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Hello: The question raised by BaZZa is one I would love to know the answer to. I have a Higo Dotanuki Munehiro Tenpo era daito with classic Higo kodogu all in uniformly oxidized silver along with a same saya, and I can't imagine it ever being bright, but it also might not be representative in that regard. Arnold F.

Hello Ken: Yours is a really interesting question, one I have never seen raised before. It goes into the entire issue of selling market structure and mechanisms. Perhaps Markus Sesko, with his wide and deep knowledge of the literature, could provide some hints if he has time in his busy schedule. Arnold F.

Hello: I agree with Bob's statement above, the vast majority of Onin and Heianjo having been "cleaned up" at some point. We "violate" the usual no no's of the Antique Road show experts all the time, particularly by having blades polished, and that makes perfect sense, but "improving" other metal surfaces is pretty strongly condemned and there are few which haven't been worked over. Beyond that I think that silver is a very unusual metal to use on Heianjo tsuba and wonder just how uncommon that is. It might be quite value adding - just guessing. Arnold F.

Hello: The hada in two of the images is too hard to really see and in the third whether itame, which is a Kunihiro characteristic, with nagare effects, or masame which would be out of place I do not know. As for the mei Fujishiro Shinto-hen, p.267 left has a tsukuru. I am more concerned with mekugi-ana placement and it being shinogi-zukuri just on probability grounds. All of this just points out the danger of internet kantei: I would like to know if it has mizukage, though that isn't always seen, and particularly whether or not the hamon widens in the monouchi, an important feature. It needs a shinsa. Arnold F.

Hello: No Geraint that sort of wiseacre stuff isn't my style. I hadn't yet finished my first coffee. In that the primary question refers to the blade and not the koshirae I'll restrict my comments to that. As always the nakago is a gold mine of information and from the nakago shape and o-sujikai yasurime it seems to fit nicely into the period from Keicho 4 (1599), that being the time when Horikawa Kunihiro followed Masamune, Sadamune and Shizu as models. Thus the mitsumune fits as does the strong nie. I can't tell about the mei but it doesn't look wildly different from the last shown for Kunihiro in Fujishiro, though more study of the mei is called for. On the more suspicious side is the placement of the mekugi-ana rather far up the nakago. It is common on Kunihiro blades to have low set mekugi-ana and we see many otherwise ubu blades having an additional mekugi-ana further up the nakago. I don't know the reason for that peculiarity for Kunihiro other than it is believed by some that he was a samurai before becoming a smith and may have inferred something of actual blade use that led him to tend to place the mekugi-ana low. On this blade the placement looks "normal". Secondly it is well know that shinogi-zukuri wakizashi by Kunihiro are very uncommon, perhaps beause he tended to do quite a few horimono on hira-zukuri blades. Let us know the shinsa outcome. Arnold F.

Hello: Wakizashi? Arnold F.

Hello: It seems a little strange to applaud and not buy, but this looks like an excellent buy for a starting or more than starting collector: good length, nice looking polished and papered sword with shirasaya and what appears to be a gold-foil habaki. It shouldn't linger long at that price! Arnold F.

Hello: I am glad to see some support from Ryubiken. It took me a long time to distinguish chikei from inazuma and other similar hataraki. While the image is now gone I think the key is that they are not necessarily bright but follow transition boundaries in the kitae. A good definition is that provided by Gordon Robson in the JSS/US's Glossary of Japanese Sword Terms: "Lines of fused ji-nie that follow the hada pattern. This feature is blackish in appearance, and is similar to kinsuji and inazuma that occur in the hamon. The feature is characteristic of Soshu works". If I recall correctly the subject blade was hardly a beautiful example. Arnold F.

Hello Ken: It is interesting how many things have been knitted into this thread. Could you elaborate on AutoCAD, which I assume means computer assisted design. Does "...more stable (stronger) in the vertical (cutting) direction..." mean less vibration or what? Arnold F.

Hello: Thank you Peter and Geraint. The typically wonderful Sesko material shows that adding hi seems not to be a put off to anyone, but from a quick reading I don't think the issue I raised was addressed. To be redundant do hi reduce strength, other things being equal? One can imagine any number of reasons for why hi and horimono in general are added, and if added as a trade off they all can make perfect sense. Strength is sort of an elastic term, but I suppose it would refer to breakage in use. If however hi made a blade easier and quicker to use and swing against an opponent, that might be an entirely rationale trade off. However substitute a larger, stronger, quicker user of the same blade without hi, it would be a different comparison I suspect. Geraint, I'm not quite sure of your argument as you do introduce weakening. Further imagine a bike frame member connecting A and B, suppose it is triangular then hollow it out to any degree and it has lost strength. Just curious. Arnold F.

Hello: A dealer has recently listed a long and excellent Shinto katana which has bo-hi, and he writes that they "...lighten the blade without its losing strength." I have long thought that it is an engineering axiom that removing metal does not strengthen, however do hi leave the strength of a blade, somehow measured, the same as before, other things remaining equal? I mean only the usual bo-hi we commonly see on swords and not some exaggerated deviation from that. Arnold F.

Hello Mark: The abstracts alone that you have gathered and the alternatives you have mulled over are useful and I will print off to put in my file of a very early Shrine made Yasuhiro that I have. I am as curious as you are as to just what separated Kunimori and Yasuhiro in a shinsa context. If steel source were the determinant it would have to be made not entirely of but incorporated I would guess as particularly after 1941 Western steel would have been somewhat hard to come by. Just to add little first person story, I was "working", which of course was a great pleasure, at one of the shinsa and a friend came over with a Kunimori that Koen sensei had pinked. He could not believe it and thought some mistake had been made. So he asked if I would run it through a little later under my name which I did. I was watching it progress along to Mr. Yoshikawa and when he got ahold of it he looked around with a twinkle in his eye to see the joker - I don't believe he would have known us by names - and at once grabbed for another pink paper, then off to the next blade. That sort of thing happened more than once I am pretty sure with blades associated with smiths who actually worked at the Yasukuni Shrine and also did side work with another name. If Chris Bowen would care to chime in here in greater detail it would doubtless help. Arnold F.

Hello: I don't think that it is an issue of Western steel for after all Nanban-tetsu was proudly proclaimed on nakago in Shinto times, and such highly regarded smiths as Hayama Enshin are thought to have incorporated the same in late Meiji times. It may have been that Kunimori blades were simply sorted out from the truly traditional blade of Yasuhiro by being failed at shinsa in post war times. In the olden days when oshigata helpers were needed at the Yoshikawa NTHK shinsa I saw several Kunimori pink papered by Koen sensei, as nice looking as the blades were. Why no stamps I have no idea; by signing that way he was in sort of a gray zone I suppose. Arnold F.

Hello: Thank you Grev. It seems to me that #1 as Ko Umetada is most peculiar and highly uncharacteristic. The call for #5 as Ko Tosho once again should remind us of the uncertainty that there is actually a difference between the men making Tosho and Katchushi; it is sort of like coastal Alaskan grizzlies and interior grizzlies are one and the same and overlap and neither is a polar bear. Arnold F.

Hello: #5 is not tosho or katchushi ????, beats me. For #1 I'll revise with little sureness to Sado. Arnold F.

Hello: A shinsa is being spoken of for the Tampa show next February. Arnold F.

Hello: Perhaps sporadic chikei??? Arnold F.

Hello: 1.Saotome, 2.Naokatsu, 3.Ko-tosho, 4.Akasaka, 5.Katchushi (Edo). Arnold F.

Hello Bob: The kanji spacing seems tight in some spaces, loose in others, perhaps indicating hesitation. Arnold F.

Hello: They do not appear to be Ko-Shoami. Arnold F.

Hello: Thanks for the replies; I've been our of town or would have chimed in sooner. The person who made the observation is Bob Haynes and it arose from a photo I sent him in an inquiry of how similar mine was to the shakudo example, rare indeed, found in his Catalog #7, pp. 80-81. The designs are identical, the sale tsuba being 7.4 mm high and the seppa dai 5.5 mm. Mine respectively 6.5 and 4.5 so perhaps they were once a daisho pair. Photograph inferences by way of comparison are always limited but naturally I take Bob's first reaction as likely, but I cannot imagine how it could be done, surely not by some manual rubbing, so I thought someone on the NMB might know if a wash of some sort would do the trick. I can see zero trace of shakudo and the piece is not abused in anyway. I will show it to Bob at the first opportunity, perhaps in SF for this year's show, and report back. Arnold F.

Hello: I have a Daigoro sukashi tsuba which appears to be copper. It has been suggested that it might originally have been shakudo, and the shakudo treated in some way to appear as copper, shakudo after all being a combination primarily of copper and gold. Daigoro tsuba are extremely rare in shakudo, so why would that be done? In this case it is part of a high quality koshirae with entirely copper fittings, so I suppose that might be a rationale. Does anyone know how that conversion could be made without showing any remaining trace of shakudo? There is kebori on the tsuba but no shakudo can be seen in the deepest recesses. Thanks for any help. Arnold F.

Hello: You have received sound advice from Geraint. It can be said with almost 100% confidence that the signature is correct, however many things cannot been seen via this visual medium and to get a better feeling for quality level, from which you could infer something about value, it needs to go to shinsa. It is my understanding that there will be one next February at the Tampa sword show either by the NTHK (Yoshikawa) or its more or less mirror image the NTHK (NPO). Of course it could go to Japan too. Arnold F.

Hello All: Just having a little fun with the post above. Some replies have had me thinking of the strict division that was made in Japan immediately after the war when Dr. Homa and Provost Marshall Col. Cadwell drew the hard line between "art swords" which should be spared the sea or furnace melt down, and "gunto", a wholly different bucket of fish. There are many determinants of demand, things which partially explain the difference between the current Chinese market and "fine art" auction prices, but one of them surely is the art content, rather than the weapon content implicit in the Japanese sword. We can convey a lot of knowledge about the sword to the interested newbie, but how more generally to convey an art historical image of the sword that would appeal more widely is not clear. That is only part of the price differential issue, but a large and important one I believe. Arnold F.

Hello: Sometimes we wonder why a fine Japanese sword isn't more than some European sword or other work of art, but when looking at the blade in question I wonder how so many thousands will risk bankruptcy by steeping up to have the last pick up truck, monster version, and a fine blade like this tries to find a home, and the pick up can easily cost more! That blade will be around until some asteroid destroys the earth, while the pick up will be at the wreckers within 15 years. Go figure. Arnold F.