mdiddy

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one

Agree with Yoshikane, Showa Jyu Roku Nen = 1941

Based on the shape, hada, and what looks like 'lightbulbs' at the top of the gunome, I would surmise the blade is likely a showato

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one (I recommend counting this as one; the sword above looks to also have a brown tassel but it is admittedly hard to make out)

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one

The bottom 2 photos are of the same gunto, so only two additional total for the chart

@Bruce Pennington Here are a couple more

@Bruce Pennington Here is another one

In my experience, when chrome was applied the whole thing got chromed - blade, nakago, everything. Agree with the thoughts above, the nakago on this one has just been assertively cleaned.

Here is another one

@Bruce Pennington Great job tracking the real data! I have a bunch I can add. Here is one that was on ebay recently: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225595288981

Wow, nice find, that is a serious trove! Amongst everything else, there is a lot of really cool officer-specific content near the end, e.g. general ID'd swords. Impressive.

Thank you Bruce, looking forward to moving forward

I apologize if my language offended you, but I am glad I finally got your attention. You have a history of ignoring my scrutiny and I don’t think that’s a function of inflammatory language. I think it’s a function that you don’t like scrutiny. I don’t like scrutiny either – no one does - and I’ve had to work through that myself in very public ways in public forums before (see attached for an example of your contribution). If you prefer to have scrutiny shared privately, or more congenially, that is fine with me, but that is a two way street and I expect the same from you. I recommend you take my scrutiny as an opportunity. For someone of your growing stature in this community, you should be better, you should ascribe to a higher standard. Let me be blunt – your mistaking the brown cord and over-shooting the sword as gunzoku is the type of simple observational mistake that is beneath you. I really hate having a public spat and it’s unfortunate it came to this. If there is a personality conflict we need to resolve, you are welcome to contact me directly and we can sort it out. I look forward to continue contributing to the collective understanding of nihonto, and engaging you in frank debate to further our learning. At the end of the day if we agree to disagree that’s fine, but I think we can both perform to a higher standard.

@John C Yeah that’s interesting but still not quite putting it to bed. Here, let me try this way, how does what you are saying apply to @Bruce Pennington's assessment of this sword: 1. The basic identification of the item is incorrect 2. That incorrect identification is then referenced against someone else’s document based research that was ungrounded in real world data but is now taken at face value as gospel 3. Incorrect identification + ungrounded research taken at face value = a fantastical assessment The ungrounded document research becomes an accelerant for falsehood. If real world data had been factored in somewhere along the way, it would have tempered the falsehood. That matters because these things spread quickly from forum to forum and if unchecked, every sword with a brown cord we only see half of in a picture is going to be labeled as gunzoku. That’s just bad, shoddy research, I don’t see how it can be seen differently. Essentially, your two methods of research are not mutually exclusive. But I remain open-minded, how does your philosophy / approach solve that scenario?

@John C Here is another fun fact about judging gendaito vs. showato. The character of the color of the nakago can also sometimes be an indicator. Gendaito sometimes shows a silvery finish on the nakago. Showato, maybe because of how that type of steel ages, will rarely feature a silvery finish and rather show a darker/dirtier type of brown or rust finish. Admittedly this observation is a little looser, but in searching though my archives I could not find any showato examples I had photographed that showed the silvery characteristics on the nakago of gendaito. For example, here are a few nakago to consider: a gendaito by Nagamitsu, a gendaito by Seki Kanehide, and a showato by Seki Kanehiro (my photo settings were probably a little different for each sword, but I think this generally illustrates the gist)

It's at least a positive sign. Look also to see if there is ji nie and any other hataraki in the hamon. Look also to see if/how the nie pools along the nioi guchi.

If you are going to defer to others on something as basic as a tassel when confronted with evidence, why are you authoritatively commenting on it in the first place? Much less using it as the basis to extrapolate to some more random and rare scenario (i.e. ‘Gunzoku'). And that’s my point on why some of Nick’s info can be dangerous when it is not understood in the context of the real world data. Yes, and that’s the problem. His research is really great and fascinating but there are holes. A straight verbatim reading of his analyses without some understanding of the underlying real world data results in these quacky assessments. You are correct, my statement that "all the all-brown tassels were on Type 3's" was inaccurate. In my haste I said 'all' when 'most' would have been more accurate.

Philosophically interesting, but assumes the data and the document say the same thing and they often do not. For example:

In addition to the distinctive dark spots in the hamon that John mentions (to my eye, they are like lightbulbs at the top of gunome formations), you can also look for nie in and around the hamon. The showato rarely (if ever) show nie while a lot of the gendaito do. Even good gendaito done in nioi deki may show traces of nie where the hardening was inconsistent in a spot or two.

Assuming it will come up and because I have too much time on my hands, here's a little comparison of the cord in question with all-brown tassels vs. tsukaito / sageo. At least to my eye, the cord in question doesn't look all that much like a tassel.

This assessment is nonsensical. The sword is a naginata naoshi remounted as a wakizashi in traditional samurai style buke zukuri mounts. It was likely brought back from the war or occupation, but there is nothing here suggesting military usage, much less a rare connection to 'Gunzoku'. You can’t see the whole ‘tassel’ so how do you even know if it's a tassel and not something more likely such as a sageo cord or tsukaito? Attaching this sword to 'Gunzoku' is such a leap that it boggles the mind. While Nick may have been a top-flight translator and document uncoverer, it seems he really did not dabble in the realities of the real world data. When confronted with the sheer numbers of late war usage he tended to skirt around those facts in a couple of hollow one-liners. Simply regurgitating his assertions as fact whenever possible without any real world data behind them is dangerous, it’s a kind of disinformation. And if you wonder why the reference material calls the all-brown tassel a "late war" tassel it's probably because the people that wrote those books spent decades on decades in the field collecting and studying examples - in hand if you can believe it - and tended to notice all the all-brown tassels were on Type 3's. Go figure.

Looks like a pretty nice sword. To my eye, the blade looks like a Sue-Koto shobu zukuri wakizashi, ubu, but mumei unsigned. The hamon looks like that of Mino Kanefusa, there were several generations, so maybe this is one of them, mid to late 1500's. The koshirae is maybe late Edo period and nice. Looks like it could have been used for formal occasions given the prevalence of kiri mon on the fuchi, kashira, tsuba, and saya kojiri as well as very nice igeta mon menuki on the exterior of the tsuka. Not sure what you traded for it, but it's a nice example of a blade and koshirae. Feel free to PM me or email me at soheiswords@gmail.com with any detailed questions you might have.