Robert S

That's extremely interesting. Do you have a thought on why in some cases you get that "hamon shadow" effect, with a gap between the hamon and the utsuri, and the form of the utsuri following the hamon approximately?

Agreed. The Wakizashi that I have that has utsuri on it, it's definitely nioi utsuri.

Doesn't look suriage to me - that looks like the original tang.

Buying any nihonto with active red rust on it carries some risk, as the total depth of corrosion is sometimes hard to tell.

That's a pretty flash saya! I'd say that was the one you wore to the opera :-)

I dug into the actual legal context. Relevant defences are: The weapon is antique (over 100 years old) The item being of historical importance. Making the weapons available to a museum or gallery in certain circumstances. Educational purposes. Made before 1954. Made at any other time according to the traditional methods of sword making by hand. Seems like they can't figure out whether the age limit is 70 years or 100, but overall this should provide a number of lines of reasonable defence for a collector.

What I'm seeing of the pattern it looks like a tsuba from India :-)

Nihonto with minimal sori could fall afoul of this law. Might work better if they added an age criteria - i.e. less than 50 years old and straight. I don't think the people they are targeting are buying older blades. Still might catch the occasional piece from a few contemporary swordsmiths, but more manageable.

£2.8 million of lovely nihonto and armour. I clearly need to up my budget :-)

That's extremely interesting. So the thought is that the Wabi aesthetics in tsuba were only a significant trend for about 50 years? That certainly narrows the attribution of those guards, for the most part.

Based on my research, Takeo Seki (BC) is no longer active... unless anyone has information indicating otherwise.

I'm not actually seeing that big a difference overall in the hamon. Those appear to me to be within the range of normal variation. The jigane differences are interesting. It almost like it may be a bit exaggerated by differences in polish, although I'd really be surprised by that on a toku juyo nihonto.

Agreed, and I rather suspect there were (at least) two rich people competing for some of the tosogu. Still nuts, mind.

The Bonham's auction today painted a picture of a pretty strange market. The nihonto on offer had estimate ranges that I felt were at the higher end, but not outrageous, and mostly they either didn't sell, or sold at the low end Meanwhile the Tosogu were attracting crazy money, often multiples of the high end of the estimate. The pair of tsuba pictured - beautiful work, but no origami - went for US$ 32,000!

As would be expected, I think there are many answers to your question - there is no single standard in Japan, just as there are a range of standards in the west. For instance, major museums in Japan will have detailed and highly conservation oriented guidelines. It might be worthwhile reaching out to one of those museums to see if they will provide you with their protocol for nihonto. At the other end of things, your tanto is a pretty good example. I suspect that far more grinder/belt sander desecrations happen in Japan than anywhere else - many people there seem to regard nihonto simply as a quick buck, unlike the very dedicated collectors represented on this site. I've seen a lot like that, which simply made me shake my head.

Mustafa has been completely upfront about the fact that he knows little about steel, traditional steel manufacture methods, etc. The fact that he then dives into thinking that he can patent something, and becomes offensive in his responses, is telling. But if there is a further need to look into this, I suggest he should step away from nihonto and spend some time looking into the current issues around KTM 790/890 camshafts, and powder metallurgy.

The "battered look" is a specific aesthetic - one I'm pretty fond of, a form of wabi/sabi. That being said, this example also looks somewhat actually worn.

Classic Boar menuki

Nazar: Just wanted to pass on my total support for Ukraine in this horrible war. I'm so sorry you've had to put aside your life to fight off an aggressive invader. I hope that soon this will be in the past. Growing up in Saskatchewan, Canada, I lived within a Ukrainian expat community, many of whom arrived as a result of past horrific actions initiated by Moscow. Slava Ukraine! Robert S.

I wonder what the evidence is for this claim in particular. I would expect that there would be few blades out there which have been polished through to the core steel if that were true... but it seems that they are not uncommon.

I'll keep an eye on this. Flying over just for this from the west coast of Canada would probably be a bit much, but it's possible that I will have other workshops in Europe this summer :-)

Tamahagane is a form of bloomery steel. which has much lower elemental control than modern steels. Japanese smiths made up for that with extremely sophisticated processing of tamahagane, which modified the content of carbon and other elements. Modern steels can have extremely tight control of elemental content, crystalization, etc. which allows blade manufacture with much lower effort... but the end results in both cases can be exceptional. The only meaningful comparison is the end product, not the underlying steel.

Definitely needs a polish, but I don't think it's that "dead", at least compared to some I've seen. If you love the blade, I'd say go for it, as long as it isn't too expensive

100% agree with that. My problem is that I'm good at buying, but not at selling, so I have to be careful, especially with big ticket items like land, as once I have them, I have them :-) With nihonto, I stick to smaller priced items that I love, and don't even consider resale.

Where historical patina really is historical patina, I think most collectors are interested. The problem is that most - indeed I would say almost all - of the patina on nihonto isn't historical (except in the case of the nakago)... because the Japanese owners over the centuries weren't interested in patina and had the blades polished when they began to get marked. Thus what we see these days is more likely to be signs of a blade that has been neglected in the 20th/21st century... which I suppose is an indicator of the changes in Japan in more recent history, but not terribly interesting. There are a tonne of well and truly rusted blades out there which were abandoned in sheds and closets in Japan... but that patina is a real problem!