sanjuro

Robert. Just from an amateur tosogu guys point of view, these menuki lack crispness in the detail of heads and paws. The stripes look very connived. The design is flat and lacks any vitality. The rear side is too smooth for hand made menuki and the post is one piece with the menuki rather than being added and soldered in as it would be on hand raised and carved menuki. Thats just the beginning, but enough to judge them as cast and modern.

Yes Piers...... I have noticed you keep coming up with these 'not so simple' topics. Then again, nothing in Nihonto is straightforward is it? :D

Bruno. Not Udenuki ana on your tsuba........ Wrong location, too small, two sets. More like a motif of some kind. The theme is the deer at Nara, as you probably know. Not sure what the motif is though. Sayadome possibly but not so confident about that either.

LOL.....If it makes you feel any better, for $15k you could probably buy a fairly decent fully mounted Edo tachi. This tsuba is either very special and very expensive, or its not such a big deal and overpriced. :D

Bone. If I had a dollar for every silly mistake I had made then i could afford the sort of nihonto I like. No probs........ My comment was wordless and lighthearted. Had I only put one guy hitting his head on the wall and said nothing more then it would have been serious. (less is more) :D Also, can't type whilst wearing a straightjacket............ Tried.......cant be done.

What's all this wrong way round business? Havent you people heard of a tachi? Tachi tsuba are displayed and worn and signed this way. The ha quadrant of the tsuba points downward in this instance and is quite legitimate.

So far so good. However, I would like to take this a little further. Some of the examples posted have only one hole in a position at the edge quadrant of the tsuba, some a single hole on the mune quadrant of the tsuba. I wonder what is the purpose of this when the tying of an udenuki no O is done in a specific way that requires two holes in a specific position. An udenuki No O has a specific purpose just as the sayadome also have a specific purpose. A single hole indicates possibly a different purpose. I have added a picture of one of my wakizashi tsuba with a single hole. There would seem to be no stylistic purpose to this one hole, which only leaves a practical reason for its presence. Any Ideas gentlemen??

John. Though it pains me to admit it, I have never seen an example of the two small holes - sayadome ana as you describe them. Do you happen to have an example picture?

OK... My contribution. Two very plain but serious tachi tsuba with udenuki ana.

Chris. The type of obi would have been those worn by ashigaru. As you say fairly narrow but effectively just strip about 6inches wide of a material like pongee- rough cotton or the like, not reinforced like a swordsmans obi. Crumpled up to fit through the hitsu ana. I've tried this myself and it does work quite well with plain unreinforced materials. I have an illustration somewhere of a warrior monk wearing a tsuba in this way.

OK... If its a Kanata, then would a false signature be Migei? :? Or is it just an average Gin Shunto?

Piers Heres a delicious little side play. Spare tsuba were quite often used as a slip buckle to fasten the two ends of an obi after passing it a few times around the waist. The two ends were passed in opposite directions from behind through both the hitsu ana. Most commonly used tsuba were with two kogai hitsu ana. I guess the tsuba guys wont like the object of their collections reduced to a mere buckle, but multiple functionality is a bonus as long as you dont use a tsuba as a beer mat. :D

Bear in mind I dont actually collect tsuba, but i do collect tachi. This is what I have observed. Udenuki ana are or were common on older tachi tsuba and yes they were intended for a wrist strap where the sword is used on horseback primarily one handed. In these instances the holes are are of different size and are reasonably close together. In the Edo period there was an antiquarian movement that caused a resurgence of older styles and this two hole feature, but in this instance with two equal sized and somewhat smaller holes, made a reappearance. It is found on both katana and wakizashi tsuba of the early Edo period. Before others start shooting holes in this observation, I stress there are exceptions to this and I know of a few. The above is one mans view not scripture or set in concrete

Always remember...... Cheap stuff aint good and good stuff aint cheap. Depends of course on what you think is 'good'. If you dont know what you are buying then dont buy it just because its cheap.

OK ...... Silly Question Time...... Sorry if this is too basic. Given the above, what would be the correct term for a matching set of tachi mounts (complete Kanagu) identical decoration, in the same material, by the same maker?

Shakudo?? My guess would be that it is a yamagane insert never intended to be a hitsu ana but inlaid to merely give the appearance or suggestion of a kogai hitsu ana. The contiguous surface carving suggests this or that the hitsu ana was filled and then the carving was done later than the tsuba was made. The two ana for a wrist strap suggest this is possibly an early Edo piece perhaps? But hey, what do I know? tsuba are usually a vast mystery to me. :?

C'mon Guys. I wont bite again unless somebody swats me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. :D

Like Stephen I have had that same epiphany when bar exams were mentioned. Let me say at the outset that it is easy to overthink these differences that you are determined to nail down, but from only photographs it is even more problematic because those differences that are so easy to see in hand do not translate either well or plainly in a photograph. Subleties of forging etc are easier to identify in hand than by even the best photography. Some are very subtle visually but profound quality wise. A bit like the letter of the law and the intent of the law if you want a legal parallel. The differences between a $90,000 sword and a $150,000 sword could be as simple as the name and generation of the smith or as complex as the comparison of two similar but not equal swords from the same school and/or smith or era. and the difference at that level between good and great is sometimes in the eye of the professional appraiser only, and may differ between opinions given since professional opinions are apt to be a mixture of subjective as well as objective.

[Please see the attached for the area I refer to, and unless i'm going blind the grooves that define the arm stop short of the kozuka ana. Perhaps the photograph misleads me.

Firstly let me say that I am by no means a tsuba collector. One thing puzzles me in a statement as follows OK... an observation to be sure but if one looks at the Ura view of the tsuba and the arm of the dragon. The two grooves that describe the arm itself stop short of the hitsu ana that cuts into the carving of the dragon. Does this not suggest that the hitsu ana was cut prior to the dragon being carved, and the grooves describing the arms truncated in order to prevent them from intersecting with the hitsu ana?

Hard to tell not having it in hand. The nondescript nakago screams not Japanese, or if the blade is Japanese then the nakago was shaped by someone other than a Japanese. The urushi work on the saya etc looks too soft, fluid and glossy to be real urushi although that is just a guess on my part. Hamachi and munemachi way too pronounced to be anything but modern. What do others think?

Hmmmm. Hira zukuri, looks to be slightly uchi sori. The chances of it being a cut down old Tachi or Katana blade is fairly remote. A fully tempered boshi also makes it even less likely to be an older blade. New, poorly made excuse for a tanto. Run away........

I have all sorts of alarm bells going off over this 'tanto'. There's something about an Osoroku like sugata but with a hira zukuri blade that strikes me as odd. Not Japanese I think. Modern knife made to resemble a Japanese style perhaps? The hamon also gives me reason to pause. It would seem to be a copy of a polished down hamon of much earlier vintage. A shinto or shinshinto blade would have typically a much broader hamon with more activity surely? it just don't feel right. I could however be wrong, since I am far from all-knowing.

One thing for sure. This is most likely an O suriage blade.