Wolfmanreid

KAJ is an incredibly interesting and eccentric guy. Writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction among his many other hobbies apparently.

Beautifully executed file work and mei! lovely piece overall.

Given the stringent regulations on swordsmiths in Japan, cost of new Tamahagane etc. are fatally flawed or otherwise “dead” swords commonly reused as material for new blades? I’ve seen some eel catching tools made from old nihonto but they were all pre-Meiji as far as I was aware. I’ve read about smiths scrounging Edo period iron from old nails and similar vintage scrap but I’ve never heard about repurposing unsalvageable historic nihonto into new shinsakuto. Do the economics of this just not work cost wise?

For whatever reason nihonto always sell and usually above what they are worth when RIA sells them. I bought a gimei Sanemori in nice kyu gunto fittings from them and sold it again at rock island a year later for over double what I paid for it. They have sold some juyo level blades over the years I think.

If you want an auction to take a punt on the below auction has several dozen nihonto in varying states of neglect... I can only imagine that the owner of the collection must have bought every bringback blade he stumbled across at garage sales and flea markets. Rock Island Auction Sporting & Collector Firearms Auction #1045 February 16th, 2024-February 18th, 2024

Definitely bearskin. Deer hide would be a poor choice for such an item anyway as the hair tends not to stay in tanned deerskin very well.

Definitely an older blade that has seen a lot of polishes… Note that the ha machi have just about vanished after numerous polishes.

My mistake! Thought the photos were of this sword’s nakago although a closer inspection reveals the third one is of a different sword entirely.

Based on the remnant of a mekugi ana in the tang of that blade I’m inclined to think it is a repurposed nihonto in sadly neglected condition. I’ve seen similar tangs on old blades reshaped to fit in Japanese civil official koshirae and also western saber style fittings.

In the 17th century there was a fairly large semi-militarized Japanese expatriate population in what is now Vietnam. I’ve seen a couple Katanas in interesting Vietnamese made Japanese style koshirae (see attached photos, I think it’s in a museum in Amsterdam but may be misremembering) Would make sense that your sword could be a repurposed Japanese blade or Japanese influenced blade from Vietnam.

Have a simple black koshirae made for it, find a square tsuba that fits and then sell it as a genuine “ninjato”! You’ll probably make a mint :D

Slicing with a draw cut or similar motion is the most efficient means of severing the spine, muscle and tendon of a large mammal and removing the head using a sword or swordlike blade. A properly sharp blade will have no trouble in that situation naturally sliding into the intervertebral space, especially if the sword is curved. However, IMO the cutting edge of those “kubikiri” and nata is on the wrong side of the curve in order to do that efficiently. If you look at a skinning or boning knife which one might use for just this sort of thing you will see the cutting edge is on the outside curve, as it would be on a wakizashi, katana, saber, shamshir etc. that is pretty much the most efficient blade geometry for that sort of cut as far as I understand.

Sword looks genuine but paying for a proper polish would likely cost you several thousand dollars. Not worth it from an investment standpoint most likely. I’ll leave it to more knowledgeable persons than I to provide a translation of the mei.

Wikipedia actually has a detailed explanation of the historical background of ninjato. They appeared in the 1950s… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjatō

I defer to those with more expertise than I, but the “classic” depictions of the black clad ninja assassins date to the mid-late Edo period and owe as much to Japanese theater and popular culture as anything else. Even in the famous manga woodcuts of Hokusai and Kunisada which show ninjutsu and black clad ninjas they are all carrying typically curved katanas and/or wakizashis. Plenty of almost straight bladed nihonto from the Kanbun era out there although I don’t think any that I’ve seen would be called “ninjato”. In short I think the modern popular culture image of the appearance and equipment of ninja is mostly cut from whole cloth in the late 18th and 19th century, was further elaborated upon in the 20th and bears little to no resemblance to the Sengoku period clans in Iga and Koga provinces. It’s rather comparable to if our entire historical understanding of pirates was based on Howard Pyle’s wonderful late 19th century illustrations, the Gilbert and Sullivan play “Pirates of Penzance” and one or two vague references in actual period legal reporting to the hanging of a pirate crew somewhere…

If not too expensive that looks like a sword that might be worth taking a punt on. I suspect the blade will tidy up quite a bit with the application of nothing more aggressive than a soft rag and a bit of choji oil.

Thanks in advance!

Please don’t take my comments the wrong way I don’t mean to attack your views I’m genuinely interested in your moral composition and views. I don’t really consider myself a humanist particularly and I’ve seen my share of killing in Afghanistan among other places so for my own part I can’t say I find the rather callous approach the Japanese took to testing their swords on live or dead human beings particularly more troubling than I do many other aspects of their culture (their treatment of women for one).

So why pursue an interest in nihonto at all then? I can’t say I find it more disturbing to know that the Japanese were killing people with these things in the 20th century than that they were killing people with them at any other time in history. That’s rather the point of swords when you get down to it… Plenty of other equally aesthetically interesting objects to study that are not made for killing.

Why do you think they should not be legal to sell? This whole hobby is based around fascination with implements exquisitely designed for the purpose of killing people… The Japanese naturally pursued that aim with their typical single-minded rigor and cultural aesthetic but I believe it’s important for people to occasionally be reminded that these swords are not mere art objects, but also tools made for the purpose of rendering living, breathing human beings into inert lumps of dead meat. The Japanese were holding head chopping contests with living victims well into the Second World War. They certainly did/do not have a culture that centered individual dignity in the western sense and murdering random passers-by to test a new sword or fighting technique was such a common phenomenon that there is an actual term in Japanese “tsujigiri” for that practice. As much as I love Japanese art and aesthetics and am interested in Japanese culture I’ve heard stories of my friends grandparents who lived through the war in China, the Philippines and Malaysia and survived Japanese atrocities. Own of my mother’s uncles was killed by the Japanese and I have no trouble understanding why other veterans in my family hated them until their dying day. I’m still perfectly capable of being impressed with the aesthetic of these tools.

Rock Island Auction has a number of unpapered blades selling in their May 2022 premier auction. I was intrigued by this Odachi. Hamon looks a bit thin in places to me… I assume this was probably a Shinshinto era sword like the one in the attached photo. Does anyone know the history or background of these late production Odachi? After enjoying a period of popularity during the Nanbokucho era in the 14th century they almost weren’t seen again until the 19th century. The handful of surviving ubu Odachi from the nanbokucho and early muromachi I’ve seen are truly spectacular. Was carrying such a huge sword in the twilight period of the Samurai basically a political/social statement? https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/85/1269/odachi-length-Japanese-sword-blade-with-shirasaya-fittings

Here’s one I sold about a year ago. It was captured on Guam and was in the estate of a USMC veteran. Blade was in excellent condition, covered with cosmoline, and the nakago is signed “関三輪正行作” (Seki Miwa Masayuki Saku).

Some Chinese swords were truly extraordinary... The Portuguese Military Museum in Lisbon has a couple Yuan/Ming dynasty swords that are spectacular. The fittings are as good or better than some of the best Japanese work I've seen. I can't speak the metallurgy of the blades but certainly the Chinese were no slouches in their technological and metallurgical proficiency going back millennia. Interesting the seminal Chinese military work Wubei Zhi from the 16th/17th century devotes considerable space to discussing the quality and use of imported Japanese swords, which were apparently quite well regarded in China at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubei_Zhi

What a spectacular blade and an incredible story. For me just getting to watch this unfold over a few years is what makes it worth being involved in this hobby.

LOL the irony that NBTHK notified him that they are catching up to the the mid 1990s internet era via letter mail rather than email...