Promo

Re Saturday: great to have had the chance to also see faces behind nicknames, despite I sometimes felt misplaced among so many knowledgeable people.

Yeah, Ian was already at my home filming stuff from my collection in the past, I know him well. If there is any chance to make it to your museum I‘ll PM you and maybe we can also meet in person!

Just a very wild hint, are you aware that the royal house of Salm-Reifferscheidt, having their home in Schloss Steyregg, just north of the Danube, close to Linz, and therefore about two hours drive from Blatná, have had a Japanese ancestor? Aoki Shūzō started studying at Berlin University back in 1869 and later was Japanese Foreign Minister and was the great-grandfather of the current head of the family. They still have a few items from him in their castle, but of course some stuff disappeared over the decades too. Some links on this (sorry, they are German, you can try Google Translator): https://oag.jp/event...m-privaten-nachlass/ https://www.nachrich...2-Jahren;art4,575690 https://oag.jp/event...1844-1914-im-profil/ It may also have been a potential connection. One would need to research if any of the Salm-Reifferscheidt family has had a Naval function in WWI to see if this theory makes sense. PS: I love your museums website, especially all the very cool and rare weapons (for me: especially firearms) you have displayed there! Thanks for doing this stuff, despite I can't speak Czech! I hope to one day make it there and get to see at least some of them in person.

Bringing it up a last time - hope to see all NBTHK Europe members from this forum in Manching (in Germany) in exactly one week, next Saturday. I'll bring this Masayuki along so that all of you can inspect it in person. Highly looking forward to it!

If there is anything needed to be done in place, then let me know. This is approximately 1.5 hours drive from my home and I go there from time to time anyway. Could check if still there and try to take some pictures. Edit: dug out the old newspaper article on them .. basically it seems they are property of Anton Petermandl, meaning this person seemingly inherited the collection. It is claimed they are all from the estate of medical doctor Albrecht von Loretz, who lived from 1847 to 1884, and had worked in Japan and brought these blades from Japan to Steyr. If this person then handed them over to the museum, idk. I'd assume they did about zero with these blades since 1884, so they indeed have handling issues and maybe are out of polish. If this adds to the provenance .. idk. Judge yourself. https://www.nachrichten.at/oberoesterreich/weihnachten/Schwerter-der-Samurais-zum-Advent;art115283,1244441

Thank you! Spoke with Markus on this signature too, he mentioned that at best the second name was 9 years old when this was a collaboration work, so bit unusual and maybe to help the younger of the two? Unfortunately I only pictured the Mei when I saw this blade at a friends place, so cannot provide additional pictures. Edit, to make it clear: he said the two smiths are Yokoyama Kōzuke Daijō Fujiwara Sukesada (1633–1721) and Genpachirō Sukesada (1712–1743).

I‘d appreciate assistance in deciphering this Mei. Thank you!

I'd need to add to this, attending to this meeting is only possible for NBTHK (Europe) members. But fortunately there is plenty time left to join . https://www.nbthk.net/news

Long time no post .. sorry to bring it up again. I'm planning to attend the NBHTK Europe meeting in Manching in Germany on 28th September 2024, mainly to bring the blade along for anyone interested to take a look at it. For what I was able to understand it will start at 14:00 local time. Would be great to see faces behind nicknames.

@Sutraken I thought your blade deserves a better side by side so I did the attached "enhaced version" of the previous image better (but still a bit "quick'n'dirty" since a bit of the red background is still visible) in Photoshop. Thought you may appreciate it:

Thanks for providing additional pictures! I've did my best in a quick and dirty method and tried to match your two pictures to a single one. The hamon is quite high up in the blade, except for a part of the front half of the blade starting around the middle. @Ray Singer did you actually have the blade with you personally when you sold it, meaning you have had it in hands?

Actually I was thinking the same, even for being a beginner I thought the actual angle and picture size used makes it tough to be able to tell anything. But this should be rather easily solved, maybe Stefan could try and do a few pictures and post those here? Thanks!

Do you really feel the necessity to call someone a nasty moron, just because he told you that in his opinion the hamon towards the edge is usually different for Kiyomaro, as well as speaking on the jigane? From a third party view this is a really harsh and not needed personal attack I would neither do online nor offline. If you feel he is wrong, then directly address his critics and point out why you think he is wrong with what he says. But please do not use words like this. You are otherwise risking ot ruin your own thread on a marvellous blade with expressions like this. Be polite, accept that there are different opinions than yours, and wait for the day you might get papered assistance from Japan which supports your opinion. Just like I did.

We are looking at a truly marvellous blade. It shows a it was done by a skilled smith with plenty of details to be found. Your posts though tend to focus on who made the blade, not this much on what it actually is and what you can see in it. And if I may allow myself to tell from a more neutral view, you seem to react very sensitive to comments regarding who made the sword. Since you'll submit it to Shinsa you'll find out. I had accepted different opinions for my blade as well, based on them you actually can learn a lot. If you for example use Kirill's comment and leave out the part where he speaks on your blade, I personally consider it extremely interesting since they mention particular details and aspects of a specific smith in a way you will not be able to find them in a book or elsewhere online. So just keep open minded - at worst you have a super nice Wakizashi which in that quality could get a very interesting attribution you may had never considered, at best your suspicion even gets confirmed. After all a win anyway.

Keep us updated when you know what the experts in Japan are thinking. Good luck - keen to find out if they think.

Well with that time schedule you should send it by now to make sure everything is within time. For mysterious reasons the watches in Japan seem to take much longer to make circles, or maybe the Japanese have fun on seeing Westerners waiting so eagerly . Do you want to handle everything yourself, or via an agent? And seriously, if you want an opinion or possibly papers around early 2024, you need to get it sent by now.

I'm looking forward to hear on NBTHK shinsa results for the blade. You never know until the blade is in Japanese hands. When do you plan to get it shipped?

The blade is so full of life and well polished that actually you don't even need special light nor a good camera since the details are visible anyway. Attached are a few pictures I did only with daylight and my mobile phone. Depending on the angle in which you hold it to the camera you can see different details of the blade. Additionally these made visible a detail which the togishi choose to do - to remove absolutely as minimal material as possible and rather leave a very few rust pits and chips rather than to take away too much material, yet the result is fantastic. The three hi are fantastic and satisfying to look at. Especially for me since I absolutely love them for being perfectly parallel and mirrored on both sides of the blade. Notice the blade cross section changes to diamond shape in front of the hi just to go back to wedge shape (oh year, I know I'm using the wrong terms!) towards the tip.

I'm pleased to let all know today the blade arrived back home with me (among the Hokke Ichijo -> https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/33001-tachi-bringback/ ). So roughly four years later now the journey of the blade ended where it began. Had spent probably 10 minutes of looking at the steel and then put it back in the shirasaya. Will need to find some more time to look at in detail. Not being an expert, but especially having the as well freshly polished Hokke Ichijo blade aside even to beginners such as me the much more life one can see in the Masayuki is obvious. And what I really realized and wasn't much aware in 2019 was the super complex cross section (I'm very certain there is a nihonto term for that but for the lack of even knowing the correct term for this in my mother tongue forgive me for calling it this way) of the blade that actually changes various times. At least to me this appeared as a very complex overall geometry. When I find time I'll do some more pictures. Seeing how bad I am compared to those who have way more experience in taking pictures of blades .

These numbers are very interesting. It seems that the submissions to the last Shinsa (speaking of totals) were way less than the previous five sessions, as well as even the pass ratio was much less than previous - for any type of submission. If this was the case, then the approximate percentage should stay the same. What it didn't. Not saying they are not compared, but it simply cannot be the only thing they consider. So this just leaves the conclusion they either got stricter, or the panel changed and the current jury has higher quality levels than previously (also kind of stricter), or the submissions are getting of less quality (theoretically spoken, the older items are not getting more, many have been already submitted in earlier years, so quite likely the submissions are of less quality than probably 20 years ago). Or a mixture of all of that. PS: It seems Juyo 63 was also with less swords passing, whereas the years prior and post had higher acceptance rates. Very isolated view, but it seems two years with higher acceptance rates are followed by one strict year. At least this applied twice in the last six years. Keen to see for the next three years if this is just statistics, or more :).

@John C I do know this is not mathematics where the panel is sitting and thinking "we still have to pick additional four items to reach our ratio", yet IMHO these numbers are very interesting if looked at a longer time, not picking one single year and making judges from this.

Jussi, since you made that great job on translating the Juyo 68 Shinsa with mentioning how many items were submitted compared to how many were neglected - do you also have these numbers for previous years? To me this is statistically extremely interesting that this year they only granted Juyo to 8,57% (94/1097) of the items submitted. would be keen to know if this is anyway a general rule, or if they were less strict in earlier years, or if this might be a result to much more items submitted compared to earlier sessions.

Simon, I appreciate your thoughts and recommendations, especially given your personal experiences I also can feel what you subly are suggesting to me. So also let me be honest: my feeling is that I already got more than I ever expected. And I am very thankful for this gift that I truly stumbled upon. Maybe a year ago I read a very old post (or entry? I can't say for sure) of Darcy Brockbank where he told the story of a Nihonoto collector who has a very high end blade, but only papered Hozon. To now summarize it in my words, simply because it confirms the signature is original, and that was enough for this collector, he got what he wanted. This made me think way more than it probably should. The result was that I noticed the certification at higher level, while it does honor certain pieces, is, at least it appears to me, a truly part of Western culture - to "win", to put something "at highest level", to "compete" with others. If you though look at a blade from an isolated point of view the Hozon or Tokubetsu Hozon papers are way more important, because (if signed) they verify the (signature of the) blade, whereas (to my understanding) Juyo is way more often seen as an award. Additionally (and mentioning it again), does a Masayuki/Kiyomaro blade absolutely need Juyo? Now doing the comparison/competition that I just doomed: for a lot of other smiths the fact if they are Juyo or not make a huge (especially value-wise) difference for them. Blades made by Masayuki/Kiyomaro are, from what I learnt and got told during my journey, somewhat flying above this. So even from this view, unless you have set certain collection limitations such as "Juyo only" or are a "certification junkie", it does not make this much of a difference. If you by now wonder based on the above why I even bothered to submit to Juyo, the answer is pretty simple. Because it already was in Japan, and because you nevertheless try, when the limits for the preconditions are low. Yes, sure I could wait and submit it next year again. And the following year. From what I gathered the chances that one day a blade (fulfilling certain levels of quality) can get Juyo if submitted enough times exist. But what are my advantages of this? In case this really applies, it would simply be a question of time and money until one gets Juyo papers. This to me, given the premise that I'll keep the blade anyway and do not plan to sell it, makes not this much sense whereas for a dealer who is looking/needs to make profit it makes more sense. So my premises are much different and not commercially driven. Finally, I am still young, plus I expect the NBHTK even exist after my death, or at least there will always be some kind of certification of higher level. So if I ever decide I want to go for it again, then there will always be possibilities for this. Even for my descendants.

Stefan in his above post already summarized it correctly, I may though add that it currently still is in Japan waiting for export papers to return back home, just to make it fully technically correct.

I almost forgot to mention that I am searching for the Masayuki Wakizashi with cutting test/the owner of this Wakizashi that I have attached two pictures of. So far I had not been successful in locating it, only learnt that the last known owner passed away 10 years ago. The reason for my search is that this Wakizashi also features a period cutting test (which though - for whatever reason - lacks the cutting testers name) and is from approximately the same period as my blade. I was wondering if there might be a connection between this Wakizashi and my Katana. Is anyone aware on its current whereabout?