Wierdest Extend-o nakago.

[Curran]

At Bonhams was a nice sword with NTHK papers. Decent sayagaki.

 

Straight as a kendo shinai. with nice jigane, and a cutting test..... but something very unusual about it.

See image and zoom in on the end of the nakago: http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/20503/lot/1172/

Keep zooming until you can see it well.

 

The last few inches of the nakago are a hollow secondary nakago somehow cut and screw-bolted (yes, looks like a screw) onto some sort of flange from the original nakago.

It is relatively stable and the NTHK papers show it this way. As I said, the extention is hollow, like a small iron saya handle.

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Blade was very nice except for this. I'd never seen something like it before and thought it rather Frankenstein. Must have made for a very long tsuka. Any of our sword swingers able to explain why this was done (just to make it uber long??).

 

Patina doesn't match the excellent patina on the original nakago. Yet cutting it off would require repatination of the end of the original nakago, and I assume it would need be re-submitted for NTHK papers. Or would the NTHK honor the previous papers and simply charge a fee to re-issue papers with the restored nakago?

[Geraint]

Hi Curran.

It certainly is an unusual feature though not unique; I have a memory of a tanto or ko wakizashi on Aoi Art with an extended nakago and there is one in the Boston Museum collection, number 51 in the catalogue. I believe the Aoi Art one had a steel sleeve fitted around the edge of the nakago but the sword has gone and is no longer on the website so I may be imagining it. In the later case a copper extension is used and seems from the oshigata to be riveted through an existing mekugi ana. Ogawa san comments; "The tang of this wakizashi was originally short, but now has a long copper plate 'nailed' (sic) to it. A long handle attached to a short tang would be very vulnerable and easily broken, so the copper plate was added to strengthen it." This was on a long Soshu wakizashi and one can imagine it mounted as katana; with the short Soshu tang breaking the tsuka would be a very real possibility.

 

If I had bought the sword I think I would regard it as very much a part of the blades history and certainly wouldn't attempt to remove it, always provided that it had the probability of being a Japanese repair.

[runagmc]

Here's an oshigata of an uchigatana by Munemitsu with an extended nakago...

 

here's the link, http://www.sho-shin.com/sue2.htm