GRC

By the way, I realize now, that I erred when I originally stated the source of the article.

After I stumbled across the article using searches with Japanese kanji, I tried looking up the author using English, and the only thing that came up was that 2014 article that Ford provided.

I wrongly assumed they were the same because they were by the same author and dealt with a similar subject.

My apologies for the confusion, and that it led people to a different article. 

Here are just a few of the relevant translated quotes from that paper:

"Establishment of medieval casting production

Medieval casting workshops in the 12th century, pot A appeared in addition to the feather pot in the western Japan, and pot C appeared in the eastern Japan. The results of the survey of the casting ruins have revealed the place of production, and it has become possible to confirm the existence of many self-sustaining casting groups that produced medieval pot kettles Japan generally. In addition, unlike the ancient times, where casting production was carried out in a form that was parasitic in workshops related to ironmaking and refining, casting workshops based on mold making, melting process, and casting process have become common. This is characterized by the fact that it takes a form of production on the premise that cast metal will be distributed as a commodity, and this was used in the Middle Ages"

"From the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period The decline of earthen cooking utensils Regarding the prevalence of cast iron castings in different regions, the relationship with earthen cookers must be discussed. Although the disappearance of earthen cookers became prominent in the middle of the 16th century in Western Japan. This is nothing more than an indication of the spread of cast iron castings and pots. Yaso-kai missionary Le (12) A passage in chapter 6 of Iss Frois' Comparison of Japanese and European Cultures Japan How People Eat and Drink, says, "We use ceramic pots and bowls when we cook our meals, and Japan people use cast-iron pots and bowls." From this 58 cast iron castings in ancient and medieval times, it can be inferred that in the western Japan where he carried out his missionary work, the spread of boiling tools made of cast iron castings was remarkable. Behind this was an explosive rise in casting production. In addition, during this period, there was a nationwide popularity of pot B, and the word "hot pot" came to refer to pot B. It can be presumed that in the Edo period, even in the eastern Japan, pot C declined, and a change occurred in which Nabe B took over it." 

"unlike bronze castings, cast iron castings repeat the cycle of recovering damaged material and regenerating them as ingots many times, so conclusions must be drawn by considering the analysis values from both the production area of the raw material and the distribution area that is premised on the recovery of the ingot."

This is the article I was referencing:

古代・中世の鋳鉄鋳物  五十川 伸矢

I believe this is the journal:

国立歴史民俗博物館研究報告　第46集　（1992）

The microsoft translation for those comes up as:

Cast iron castings in ancient and medieval times. Shinya Isogawa

Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History Vol. 46 (1992)

It is 79 pages, written in Japanese, with a single page of English writing on the last page.

I had to copy everything from the pdf to a word document, then translate it one page at a time using Microsoft's translate function. When I tried doing more text than that, the translation kept getting cut off for some reason... definitely tedious.

It's got fins on the body and tail, so shachi it is 

Looks like it's also cast like so many (but not all) of the others.

Ford does this also apply to the very fine lined sukashi of the Ito schools (Odawara and Bushu Ito)?

I genuinely don't mean to be contrary here, but I don't know how to reconcile what you are proposing, with the information and examples that are available on this topic.

I've also seen refences like the one Dale posted, citing an entire style of sukashi made by saw cuts, like this one:

"The original style, Itozukashi, or Odawara Sukashi consists in designs cut through in fine lines with a fine saw. The style of sawcuts thus called Itozukashi was not altogether the monopoly of the Ito family. We find example of it in the work of the Shoami of Akita, also in Inaba, Owari, in Mito, and many other places besides such men as Seisai, and Shosai who worked in Yedo. We may mention as a tour de force, a tsuba by Munenori pierced with an extremely elongated Svastika, once in the Burty collection, of which the sawcuts were about 0.25 mm, without the slightest defect in the cut being visible, even under the microscope." 

Here are three examples that I got with a google search for "itosukashi".

I can't see any deformations along the sukashi edges that would indicate the use of chisels, in 1- the pine needles, 2- the birds, or 3- the wave lines & bird wings.

Even the chisel work of the mei on #1 shows edge deformations, and some of the strokes of the mei are even about the same width as the sukashi.

The tips of the finest sukashi lines are pointed.

And if you look at the tips of the three tiny little birds in #2, you can see that they aren't cut clean through, they sort of gradually rise up from the center like an "onramp" to get onto a highway/freeway.

Also, the curves of #1 and #3 are remarkably smooth. 

I could envision all these features being formed by dragging a thin abrasive wire up and down through a tiny drilled hole.

Are you certain that these were produced by chiseling and filing rather than "sawing" with an abrasive wire?

Some other points of interest about casting from Isogawa's anthropology article:

The article outlined that the foundrymen were using widely available, distributed cast-iron ingots, so all they had to do was do a quick melt at a relatively low temperature, and would have poured this into multiple pre-made sand molds.

Cast iron goods were commonplace during the Edo period, and foundrymen were supplying all sorts of small sized consumer goods in large quantities.

They even pointed out that a certain point in the Edo period, household ceramic bowls had been largely replaced by cast iron bowls.

As an aside, although not a scholarly source, this site on traditional Japanese kettle production states that sand molds could be reused multiple times until their quality deteriorated, whereas high end pieces were made in single use molds made of sand or clay.

 https://japanobjects.com/features/tetsubin/#how

Back to Isogawa:

He also pointed out the rarity of finding extant molds in in the archeological dig sites and that in many cases, the structure of the molds had to be inferred from the details in the cast-iron objects themselves. 

He also concluded that the rarity of extant examples of older cast-iron products strongly suggested that older items would have been "cannibalized" and remelted to make new items once they were damaged through use, transport, or fire damage.

So looking at it from a reverse perspective, we can perhaps infer that newer items will have had a greater chance of surviving, and older items will be harder to come by.

On 11/19/2022 at 11:23 AM, 1kinko said:

I didn’t see any specification to malleable cast iron in your post where you suggested that carving and inlay would have been less labor intensive than doing the same in steel.

Hi Darrel, I never intended to suggest that at all, my apologies if it came across that way.

That part of the work would almost certainly be equally laborious for both of those types of alloys (steel vs cast-iron).

My point was that by casting, you'd be able to skip all of these steps:

-forging your own plate,

-scribing a pattern on the plate to outline the pattern to be cut,

-drilling the plate

-straight chiseling to create a basic straight-walled outline (resulting in a roughly vertical sukashi wall)

-rough chiseling the remaining flat surfaces to try to carve it into a more 3D shape (including doing some of the detail work like carving in the scales of a dragon for example)

Then you are basically at the same point for both cast and forged sukashi tsuba for putting in the finishing details like cleaning up some of the detail work, or adding nunome, or maybe a simple inlay like a dragon eye.

You'd also have to remove the "web remnants" in the cast tsuba, but those will be quite thin and much easier to remove compared to removing the full thickness from a solid forged plate.

So, a massive time savings, and savings in charcoal resources since you only have to do a "single heat" to melt the cast-iron and pour it, vs the "multiple heats" required for the hand forging of your plate into whatever shape you are aiming for. If a smith was making their own tamagahane, then add in a lot more labor and many more heats. 

On 11/19/2022 at 11:23 AM, 1kinko said:

Were tea kettles made from malleable cast iron? 

I've actually been looking into Japanese sources to find out, in an attempt to narrow that down. That's a critical piece of information to support or refute that idea. So for now that's, that's just a suggestion that was originally offered up in Lissenden's dissertation.

I've been trying to explore that idea to see if I could find out more about it and whether or not it was a possibility. I just got a Japanese source from 1936 on the specific topic of malleable cast-iron that I need to get translated. I'm hoping that it is a historical summary of its use in Japan and will shed some light on when its use began.

I just read a translated, peer-reviewed Japanese anthropology article about the history of Japanese cast-iron kettle, bell and bowl production (by Shinya Isogawa), that during the pre-Edo and early Edo periods, the rare examples of signed pieces showed that the mei was cut into the mold before casting, and these items were more brittle. So, we can assume those ones were not malleable cast-iron.

Unfortunately though, this doesn't help us with the period in question: mid to late Edo.

Regardless, I think the use of malleable cast-iron is now much less relevant for our current endeavour. I think the availability/use of malleable cast iron is most relevant to the nanban tsuba specifically, which often have lots of nunome and finer details compared to a straight-walled sukashi.

And even then, may not be necessary... I suppose you could just file in the cross-hatching for nunome, rather than chisel in the cross-hatching. So it may not be a necessity at all.

Why I think malleable cast iron is now less relevant:

Earlier, I was thinking that the softness of malleable cast iron would make it perfectly functional for use in battle, and allow it to serve the "defensive" aspect in its long list of functions.

The irrelevance of the defensive aspect "clicked" for me when I read the comment by Joly, that stated shiiremono were being produced in large quantities during the 18th and 19th centuries, and were being "made for the masses", and served a "decorative" function.

Given the mid to late Edo time period, and the fact that these were not intended for use by the samurai, there was absolutely no expectation that these would ever be required for use in any kind of battle. Even the samurai were not seeing any battles during this time period, so the defensive aspect of any tsuba made in that time period would be almost entirely irrelevant.

The only exception being, when people were gearing up for the Satsuma rebellion and the perceived fear of some sort of impending European invasion once Japan opened its borders once more. But this was just at the very end of the Edo period.

Not to drag this out any further, as the thread is already moving along, but I feel I should explain the rationale for my last few "heated" posts.

Much earlier in this thread, one of the posters was chided and mocked. I felt compelled to say something then, just as I felt compelled to say something now about the repeated attempts to discredit or mock others.

My last few posts were a response to what I was witnessing, and found distasteful and potentially hurtful to others (and I know through conversations with others, I was not the only one who saw them that way).

The posts were carefully scripted to use some of these same strategies and tactics in such a way as to “mirror” them back to the sender. In that way, I was hoping to show that the same destructive tactics could be used against anyone.

Normally, I would not choose to do that in any form of academic discussion, and I sincerely hope to never see the need to do so again.

In terms of this being “my theory”, that is an interesting perspective, but one that I do not share.

My approach is to always be open to new sources of researched information and will gladly pivot my thinking as soon as new evidence arises. Having “perfectly respectful criticisms of specific points” is an essential tool to the refinement of any theory, however it is only helpful when being “respectful” is the norm, rather than the exception.

There are better ways to introduce a counter point, or offer up another avenue to consider, that will actually generate discussion, rather than to shut it down. Many contributors to this thread have done exactly that and it’s been a wonderful discussion that offers up opportunities to research new areas and continue to learn.

I am looking forward to seeing whatever evidence turns up from either position in this discussion, so that we can hopefully get to some sort of agreeable conclusion.

Um, definitely contact the company first to find out whether they used regular cast iron or malleable cast iron before you try taking a chisel to it.

And by the way Darrel, it was every reference on malleable cast iron that I had read that says that it can be worked with hand tools. So "I" didn't say it, I merely passed the information along. I don't see any reason to distrust what was written by the metallurgists.

The inherent problem there is that you are talking about samurai again, not the target market for cast fittings... refocus your attention on the general populous who would have had a far more varied buying potential.

It is well documented that during the peaceful Edo period, some merchants had exceeded the wealth of many samurai, while the masses were still much less affluent.

Yet the samurai were still the "cultural elite", and the general masses were not as "cultivated" or as educated as the samurai themselves.

So, it doesn't take much of a leap to envision the general populous admiring the cast tsuba copies that have a lot more "obvious" designs with 3D depth to them, like "the frog" and "the rat", or any of the heavily carved "Choshu and Bushu" tsuba, as noted by Joly.

Now throw into the mix, many of the lower quality nanban tsuba that were so popular among the masses during the mid to late Edo period, as well as the multitude of cast copies of the Kinai dragon tsuba, or the myriad of examples in the Shachi tsuba thread.       

These surely would have appealed to those who were NOT the exalted aesthetes that Ford seems to think were the only people who were purchasing tsuba during the Edo period. 

People also need to stop viewing these things as defensive tools during the Edo period.

The idea is absolute folly and is completely irrelevant in terms of determining whether or not cast-iron tsuba were produced in the Edo period. Yet it remains one of cornerstones of the "post-Edo believers".

What war, what battle was anyone getting into?

And that goes for both the samurai and the general populous.

The defensive potential or function of the tsuba, during the Edo period, is completely irrelevant to this whole topic.

This was a period of peace and prosperity where people were using tsuba more like jewelry, and adornments. Granted in the late Edo period, there was an aesthetic movement that shifted back toward the more austere iron guards, with the tsubako drawing inspiration from the tsuba of old (from the likes of Kaneiye, Nobuiye, Ymakichibei etc...).

But, there was still an enormous variety of aesthetic styles being produced in that period, ranging from serene and austere, to heavily carved machi-bori, or the extreme opulence of some of the kinko tsuba, or some highly visible reference to various cultural motifs (like some type of 3D dragon, frog, phoenix, or horse-riding gear ...etc).

The cast-iron tsuba were more likely used as simple "adornments" to "accessorize" an outfit for a night out on the town.  

The found examples listed by Haynes and Joly seem to favour tsuba with 3D carved motifs.

For a 3D-carved tsuba, there would be an enormous savings of time, energy and resources if it was first formed from a casting.

You wouldn't have to try forging out your own plate, or do any of the rough chiseling... you could very quickly get to the "finishing" of an already mostly formed object: clean up most of the webs, or address some possible faults, or add an inlayed eye on a dragon, or scratch in some crosshatching to add some nunome etc.

People who can't see how much time and effort this would save, have clearly never tried to cut out even a basic straight-walled iron sukashi tsuba by hand... otherwise they would know how much time and effort that takes.

Then imagine having to do all the chiseling to produce a true 3D effect like the curving body of a dragon with all of its scales...another monumental task.

Again, go have a look at some of the shachi tsuba in the shachi tsuba thread, then imagine trying to produce that by hand, from start to finish... 

Using one of Ford's favorite philosophical techniques of reductio ad absurdum,

expecting a genealogy of Edo period cast-iron tsuba makers would be like expecting one for Edo period broom makers.

This however is not a tool of science...

I imagine 2100 years ago was a typo?

Regardless,

Brian, can you point out a book that was published in the 1700s that details the techniques of any "tsuba school". A pattern book is not a technical manual...

Show me a period book that names the Kaneiye smiths and details any one of their techniques.

We still don't have any information about the exact date that the first Kaneiye began!

Or how about the Yamakichibei smiths... I'd love to see a detailed pattern book of their school's work... it sure would make it a lot easier to push aside the seemingly infinite number of copies. Even better, I'd love to see a single passage of period text that even remotely begins to outline their methods and techniques.

Everything we have on tosogu has been cobbled together slowly over time, with vast amounts of assumptions made about craftsmen who had been long dead.

Those ideas change (sometimes) when new information arises... hence all the conflicts and contradictions in the assertions we have about these smiths and their products.

You ask for detailed books listing all the cast-iron tsuba makers.

Why would such a thing even exist?

And again, this would be the lowest form of tsuba production, so why would anyone attempt to document it at the time?

From the quotes from Haynes and Sesko, it was clearly being done by kettle makers who were doing it as a sideline. We're lucky to have Sesko's reference which shows at least one genealogical connection between a known kettle maker and his apprentice who both made tsuba. And we likely have that reference, solely because the apprentice later transitioned to becoming a full time tsubako, so someone took note of that because it was deemed worthy of noting.

On a similar note,

I have to say I was also shocked (but not amused) that “science” was being wheeled out in defence of the post-Edo belief.

On 11/9/2022 at 7:27 AM, Ford Hallam said:

“I try to consider such possibilities as cast iron tsuba in as scientific way as possible.”

Ford, although I value your insights on other topics and respect your technical skills and accomplishments with working with soft metals, on this particular subject you are merely hypothesizing, philosophizing, and pontificating, using nothing but your own opinions.

Claiming that you are approaching this particular topic “in a scientific way”, is unquestionably a false statement, and demonstrates that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is.

16 hours ago, Ford Hallam said:

“…not that M. Joly provides any sources for his comments with regard to these spurious castings, he simply asserts.”

If that comment is true, then it seems these two gentlemen have a lot in common. 

I have noticed a disturbing trend where quite a number of posts show deliberate attempts to diminish a person's status by belittling them or outright mocking them or their ideas... primarily directed towards "beginners" and the two dead guys: Lissenden and Joly.

Selectively targeting a misstep does not nullify every idea or concept associated with the person who made the claim.

For example, to be "amused" at the mere mention of Joly, just because he is known to have made some errors in his writings about tosogu (which were based on the information he had available to him at the time), is quite shocking and ignorant from a historical perspective.

From a scientific perspective, it would be equivalent to laughing at an earlier scientist simply because they didn't know what we know now.

But if anyone feels that is justifiable, at least they can rest assured that the same will happen to them one day...  

The fact that Joly never went to Japan or studied under a Japanese craftsman, by no means prevents him from discerning a cast-iron tsuba from a forged iron tsuba that he was holding in his hands.

Someone with that much experience and who had handled so many tsuba prior to that moment, has to be given a little more credit than a dismissive wave of the hand.

That dismissive statement comes across as a blatant attempt to cast doubt on the validity of what that experienced person witnessed and reported, simply because their findings contradict someone's beliefs.

It's also interesting to note that neither Haynes' nor Sesko's researched statements have even been addressed, let alone countered...

Both of these gentlemen are still alive and their research on the subject far outranks anyone on this message board.

Why no ridicule for them I wonder... 

15 hours ago, Brian said:

One thing I would like to know though, is if these are all considered fairly modern fakes or products, from what time do we accept that they DID start casting tsuba? Is this an 1800's thing, or a 1900's thing?

Brian, if you’re asking this of Ford, you’re going to be waiting forever…

He cannot provide you with any verifiable date in that time period, other than his own opinion.

I defy him or anyone to provide a single published statement that says what he is claiming to be true. Once again, throwing the challenge back to the post-Edo beleivers.

On 11/9/2022 at 7:29 AM, Ford Hallam said:

“it'd be refreshing to see some references to proper history and technical books rather than the usual unverified internet fluff that is the usual fodder.”

That would be great! When will Ford provide some?

Now where might such a document come from?

Surely in the push for modernism during the Meiji period, there would be some sort of documentation or publication to exhibit and celebrate this “newfound modern technology” to attest to the “sudden” large scale production of cast-iron tsuba…

That’s a far more likely piece of writing to expect to find (if it even exists), rather than the absurd expectation that we should find some Edo period writing that outlines the technical aspects of the making of the lowliest of the low, cast-iron tsuba. 

There is notoriously little, period-produced documentation about anything to do with tosogu, so of course there won’t be a “how to manual” on making cast-iron tsuba.

8 more cast-iron tsuba in the Naunton Collection, published in 1912

4 had item numbers and brief descriptions like this one, that is clearly describing an example of one of the many cast-iron Nanban tsuba:

"4585.- Iron, hexagonal with lobed sides (150-140) with a dragon in low relief, cast, thin piece."

But, the 4 others were only superficially mentioned with this statement in the text:

"A few cast tsuba : the frog, the three monkeys, signed Masanori; the rat, signed Masakata; the dragon on bell, and the lotus leaves signed Hisatsugu of Hagi Choshū have been eliminated; they and others with Bushū and Choshū names or even signatures of great masters crop up from time to time."

Soft metal castings were listed separately in other sections of the text.

And once again, I should point out that these cast iron tsuba did not earn the honor of having their images placed in print... which is not surprising.

It's interesting that cast-iron Choshu and Bushu tsuba (among others) were deliberately

called out, despite there not being any specific examples in this collection.

It speaks to how common they were, such that the author (Joly) would call attention to the fact. 

In a period of relative decadence and opulence of the mid to late Edo period, it shouldn't be surprising that some members of society would opt to purchase the much less expensive cast-iron version of a famous tsuba, or one with a culturally significant or popular motif.

To compare it to a modern day equivalent, it's like people who would buy and wear a fake Rolex. The real ones are widely available, but not everyone can afford one.  

Another contextual fact to point out is that Japan only began to have publicly available electric lighting until 1887.

https://www.fepc.or.jp/english/energy_electricity/history/

So, if it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a cast iron vs a fully hand-made tsuba using high resolution images (along with digital zoom), it must have been very easy to pass off a cast-iron tsuba for the "real deal" when wearing one in public or when worn/displayed indoors in low light conditions during the Edo period.

I'm sure no one would dare to walk up to someone else and start scrutinizing their tsuba... Seems like that wouldn't end well for the enquirer...

Another note of interest about the Hackshaw collection:

There was a cast-iron tsuba in the collection (item-255)

However, not all the tsuba had images, and for obvious reasons of being deemed "lesser quality", the cast-iron one wasn't pictured in the book.

(...or at least not that I could see. It's a bit tricky to find images in this book because the tsuba are grouped by Joly according to "schools"/makers, but these groupings don't align consistently with their numbered entries in the text.

So in one group of images you might see item-56 grouped with item-2135... not very user friendly, but I looked everywhere for item-255.) 

It seems obvious to me that the same could be said for all books on Tosogu, which are attempting to show "the best of the best".

I doubt you'll ever see an Edo period cast-iron tsuba in any tosogu book, not because they didn't exist, but because they weren't good enough to waste the ink to print an image of one. 

I'm sure this one only snuck through with a listing in the text because Joly was presenting the Hackshaw collection in its entirety, and again, he and/or the publisher chose not to include an image.

So who was buying this stuff?

I have to agree with Ford on this one, it almost certainly wasn't the samurai themselves.

Henri Joly also made these statements in the introduction to the Hacksaw Collection:

"I have given elsewhere some idea of the extensive manufacture of Shiiremono in Japan from 1750 onwards"
Note: "shiiremono" was mentioned much earlier in this thread, but it means "ready-made".

and he stated that shiiremono were available "in the back shops of the wholesale dealers,"

and were made "by craftsmen making copies, forgeries, shiiremono, cheap and undesirable, to satisfy the craving of the multitude".

I found it interesting that he also stated:

"I do not think that the majority of these “forgeries” were made for the European market."

*Caveat for this quote: this was specifically referring to "gimei tsuba" (tuba with fake signatures), but was placed in a passage that was addressing shiiremono more broadly. 

In reading Joly's text, it seems clear to me that he is including cast-iron tsuba in with the broader group of "shiiremono".

So according to Joly, most of the Edo period productions that were "made for the masses" so to speak, were of lesser quality or were deliberate attempts at deceit, and were mostly being purchased by the Japanese themselves.

Scholarly quote #3 about cast-iron tsuba being made in the Edo period,

written by Henri Joly, in the J.C. Hackshaw Collection, 1910.

The passage is taken from his brief write up of the Kaneiye tsuba section:

"The first Kaneiye worked in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, but much of the work so signed was done in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century and in the Eighteenth. Since then some reproductions have been made by casting and the number of spurious Kaneiye made in Aizu and elsewhere is past count."

This reads like a statement of fact that is a "given".

(or at least it was a "given" in Henri Joly's view)

As written, cast-iron copies of Kaneiye tsuba were being made since sometime in the 18th century.

This reference is just specific to Kaneiye copies made of cast-iron, not to ALL cast-iron tsuba production.

So, the production of cast-iron tsuba in general, can be assumed to date to at least sometime in the 1700s.

Interestingly, this also coincides with Hayne's approximate dating of his cast-iron tsuba which he stated was made by a kettle maker in the mid-1700s. 

Also of note, is that both Haynes' and Joly's approximate date attributions fit nicely with the construction of the more "industrial" type Tatara furnaces in the very late 1600s, which would have increased the availability of cast-iron and malleable cast-iron (which was not brittle and could easily be worked by hand afterward).

Interesting info there Dan.

I wish the author had expanded this passage, so it was more clear...

I'm really not too sure what is meant by the series of terms used in the first sentence, or how that makes it different from medieval casting. 

3 hours ago, Dan tsuba said:

Precisely examining these ancient molds of cast iron, core print by which fix mold and core is not clear. This is a different from medieval mold of kettle.

I second Geraint's theory.

Punched in their "signature tegane pattern" but had not filed it down yet. 

Interesting that it was never completed though...

Wow... been busy with work and haven't been on the forum except for a few quick glances...

It seems like there was one recent misstep in this thread about a legit Higo tsuba, then this quagmire rears its ugly head. 

Unfortunately, I feel compelled to point out that the only dead horse here, is the idea that there were no cast iron tsuba produced during the Edo period.

The burden of proof is now placed squarely in the hands of those who wish to believe that cast iron tsuba were only produced after the Edo period. 

The "post-Edo group" has multiple points of researched statements & facts that would have to be disproved before even beginning to advance their case again.

The most important points coming from Sesko and Haynes, who are both two of the leading Western tsuba scholars.

Both of them independently researched and published statements that cast iron tsuba were being produced by kettle makers during the Edo period.

And, in Sesko's example, he referred to a documented case of a tsubako who had apprenticed under a kettle maker who also made tsuba.

So, the idea that cast iron kettle makers were also producing cast iron tsuba in the Edo period is a statement of fact corroborated by two tsuba scholars.

If anyone has any hope of adhering to the notion that cast iron tsuba were not made during the Edo period, then they MUST disprove those documented and published statements.

Anything less is merely a rhetorical attempt to persuade others.    

and another... but the ura side is just waves and wind, so not quite as "on theme" as the previous one.

I'd say this fits the theme nicely