PietroParis

I have just bought this unpapered Tatsutoshi on Yahoo! Japan: I had given up on it after a little bidding war and then I got a message from Buyee telling me that the seller had canceled the highest bid. I guess that the other bidder was the seller him/herself, just probing how high I would be pushed. Let's hope there won't be bad surprises with the condition of the tsuba – which does show a bit of corrosion in the pictures – or with the taxes... Does anyone here have experience with getting Buyee to use the proper description and tariff code for antiques? This said, am I correct in assuming that this tsuba represents a rice bale?

The notch on the mune looks like a kirikomi (cutting mark) i.e. the mark left by the impact of another blade. As far as I understand, it is generally considered a plus rather than a defect. https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/20392-does-kirikomi-add-to-or-detract-from-a-swords-value/

Wise words. My suggestion (as a near-beginner myself) would be to start with Joe Earle's "Lethal Elegance" and Masayuki Sasano's "Early Japanese Sword Guards: Sukashi Tsuba"

Sadly, they look like cast (as opposed to forged & chiseled) reproductions to me. Let's see what the others think.

It looks like ぐ 刀 Gu To (carved by Gu?)

Tatsutoshi on Yahoo! Japan, unpapered:

Tatsunao on eBay, this must really have been his best-selling model...

This is a kind of test that a netsuke collector would definitely not recommend. The dirt in the crevices is part of the “life” of the object, and you could even damage the inking. In Nihonto terms, it’s a bit like messing with the inside of the sukashi in a tsuba.

With some guesswork, I think that the right signature might read 光玉 Kogyoku, another rather generic, "easy" name (although not as egregious as Gyokuseki):

P.S. Alas, rotating and magnifying the left signature it does indeed look like 玉石 Gyokuseki, a notorious red flag for mass-produced export/tourist carvings made in China or Hong Kong. TBH, the quality of the carving itself suggested as much independently of the signature.

Not necessarily. On this kind of tourist/export carvings a random signature can be added just to enhance the perceived value of the item, with no connection to the identity of the carver. Indeed, most such carvings carry simple signatures from a limited set, e.g. famous signatures from the past such as 正直 Masanao or 正之 Masayuki. Other much-recurring signatures are 石川 Ishigawa and 玉石 Gyokuseki, the latter probably intended as a pun because it can be read as "dodgy". Your pictures are not clear enough to read the signatures, but it seems to me that the one on the left belongs in the broad class mentioned above, while the one on the right (cursive, upside down) is harder to read and might or might not mean anything at all in Japanese.

Thank you, you are correct that they are not great old works. The one on the right might be Japanese, the one on the left most likely not, but they both are relatively recent products aimed at the tourist/export market. No problem with that, as long as you know what they are, like them, and did not pay a fortune for them. P.S. leaving aside the ethical (and legal) implications of buying/selling recent ivory, of course. That is a matter on which sensitivities vary, but many netsuke collectors feel strongly about it because it kind of ruins the game also for harmless antique ivory. P.P.S. On this kind of carvings the signature does not matter, since it will not point to a recorded artist anyway.

You are of course correct in pointing out that, differently from the eBay example, your okimono shows detail also on the bottom. However, there is still at least one flat, messy area that looks suspicious to me: For the rest, I don't know what kind of plastics would resist the hot pin, but let me stress the obvious fact that the hot pin test works only in one direction: if it melts, it is not ivory. If it does not melt, it could be ivory as well as any other material that does not melt. I recall a discussion in the FB group of a museum replica (the cat in robe from the Peabody Museum) that had fooled its buyer because it had passed the hot pin test.

It does not look like ivory, especially the bottom view. Moreover, as you were told in the FB group, it is a model that is quite commonly faked, see e.g. this recent sale: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/115468859653 My own guess would still be some kind of plastic. Just out of curiosity, would you care to show the netsuke?

Very nice, would you please post it also in the "Tatsutoshi & Students" thread? For the record, a similar tsuba signed 並寿 Namitoshi (one of Tatsutoshi's students) has been on sale for ages on Yahoo! Japan: https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/l657634473

One more from Yahoo! Japan. The seppa dai is heavily corroded, but the Hozon certificate attributes it to Tatsutoshi:

Tatsutoshi on Yahoo Japan, with rust issues:

Last one and then I swear I’ll stop: this is identified as a Kaichi by a well known Japanese scholar/dealer of netsuke:

For those who remember the sprawling discussion a few months ago on the Japanese representations of the mythical beast 白澤 BaiZe/Hakutaku, I would like to share two more examples of the "flaming horned lion" version that I stumbled onto later. I tried to add them directly to my old summary (see this link) but I can no longer edit it. The first is again by Tachibana Morikuni, in an encyclopedia of Chinese things named "Morokoshi kinmo zui" (see this link): The second is a netsuke in the Go collection at Tokyo National Museum (see this link). This one attests that the shishi-like representation, alternative to the extra-eyed, cow/goat-like representation, is still recognized by Japanese curators as Baize/Hakutaku: Cheers, Pietro

Just in case anyone didn't know: https://archive.org/details/japaneseswordmou00joly/mode/2up

Another tsuba on eBay whose style looks familiar even if the signature 宜壽 Yoshitoshi is not in Markus Sesko's lineage for the Akao & Ito school:

You could try to match them with these pictures from the museum's website: https://colbase.nich.go.jp/organizations/1/collection_items?locale=en&limit=100&organization_id=1&with_image_file=1&only_parent=0&free_word=katana https://colbase.nich.go.jp/organizations/1/collection_items?locale=en&limit=100&organization_id=1&with_image_file=1&only_parent=0&free_word=tachi https://colbase.nich.go.jp/organizations/1/collection_items?locale=en&limit=100&organization_id=1&with_image_file=1&only_parent=0&free_word=wakizashi

I have this cross(?) shaped, unsigned tsuba, papered Shoami: It was discussed earlier in this thread.

Just out of curiosity, who's Murphy?

Yep: