Pincheck

I can’t imagine why someone would go to the trouble of carving a kiku mon and then not sign it, but anything is possible. It could be that someone has removed what they thought was a gimei signature and repatinated the nakago. It looks like there might be a slight divot, a different texture and maybe a change in colour where a signature might have been. But that is pure speculation. Whatever it is, I like it.

Thanks guys. I naively thought the outer leaves were lily pads, not sure what the other ones are. Aoi leaves make more sense I suppose. It’s not big, only 75mm across, and correct me if I’m wrong but I was under the impression that a lot of the more functional tsuba were a bit bigger than that, so I’m guessing later (maybe edo) rather than earlier (muromachi or before). But I really do know nothing about tsuba. I got it for a sword I used for Iaido, back when my knees still worked.

I’ve had this tsuba for about 35 years but I know absolutely nothing about it. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts? It has no markings, it’s the same design on both sides, it’s made of iron with some kind of yellow metal inlay. Any comments would be very much appreciated.

ChatGPT keeps the chat history in its contextual memory so you could feed it information and then ask it questions about what you’ve told it. That history is gone when you start a new chat though. But you can train a custom GPT and save it so other can use it. There are input limits though, I think I read something like 32k tokens, a token is a word fragment like “ing” or “tion”. AI is generally good at things that are incontrovertible mathematical facts, like computer code, and really bad at woolly opinion based things with vague and inconsistent descriptions, like kantei.

After a lot of trial and error (mostly error) I finally got some decent photos of my katana. I have no idea how old it is, or what school it might be, but I like it.

Not that it adds much to the discussion but I also have a showato katana signed Hoshiya Yoshinaga that looks a lot like yours. https://i.ibb.co/9gXS1mM/IMG-1203.jpg https://i.ibb.co/t8QxkRY/IMG-1204.jpg

Thanks, I think. Like I said earlier, people can’t even agree on an approximate age of this one.

Now that I’ve had time to do some research, I think there is a way you could be right on all counts. I showed this sword to a Hizen collector who said he didn’t think it was Hizen Tadayoshi line which threw me off the hizen theory and I had discounted Bungo since I seem to remember them producing a coarse mokume hada and generally having a much wider shinogi ji, neither of which this sword has. But, the hada, hamon, the narrow shinogi ji and some other characteristics do resemble a sword I’ve seen by 1st gen Shizuhiro of the Igo Ishida school, which was an offshoot of Bungo Takada. Shizuhiro signed as Hizen no kami (lord of Hizen province). His work seems to be rare and I’ve only seen two Shizuhiro swords on the net, both had a very tight ko itame hada that looks a lot like mine, one had a laser straight suguha hotsure with no ashi like mine, both had narrow shinogi ji and seemed to follow a kamakura/nanbokucho style sugata, although both slightly different. Shizuhiro worked around the mid to late 1600s. Whether it is Igo Ishida or not, who knows, but it seems like a possibility. So thank you, I appreciate the help.

Well, here are some more photos of it. What do you think? 686mm (27”) nagasa 12mm of very even sori Chu kissaki 33mm, 28.5mm width at machi 21mm width at yokote (26% taper) Kasane across shonogi: 7mm at machi, 5.5mm at yokote Kasane across mune: 6.6mm at machi, 4.9mm at yokote Weight 760g

I would dearly love to date this sword but in this case that seems to be easier said than done. Several knowledgeable people have seen it IRL (including you Paul, you thought Hizen at the time) and so far bids have ranged from early nanbokucho to late edo. It seems like this one is a tough nut to crack because the sugata suggests late kamakura or early nanbokucho, but the hamon is laser straight ko nie suguha hotsure with not much else going on besides some feint sunagashi and one short patch of nijuba. No Ashi, no yo, nothing. It does look to me like it has bucket loads of ji nie and some fine chikei, plus some feint bo utsuri and hakikake on the boshi. But it’s all subtle stuff, nothing outrageous at all. Not what you might expect from a typical koto blade. The ryo chiri bo hi is of a style I’ve only ever seen on one very tired mumei sword thought to be koto and the hamon I’ve only ever seen on an Iga Ishido sword, of kanbun Shinto vintage. Maybe it could be a shinshinto copy but the patina on the nakago looks too deep to be shinshinto and everyone that’s seen it IRL says it’s older than that, so who knows?

Maybe this topic has already been done to death, if it has then I apologise for dragging it up again. But, I have a sword that has a really fine koitame hada, almost nashiji hada (depending on your perspective) but there's almost no way it is an Awataguchi. So I was wondering, in the entire history of nihonto, who in your opinion came closest to reproducing nashiji hada? Can it be done now? Aoe Chirimen Awataguchi Nashiji Hizen Konuka Rai ko-itame Mine

I've been taking some photographs and I'm wondering what people see in this hada? Chikei? Ji nie? Nothing? I'm just trying to calibrate my brain to put the right name to things I see, and rule out things I think I see that others don't.

Thanks guys. I’d heard of nishiji, chirimen and konuka hada but I’ve never seen anything like this in the flesh and wouldn’t want to label something I’ve got no experience with. Ko-itame is probably the safer label. It’s very subtle and has a slight sparkle to it in the right light. Whatever it is, it’s quite pleasing to see. It’s a really nice thing, a couple of chips the polisher couldn’t get out without changing the shape so he left them in, but the quality of the workmanship looks very high to my eye No flaws, straight as they come, crisp lines. 68cm Nagasa but o suriage by at least another 10, mu Mei, noticeably thin shinogi-ji, super straight suguha in ko nie (maybe? Not that you can tell from the photos). The polisher said it felt like koto steel, other knowledgeable people that have seen it thought hizen. I’ve no idea but it sure is pretty.

Hi all, Has anyone got any idea what you would call this hada? It's from a sword that I just got back from the polishers and it was a real pig to photograph. It's super tight, almost muji unless you get the light just right then you see a kind of mottled finish, maybe itame, maybe masame. Any ideas?