Gerry

Here's another odd hamon...a chicken pox gunome?

Nah, I have no intention of purchasing this sword...just thought I'd share this unusual looking hamon. And for what it's worth, the sword is actually in Japan with a torokusho, so it's not a Chinese fake.

I came across this sword with a peculiar hamon. Does anyone know what this type of hamon is called? It kind of looks like a reverse saka choj.

Sure, I used Nosyudo in Gifu.

For what it's worth, katana prices (I don't pay attention to tanto or wakizashi prices) at Aoi Art and other online dealers who have a Western clientele have been trending up in the last year. This is probably due to the increase in international demand caused by the weaker Yen. A TH katana with koshirae from a regular smith listed on Aoi 2 or more years ago went for somewhere between 700,000 to 950,000 yen, whereas they're being listed for about 1,200,000 yen recently. I was still even able to buy a few TH katana in shirasaya as recently as in early 2024 for 600,000 yen each. However, prices on Yahoo Japan have been fairly consistent because they mostly cater to their domestic collectors.

Aoi Art is definitely pairing up koshirae with blades to make them more appealing to Western collectors. In fact, I had previously purchased a daisho from them with a gorgeous set of Edo period mounts, only to find out that the blades in them were not original to the koshirae, and didn't fit exactly. In the case of daishos, they find blades to make the daisho koshirae more appealing. I was in their shop recently deciding on whether to purchase a particular katana in shirasaya, and discussed options about having an antique koshirae for it. They walked me through the process of finding suitable koshirae parts, and the hardest step in the process was finding a suitable existing saya. I ultimately decided to send the sword off to have a custom koshirae made in Gifu.

Interestingly enough, the same on the tsuka on mine is also painted white on the exposed areas. It would be quite remarkable if this color of gunto was indeed for troops sent to the Aleutian islands. There's movie footage of these troops that I've soon on TV, so let me try to find it again and verify if they had white gunto.

Thanks, and with regards to the copper fittings, if you look at the last photo above showing the ashi, you can see that the left clasp has s small chip, exposing the internal color of the metal, which is also copper colored.

Hi Bruce, Thanks! I appreciate you sharing the photo of the NCO swords, and these do have a similar cream colored paint on the saya as the one on my sword. One thing I also wanted to note are the slender proportions of the blade; the width at the yokote is only 0.75" (1.90cm), and the width at the hamachi is 1.125" (2.86cm). It almost has the proportions of a koto sword.

The mon on the hilt is unfortunately missing.

I've owned this custom shingunto for the better part of 20 years, and thought I'd share photos of it with this forum since I don't see gunto with white says very often. The sword has a graceful 25" inch nagasa blade that is ubu and unsigned, with a very well controlled nioi deki gunome hamon, and is very well balanced in weight distribution. The pierced tsuba is also very large and heavy. It seems that the white paint is original to the saya, since some areas of wear exposing the steel underneath don't show any other colored undercoats. The metal fittings are also heavy and copper colored, with an oval ashi ring. It's a pity that the nakago isn't signed, since I've always wondered who the smith was for this rather lovely blade.

Wow, I was pretty surprised that this Masanori katana with the dragon horimono on Aoi went for only 1.3M yen. It sold a few months back on Aoi too, but WITHOUT the koshirae, for 2.0M yen. https://sword-auction.com/en/product/27081/as24102-katana-yamato-daijo-fujiwara-masanorinbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token-2/

Ah, that's a good observation. I always read so much about Ka's "Kamakura jigane", but I don't see it at all from the photos of this blade.

This josun length Shibata Ka katana was sold almost as quickly as it was listed for 950,000 yen. Tsukada-san might be regretting not listing it for more. https://www.toukenkomachi.com/index_ja_tachi&katanaA010625.html

It looks like an iaito hamon to me. Here's an example. https://tozandoshop.com/collections/iaito/products/tozando-full-custom-iaito