nulldevice

Good looking sword. If you right-click the image and "open in new tab" it pulls up a much more detailed image. Sometimes Eirakudo's site loads blurry images for me at first.

It does look like the book here only covers the Osafune lineage looking at the table of contents in Aoi's picture it goes from Mitsutada through Motoshige

I'm not sure the order in which Markus is translating these so we'll have to wait and see. Or maybe he can chime in on what he's working on next as I imagine he'll be the translator for all 5/6 (I think there are 2 Bizen-den) books.

I contacted Me No Me regarding Tanobe's newest work on the Yamashiro tradition translated by Markus Sesko as part of Tanobe’s gokaden series and they sent me a live product page for international orders. I know the Yamato den book was popular and many people here were trying to get a copy of one without paying inflated prices. I just placed my order this morning after they provided me a link so we will see how de-minimus and other tariff laws apply as its shipped internationally. https://ringringdo.com/products/9784907211356

As was suggested earlier it reads 因幡國住藤原兼先 - Inaba no Kuni ju Fujiwara Kanesaki The link to another thread posted above your post has a lot more context on this smith and their working period including many genealogy charts and the entire lineage of smiths who signed this way.

The habaki is really cool!

Dont do anything to clean the tang or blade! That will ruin any value in the blade. the pictures you supplied of the tang are perfect.

Do you have any pictures of the tang of the blade underneath the handle? The handle can usually be removed and is held in place with a bamboo pin. That will reveal if the blade is signed underneath.

Check out these 2 threads:

As for a better view of the dan utsuri for #5 @Jussi Ekholm thanks for the first link and for I imagine, archiving all of the pictures of this sword from Aoi! You rock! https://web.archive.org/web/20240113062400/https://www.aoijapan.com/img/sword/2023/23761-4.jpg

https://www.aoijapan.com/temporary-suspension-of-ems-shipments-to-the-united-states/ Tsuruta posted this morning a temporary suspension on EMS parcels to the US from their shop.

Was this blade at SF? The utsuri looks outstanding and reminiscent of a particular Aoe blade at the SF show a few weeks back. It also looks to have the fine saka ashi that as Michael mentioned earlier, are something desired in Aoe blades of the period.

I noticed that when visiting the sword museums the kanji that I know (swordsmith name kanji and sword terms) all had hiragana pronunciations above them meanwhile everything else I couldn't read a lick of. I need to step up my Japanese learning and find room for yet another thing to take up this space in my brain

Nope, rural town American! She obliged me on our Japan trip to see the NBTHK museum and spend half a day at DTI. It was our first Japan trip last November.

My wife told me to buy she sword I liked at DTI! I think after spending 7 days in Japan and walking 20k steps a day, she was finally happy to find a place with padded chairs to sit down for a few hours while I browsed swords. She’s a keeper!