Tsuku

Here you are.

Here is an example of an itomaki-no-tachi koshirae which was formerly a possession of the Mōri clan.

The opposite is true. The first Jūyō session was in 1958. By the time 1971 rolls around and Tokubetsu Jūyō is introduced, we are up to Jūyō session 21 and almost 4,000 blades are Jūyō-tōken. To illustrate the difference, let's use this point as a dividing line and look at the blades that passed Jūyō before session 21 ("early") and after ("late") There are about 3,700 early blades and 8,600 late blades, but 14.7% of the early blades subsequently passed Tokubetsu Jūyō, and only 7.5% of the late blades did so. There are obviously stand-out great swords in every session, and due diligence should always be exercised, but the early sessions were very strong. None of this rationale should be applied to the old Kichō papers. That is a topic which has been beaten to death around here but I would be remiss if I did not mention it.

"Kunzan" is not a Hon'ami, he was Honma Junji-sensei, one of the founders of the NBTHK. He used 薫山, read as Kunzan, as his gō ("artistic name"), which literally means "fragrant mountain." This is a bit of an inside joke — Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeia, and クンクン kunkun means "to sniff." Honma-sensei supposedly had the habit of sniffing loudly when he was inspecting blades, and one day one of his staff jokingly called him kun-san ("Mister Sniff"), and this was his inspiration for the gō. His successor, Kan'ichi Sato-sensei, used "Kanzan." (I forget the kanji off the top of my head.) Tanobe-sensei, the former head of research at the NBTHK and their student, uses 探⼭, read as Tanzan, which literally means "research mountain." Modern attributions are not really comparable to the old Hon'ami judges. There are strengths and weaknesses of both, a bit like apples and oranges. Honma-sensei's opinions, however, are generally well-regarded. He didn't do very many kinzogan-mei though, I think about ten at jūyō.

Yes, kinzogan-mei were very expensive. If a blade had a Hon'ami kinzogan-mei, especially from an old judge, it was almost certainly the collection of a daimyō (though which family specifically is often lost). And in general you are correct, that kinzogan-mei were only applied to mumei nakago. But there are examples where the Hon'ami applied kinzogan-mei to ubu blades. It is exceptionally rare and all the examples I can think of are from Kōtoku (more on him in a moment). Hon'ami Kōsatsu was in charge of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sword maintenance. But the appraisal process really seems to have started started with Hon'ami Kōtoku around 1600, which the shōgun granted the Hon'ami family a copper seal to authenticate their origami. This continued through a long and convoluted family structure until the modern day. Old Hon'ami records — kinzogan-mei, origami, etc. — are very, very rarely overturned by the NBTHK. Part of the reason is respect for the old judgements, and part of it is that the old judges had access to original signatures that have long since been lost to us through suriage. Anyways the first five judges are the most important. (The Hon'ami family was around for a long time before this, but this is the important part of the lineage for our discussion here.) 光徳 Kōtoku (1554-1619) has about 10 jūyō, but a mind-blowing 13 jūyō bunkazai 光室 Kōshitsu (1583-1625) and 光温 Kōon (1603-1667) have about 10 jūyō and 2 jūyō bunkazai apiece 光常 Kōjō (1643-1710) has 120 jūyō and 2 jūyō bunkazai 光忠 Kōchū (Hon’ami head 1697-1725) has 200 jūyō and 3 jūyō bunkazai 光勇 Kōyū (1704-1770) has 35 jūyō Kōtoku's judgements are absolutely ironclad. You will almost never see any of his kinzogan-mei on the market, they are priceless. Kōchū and Kōjō are probably #1 and #2 that you will see commercially available, and they are both extremely reputable and legitimate appraisals are almost never overturned. After Kōyū the appraisals start to get weaker... The short version is yes, attributions by later Hon'ami judges are much less reliable than earlier judges. Outright forgery was fairly rare, but inflation of appraisals happened — if you need a Masamune for a gift for the shōgun, but you don't have one or don't want to give yours up, maybe you can pay the Hon'ami fee in advance and get a Shizu re-appraised as a Masamune after "very careful appraisal." Or turn a Naoe Shizu into a Shizu Kaneuji, etc. You do also need to be aware of fake origami. There are quite a few floating around and some of them are very good forgeries. The best ways to tell are a malformed seal stamp on the back, a misshapen kao, or the paper not feeling right. The paper was very tightly controlled and quite consistent, and it has a particular feel to it. The gold (ha) standard reference book on this is Markus Sesko's history of the Hon'ami family, and I would encourage you to buy a copy — it's a great reference.

There are ~12,000 Juyo, but Tsuruta-san alone has 15 Juyo for sale right now. There is way more turnover than 100 a year. Tokuju is a different matter, but there are 10x fewer of those.

There are other kinds of inlaid gold inscriptions (generally, kinzogan-mei), but yes, this is a saidan-mei which records that the blade cut through a body at the chest on a particular day on Kanbun 6 (1666). A blade, just like anything else, is worth what someone else will pay for it. I don't think there is any real "formula" by which one can compute what a given sword is worth in an objective sense. NBTHK papers swords in four levels and a blade has to go through them in order. They have some defined criteria: here they are. The first two, Hozon ("worthy of preservation") and Tokubetsu Hozon ("especially worthy of preservation") are more "mechanical," in that if a blade meets the criteria, it will pass. Juyo ("important") and Tokubetsu Juyo ("especially important") are more like competitions; a blade is competing not only with the other works of that smith, but with the other blades submitted to that session. It is not unusual to have an excellent blade fail because a slightly better one was submitted, etc. The selection process can be a bit inscrutable and lead to some head-scratching... so nobody can give you a list of the things that will certainly guarantee Juyo or Tokubetsu Juyo in any meaningful or realistic way. The Hon'ami were an old Japanese family that had a historical connection with sword polishing and appraisal. They held this role for the Tokugawa shōguns. Markus Sesko wrote a fantastic history of the Hon'ami that goes into a great amount of detail. Sometimes the Hon'ami just appraised blades (writing the results on wooden tags or origami), sometimes they also gave them values (daizuke), sometimes they left kinzogan-mei on the nakago of blades. The greatest Hon'ami appraiser is Kōtoku, of whom we have very few blades left and only a tiny handful that can be privately sold — the rest are important cultural property and cannot leave Japan. The next two most important are Kōchu and Kōjo, and we do find blades with their records still intact occasionally. As I mentioned earlier they are often forged so you need to validate them carefully.... Later on the Hon'ami judgements became a bit more suspect in a sort of grade inflation. Wazamono was an Edo period ranking of swords and then swordsmiths for sharpness. The saijo-saku ("grandmaster"), jojo-saku ("very high skill"), jo-saku ("high skill"), etc. ratings are for swordsmiths and come from Fujishiro. The most important thing about Fujishiro is that his ratings are also by period. That is, you cannot say a saijo-saku smith from the Kamakura era is comparable to a saijo-saku smith from the Muromachi period, like Magoroku Kanemoto. Kanemoto was a great smith and a standout for his time, but he is not playing the same ball game as Hisakuni, Tomonari, Masamune, etc. Hope that helps.

The judgements of the early Hon'ami – Kōtoku, Kōjo, Kōchu, etc. – are held in very high regard, but they are also rather rare and often falsified. So blades purporting to have these old origami or kinzogan-mei must be studied carefully. The best case would probably be an old Hon'ami attribution that is specifically supported in modern NTBHK papers. The wazamono came from the 5th generation Yamada Asaemon, who were the executioners and sword testers retained by the Tokugawa shōguns. The majority of swords subjected to tameshigiri testing in the Edo period were recently made. The old Kamakura/Nanbokuchō masterworks had survived through the Muromachi era and didn't really need to be tested, everyone knew that they could cut. As a result, the wazamono list cannot be taken as a real "reference of quality." (Try looking up the Kamakura/Nanbokuchō saijo-saku and see how many of them appear on that list!)

JAL will transport swords with proper paperwork in either direction — at least between the United States and Japan. Obviously, they must be checked. I am not sure if a hard case is required, but I have always done it that way.

The certificate is a torokusho and it just says: wakizashi, length 44.2 cm, sori 1.1cm, 1 mekugi-ana. The inscription column (銘文 meibun) says 判読不明 handoku fumei, meaning illegible.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “moderate.” By my wife’s standards… (I jest, she is very supportive!) I think I accession 0-5 blades a year and de-accession 0-2. For me, the real utility of focus is ensuring that I have sufficient ability to pick up something exceptional should it arise. I suppose I realized that I couldn’t acquire everything I liked if I wanted to acquire everything I loved.

This exact thing happened to one of the few extant Tokuju Taima. The only way to know is to compare the oshigata (or Tokuju photograph) with the blade as it sits, with a very critical eye. But for a TH? You could detect a repaired/reshaped kissaki by virtue of the geometry being off, but you could not say whether the repair predated the kanteisho or not.

I guess I have two principles. The first one is that I try to maintain focus. There is a particular story that I want to explore (thankfully a pretty broad one) so by default every new blade has to contribute something to that story. There are some exceptions, where I have come across something remarkable. The second one is that in a perfect world I want every blade in my collection to be able to stand as a collection of one, and be of comparable quality relative to the others. Sometimes I do acquire placeholders, but if I find a better example of a placeholder's niche, I help it find a new home.

May I suggest you sit down with your favorite book on the topic (or one of the online resources) and start trying to match up what the card says with what you can observe? Here are a few hints to get you started: There is no maker's name inscribed. (Kogai signatures usually don't mean anything, as they are often honorific.) It is called out as mumei; what does this mean? Shinshintō is a period; what does that tell you about when the blade was made? The hamon is called out as suguha. What does this mean? Does it look like that to you? The boshi is described as hakikake. If you look at the boshi in good light, what do you see? Does this line up with hakikake (hint: it literally means "sweeping"). The end is indeed is squared off, as you noticed. Bonham's observed suriage nakago. What does this suggest?

I am not sure why you think this. Regardless, you could do worse than starting with Dmitry Pechalov's Sōshū-den Museum page for Yukimitsu.