Kevin

Have you tried contact through this page? http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.bown/ Kevin

It sounds a lot, but it depends on how it is distributed. If it is distributed well, it doesn't feel that heavy. 40kg is just under 90 pounds, as I recall. I've carried a 100 pound pack camping before now, first time in the Canadian Rockies doing 15-20 miles a day with it at altitude very comfortably, and without trying to push the boat out by yomping across the mountains at speed. Mind you, I was just enjoying the walk and the scenery, so I could afford to be leisurely. :-) I'd guess at that time I was about 154 pounds unladen weight. :-) Thing is, a lot of modern folk aren't terribly fit. OTOH, modern infantry probably carry similar weights or heavier. Kevin

Well true - but many polishes ago you wouldn't have seen them. Chris, that's another approach. Kevin

It's a shame - it was a nice sword many polishes earlier, but there you go. Now I think it needs to be retired. However what should the current owner do with it if they no longer want it? Dumping it in the dustbin seems a shame. I recall reading a year or two ago on a martial artist's blog how he donated his old sword to a Japanese shrine that takes in swords - old ones, worn out ones, unwanted ones etc. Should the current owner be feel like affording a trip to Japan, that might be an option. Kevin

I suspect that there is another ware waiting to open up if it is polished again; see the dark line cutting through the hamon to the left of picture 4. If so, it is only going to get worse, not better. All in all, I'd leave it well alone. Kevin

As a metalworker I was puzzled by the claim that you could change the hada by retempering. I honestly can't see how that would be possible, short of folding metal again. :? Kevin

It happens to websites sometimes - somebody hacks the website (frequently via .htaccess) and forces it to redirect to a phishing or malware site. The owner of the website then has to remove the hack. Kevin

Of course, the other reason for saying that it is a private sale is that it won't then go through the books and the taxman won't know about it. Mind you, the taxman is likely to find out sooner or later, cos they do check on things . . . Kevin

From a legal POV, private sales aren't covered by retail laws. OTOH, it's a very grey area - if a sword is on a commercial website, can it be said to be a private sale? That is something the lawyers would have to argue. Speaking only for myself, if it's on my website, it's not a private sale and I'd find it troubling to claim that it was. In fact, given that I sell swords as a business, I'm not sure that I'd want to claim exemption on 'private sale' grounds just cos I'd sold a sword without it going on the website. I sell swords - it doesn't matter if it's on the website or not. All my sales are covered by retail laws as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise where do you draw the line? If you are going to make the distinction, how do you distinguish between a private and a commercial sale if the person selling makes a living selling swords? I guess that it all comes down to personal ethics. But then that's just my POV. Kevin

Just to let you lot know the gist of a conversation that I had with Japanese Customs. Swords are supposed to enter Japan by freight now. The following rules apply: When goods are imported into Japan, regardless of purpose such as sale, a Customs duty as well as 5% of consumption tax will be imposed. In general, customs duty for sword is 8.4%. Therefore, 8.4% customs duty and 5% consumption tax will be collected. If the sword is an antique which age exceeds 100 years, 0% customs duty can be applied as long as a certificate issued from authorities such as a government in export country. So you need a certificate to get the lower rate of duty. OK, it doesn’t, in principle, matter whether 0% or 8.4% is applied as long as you can get your money back, though it does mean a larger outlay upfront. If the items are re-exported within one year from the date of import, the import duty/tax can be refunded when requirements are met as Article 19-3 of our Customs and Tariff Law provides as follows; (Refund of Customs Duty when Imported Goods are Re-exported in the Same Conditions as Imported) Article 19-3. When the goods the customs duty on which has been paid in accordance with a Cabinet Order are re-exported from Japan without any change in nature and form at the time of their importation, the customs duty may be refunded, as may be prescribed by a Cabinet Order, if the said goods are to be exported from Japan within one year from the date of their import permit. In order to apply this clause, prescribed procedures are required at the time of importation in addition to import declaration and at the time of re-exportation. Furthermore, importer (receiver) has to have a bank account in Japan for refund. Hmm! So what are the procedures applied at the time of importation? As procedures, it is necessary to submit, at the time of importation, two copies of the "Application for identification of goods to be re-exported" (one of which will be returned to the applicant by the customs after confirming identity), in addition to complying with regular import procedures. At the time of re-exportation, it is necessary to submit the import permit, two copies of "Application for duty refund (reduction) for the goods to be re-exported without change" in its nature and form and the "Application for identification of goods to be re-exported" which confirms identity at the time of importation in addition to regular export procedures. In some cases, you might be required to submit photos, brochures and the like concerning the goods so that customs confirm the identity between import goods and re-exported goods. OK, you can get your money back if you are aware of this at the time and the proper procedures have been followed at the time of importation. However, there’s a rub – the refund has to be paid Japanese bank account, otherwise they can’t pay you. Kevin

It depends upon why its loose. You need to take a careful look at the whole assembly and how the bits relate to each other. For example, in some swords the back of the habaki may not be parallel to the seppa and the face of the tsuba. Then again, it might be a problem with the tsuka (in which case you might, in the worst case, need a new tsuka), or someone may have changed a tsuba for a thinner one and so on and so forth. Just putting in another seppa willy-nilly may only solve the problem temporarily. Consequently there isn't really a one-size-fits-all answer. It's actually a fairly common repair request for us. As Toryu said, if it's your practice sword, it needs dealing with immediately. As for deliberate looseness - hogwash. Someone did an engineering study of how the whole assembly works in cutting. The shock should transfer to the outside of the handle, with very little of the force being exerted on the mekugi. The assemble needs to be tight to do this. If it's loose, this can't happen efficiently. The upshot is that you may get the mekugi having to handle too much force, in which case it will break and the blade may go flying out of the tsuka. That sort of accident has happened. It can be quite risky if you're training with others. Kevin

Apparently new rules were introduced on January 1 2011: New customs requirement All High Value exports January 1 2011 HM Customs MOU - Strategic Export (LIC99) procedures. Certain High Value export commodities require a UK export licence (these include as an example IT equipment, printed matter, paintings). If no export licence is required the Shipper needs to endorse this on the invoice or provide a statement on letterhead confirming the items being exported do not require a licence. Check if exports require a licence at http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/export-c ... ganisation Now, nihonto don't need an export licence - leastways when I entered in a variety of search terms covering the topic, nothing was found - but you'll have to put that you don't need a licence if you are sending a nihonto to someone overseas. I know - more hogwash, but I figured UK collectors might like to know. Kevin

The description is, to my mind, misleading. Lots of stuff in English extolling the sword's virtues, and then a bit of technical Japanese when it comes to fatal and potentially dangerous flaws, which is also buried in the middle of the text, so easily skipped over. You also have to look through the pictures carefully. I can only hope that the buyer understood what hagire are, and that the sword has hagire, otherwise there is going to be one very disappointed customer when they do realise that it has cracks. I also hope that they don't intend to use the sword. I asked my girlfriend for her opinion of this listing. Her opinion was rather stronger than my comments above, and along the lines of Kevin

If you welded on a nakago, you'd screw up the hamon at hamachi - steel conducts heat and you're talking about melting steel at the welding site. That's with modern welding techniques. If you were forge-welding it, you'd have to raise both bits to white sparking heat - even more damage to the hamon - and bang it with a hammer. Chances are high in both cases that you'd have to do a bit of file work to get the surface of the weld flat with the surrounding metal. Draw your own conclusions. Kevin

I had a chat with a Customs Officer not long back, and the conversation turned to the cancelled shinsa. He advised letting Customs officially know in advance (presumably in writing) of any future shinsa so that swords weren't held up . He told me that this is what has happened with preparations for the Olympics, so that competitors' equipment is sped through Customs and available on the day. Just thought that the info might help. Kevin

Most likely his starting bid is too high for the tastes of a lot of bidders and no one wants to be first. There are folk out there who think that they are going to get a nihonto, even good nihonto with papers, for the price of a Paul Chen sword or less, and that $1000 is the most that they should have to pay for any antique sword. Haven't checked, but he may also have not checked the box to get it on the US and Canadian servers. Better pics of the nakago would have helped as well. And it is nearly Christmas and a bad global economic situation - lots of folks are spending money on other things. Kevin

I've also heard of the opposite - collectors/individuals at meetings persuading newbies that their sword is worth far less than it actually is in order to buy it cheaply themselves. Plus other dodgy stuff. Whether the accounts I've heard are accurate or not - dunno, wasn't there, so can't comment. The folks who've told me things like this weren't however the newbies concerned; they were just a bit taken aback by the lack of ethics. Agreed on both counts. That's why I give folks seven days after receipt to make sure that they are happy with a purchase. It's not in my interests to have unhappy customers. They pay me, I send them the sword, and they then have seven days after it arrives to make sure that they are really happy with their purchase. If they're not, they can send it back and I'll refund them what they paid. Simple really. Actually quite a few folks become friends as well as repeat customers. Kevin

What no one? Taken to its logical conclusion, that argument means that you shouldn't buy from anyone who is selling because they are, by definition, not to be trusted if they want to sell. Presumably you should only trust people who want to give swords away or who are selling but don't want to sell. :D Well, in the first instance, if someone wants to give me a boxful of Juyo swords, I'll be very happy to recieve it. :D In the second, that does rather open the door to taking advantage of someone who presumably desperately needs to turn their sword back into money in order, for example, to cover bills. I'll leave folks ponder the ethics of taking advantage of somebody in such straits. Trust is not something that should be easily given in any walk of life. Trust has to be earned - on both sides. There are dodgy buyers as well as sellers Of course there is. That's when the buyer gets exactly what they wanted, with no surprises, at a price that they were happy with, and the seller makes a reasonable profit that allows them to continue in business and support their family. Contrary to Marx, selling things to people is not necessarily one long rip-off. To my mind that's a good way to go out of business, because eventually folks see that the Emperor has no clothes. Mind you, I prefer the model of business exemplified by the Quakers as opposed to the idea of capitalism red in tooth and claw. But then I've been told that I'm odd. Oh, as for Caribbean holidays - never had one, wouldn't want one (far too hot) but wouldn't mind being able to afford the time and spare money involved in taking one. Though the prospect of taking our 3 year old daughter on a plane is a bit nightmarish. Kevin

Oh, I know about that firsthand. The guy who taught me woodcraft was a poacher turned gamekeeper who wound up hunting the Japanese through the jungles of places like Malaya. He scared the sugar out of anyone thinking of poaching on his patch. Just the idea of him hunting them scared folks. All sorts of tales got told about him. You'd think you were alone, no one around for miles, and he'd be round the next tree you passed, or appearing to have just materialised out of the ground. No noise at all - he'd just be there, as if he'd always been there. :-) Kevin

Stupid error - please delete. Kevin

Estcrh, well you wouldn't go around clanking with a hidden armoury 99 times out of 100. Dead giveaway. :-) Specialised tools would be useful on some occasions though. That first blade is sneaky. You'd imagine, from the saya, that it would have a fairly normal sugata and that the saya indicates length. Thus you have preconceptions about how it would be used. Instead you're faced with something very different and used very differently. Jason, true, disinformation is useful. Nothing like an enemy who has already defeated themselves out of terror. :-) Additionally, it's a good idea to get an opponent to believe in a reality that is advantageous to you, and only see that it was all an illusion right at the crunch point, when it is too late to do anything about it. ]:-) OTOH there were tools for scaling walls and various methods of obscuring an opponent's vision so that someone appeared to disappear (some a bit like flashbangs). Some was probably plain woodcraft. I recall scaring one bunch of coppers that way years ago - it seemed to them that I'd just popped out of the ground in their midst. ]:-) One damned near peed himself cos I was 3-4 inches from his shoulder. :-D As for magic, there are links to mikkyo and some of the more arcane stuff could be regarded as 'magic' by others. Kevin

Reading through the blurb on that sword, it looks like some students in the Bujinkan have recently had the bright idea of lengthening the tsuka (and thus the nakago) in order to make certain restraints easier to apply. Actually they can be applied with a katana tsuka of standard length (e.g. you could apply them with a shin-gunto tsuka), which was no doubt the way it was done historically. Personally I'd not be too keen on such a long tsuka, though there are pictures from the Satsuma Rebellion of samurai with swords with very long tsuka. Apart from that, the only really distinguishing feature of this sword is something like a short katana or a long wakizashi in a saya that looks like it houses a longer sword. As I mentioned in the previous post, that was done in some schools. However, there wasn't anything unusual in the blades themselves. After all, it probably wasn't a good idea for a smith to knock out obvious ninja swords, any more than it would have been a good idea for a ninja to have an obvious ninja sword in the house. That said, the lines between samurai and ninja were not always clear cut, and the Tokugawas used the Iga and Koga clans for various reasons, e.g. security. Kevin

I've never seen physical or historical evidence for a specifically ninja sword. As far as I know, they used whatever swords they could get their hands on. That said, (and ignoring the Bujinkan for the moment), some old ryu (can't remember which) did have, as part of their syllabus, the use a shorter sword in a longer saya. An opponent might anticipate how a sword would be drawn, used, and its effective distance, based on the length of a saya. After all, you can't see the blade and it's a reasonable assumption. The use of a shorter blade in a longer saya would therefore screw up their assumptions on distancing, leaving them at a disadvantage. Additionally the extra space below the kissaki would allow, theoretically, for keeping things in, such as the odd message, though I could see that there might be a problem in getting them out again once you'd put them in. However, it is not in the least unlikely that such a tactic would be adopted by historical ninja and thus wind up in the Bujinkan syllabus. BTW, it should be noted that not all the ryu under the umbrella of the Bujinkan were ninjutsu ryu. Kevin

Before - no problem. Afterwards? Well, I talk to lots of folk and have been asked to help with Customs on more than a few occasions, so the following draws on a lot of people's experiences. As one Customs officer said to me, all swords tend to be detained and assumed to be prohibited, just in case someone makes an error in letting a prohibited one through. To my certain knowledge of more than a few cases, that's even if it has just returned from shinsa with origami, the correct tariff codes and the correct export paperwork. Well, it may have the correct paperwork but it is in Japanese and it looks as if Customs can't be bothered to know what the correct paperwork looks like, let alone translate it - they regard it as your job to prove that it is exempt. Ditto correct tariff codes - they'll still detain it. It can take up to a month before they release it. As they admit, in the vast majority of cases it is a paper exercise that has little point to it, other than to consume a lot of various officers' time in answering responses and processing the sword, and thus consuming bits of HMIRC's budget to no good end. As one officer said to me, it's a waste of resources that could be more usefully spent elsewhere. Meantime the manufacturers of the swords that the legislation was aimed at retooled to make them straight for the British market, and thus exempt, so they go sailing through. Customs know this - they've remarked on it. The only swords that get impeded are therefore exempt swords over 50 cm in close on 100% of cases. Customs are pretty hamstrung by knowing nothing about swords and not being allowed to inspect them thoroughly. They also don't have experts on tap to examine the swords. They do know that traditional swords have hamon - however swords showing hamon will still be routinely detained and the recipients asked to prove that they are exempt. What Customs know about identifying traditional swords is therefore irrelevant, cos the procedure is to detain. It does however have an impact. Some folks are afraid to send their swords to the UK and some sellers won't send swords to the UK, even though they are exempt. That however is getting on to where the law has an unintended economic impact. Kevin

:-) I was looking at the deformation on the mune. That looks to me more like bending over the side of an anvil, rather than a vice. In fact its the wrong way round for a vice, unless you were hammering above the bit you were bending (i.e. you clamp the tip of the nakago in the vice), which would be a very awkward and risky way of doing it. A large amount of effort would also be needed to work it cold, which then entails some risk to the integrity of the nakago and even the blade. It might well fracture at the mekugi-ana. Not exactly exact either. Working it hot would be a far better idea, with far less effort and risk involved, and would cause the pattern of dents seen. As for patina - it's a photo of unknown colour temperature of a nakago that was probably altered of the order of about a century ago and which has had time to develop a patina since then. It's therefore not a reliable indication. Kevin