Jesta

That is excellent. I have been looking for a good way to display fuchi-kashira sets. Thanks for sharing.

This was my first thought too…

Yeah, I was just thinking that. I will look out for them next time…

I love this sentiment. I collect because I love the aesthetics of the tsuba, and I pick pieces that I want to look at every day. I never get tired of them, and I aspire to have so many that I too will be able to rediscover them when I go digging into my cabinets.

Much like Mauro noted, I don’t see any of the typical motifs that link this to the Race across the Uji. It is very nice, but the Chinese armour and sword, combined with the lack of a bow, or bridge, or companion to race make me think that it is more likely to be depicting something else.

I love the playful theme

I have one that is very similar, but there is no tekkotsu on mine.

Hi Will Looks like an iron marugata shaped (round) tsuba. The effect of the folded over edges is similar to one in my collection that is listed as sukashi, so yours may well be of that type too. There are others here who will be able to give you a more definite identification. Dan is right, tsuba are usually seen with the edge up because the Japanese typically wear the swords that way in their obi (belts) so the designs are intended to be seen that way. There is usually a clear front side, but in your case the sides seem to be identical, and the two ana (holes) each side of the central nakago ana (tang hole) are also identical meaning that there is no clear front or back.

I know I’m very late to this thread, but I was looking through “The Beauty of Tsuba” (just bought it) and saw the same design listed as Higo. The one in the book looks very similar to one Dale posted, but there are some differences.

Good points, and well-made. I have these labelled as “flood” in my collection. I chose the possibility that it was Futami Bay partly because the torii seems to be at that angle on the rock in the woodblock, and the bridge has similarities. The water under the bridge is definitely water, whereas whatever is covering the torii and the shrine is… ambiguous. Do you have any thoughts on the sticks (poles?) supported or held by the ropes on the omote side? I don’t know what they could be, but they get repeated too. As for getting tired of them, I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to sell any of my collection. I gave one tsuba away because I thought that it deserved a better home, but I am rather attached to the ones that I have. Hard to do anything, but accumulate

That’s a beautiful piece. Really lovely.

Agreed. It’s very poor quality, and looks like it was made fast for a quick sale. That was my initial thought. My skepticism around this is that there is no clear depiction of water, so it could be mist or fog, and the bridge is not submerged. Since this scene gets repeated line-by-line in the cheap tsuba I am thinking that it must be a recognisable scene that has elements that immediately trigger the audience to know what it is.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on this one. One possible answer that I have come up with is that this is a view of Futami Bay and the temple and torii there. This seems to have been a famous view (see woodblock below), the angle of the torii would fit with the angle on the tsuba, there is a temple or shrine in the mid-ground, and there is space for boats on the left.

Reviving this topic because I came across this in an auction (apologies for the low-res pic - it’s a screenshot of a zoomed in pic on the app). The theme is pretty much identical, but they have mashed together the various parts depicted on the daisho (omote and ura) into a single scene. So… I am still wondering if this was a well-known motif. It would seem strange for it to be repeated in what looks like something for the quick-sale market in the late Edo period (or Meiji period) that wasn’t something commonly known. Are there any resources compiling the typical motifs used on tsuba so that they can be searched?

Looks very similar to Dale’s door handle… https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/53845-oh-goody-another-door-handle/