Tight hada

[cabowen]

Tadayoshi use of nanban tetsu is rare I would imagine as I have never seen a blade from any of the Tadayoshi/Tadahiro smiths inscribed as using it. Yukihiro of Hizen is well known to have used it.

[george trotter]

I see. I could have sworn I read somewhere that the Hizen Tadayoshi's did use it and the Daimyo had a special arrangement to import it into Japan...in fact he was the "distributor"...maybe I'm getting confused in my old age.

 

edit: I found it...I'm not going crazy...we had a long discussion on Hizen steel in August 2010 on thread "Hizen steel and nambantetsu".

Very interesting...but maybe still no conclusive answer..one Hizen smith Tosa no Kami Tadayoshi is definitely known to use nambantetsu, but I don't know about his hada. Page 2 post by omidaijo has a lot of info..

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8325&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=hizen+steel+and+nambantetsu

Regards,

[paulb]

Hi George,

The suggestion of Hizen smiths using nambantetsu is a fairly recent theory I think, or at least it has only surfaced in the West in recent years. Certainly Nabishima had the infrrastructure to import iron in to the province but as Chris says I thnk the use of foreign steel by the main line would be very rare. When compared to Edo where Yasutsugu was experimenting with "Holland Steel" a lot I have found little evidence/references where it was used by Tadayoshi.

I think the real difference is in the quality of the Tamahagane. By the time Tadayoshi was working steel production had become more centralised and uniform. As with most compromises this eleiminated the worst and the best of local production. As a result the general perofmance improved but material that produced the very best , i.e. steel produced in Yamashiro, was no longer available or used in isolation.

 

Regarrding this sword it has NTHK papers to Hosakowa Tadamasa. I can find little about the smith other than he was the son of Hosakawa Tadayoshi. The attribution is a little confusing to a non Shinsinto person like me. Based on my scant understanding of the school and period I thought they were mainly producing larger nambokochu revial peices in Bizen style, everything infact that this isnt. However as I said this is far from my preferred field.

Just as an aside for the newer members who believe that they need to buy old and tired pieces as starter or "study pieces" because good swords are out of reach. This blade which has a huge amount of study potential, new shirasaya, polish and papers cost little more than a standard Gunto Showa-To in average condition. Because it is unsigned and late the paper hunters have ignored it. As a result an excellent piece of work was avaialble at a fraction of what it should be priced at.

When buying please look at the quality of the sword not the mei, the attribution size or stated history. there are some very good swords which can teach all of us a lot out there, all within reach of the average buyer.

[Alex A]

Hi Paul, thanks for the tip, funnily enough i have been on the lookout for an old sword. Price range was a concern for a good piece. Buying on line can be risky as you all know, you dont know exactly what you have until you get it. This post as helped a lot, i have more of an idea of what to look for.

 

Alex

[george trotter]

Hi Paul,

yes that makes sense...hard to expect that a shinto hada would match a hada made in, and of, the steel of Awataguchi blades of early-mid Kamakura age. It makes sense that the steel is different with or without nambantetsu.

Thanks,

[cabowen]

Hosokawa school had quite a few members, some working right at the end of the Bakumatsu period. I have owned a few of their blades and seen many more. Some are excellent, some rather mediocre. This blade, while I am not sold on it being of that group, is very nicely made in any case. Thanks for sharing Paul.

[paulb]

my pleasure Chris

once I have had a chance to study it a bit more I will try and add some detail. Like you I am not confident with the attribution but would like to do some more work to either understand it or to understand why I dont agree with it

Regards

Paul

[cabowen]

yasurime are very distinctive feature of this group. I would start there....

[mdiddy]

Based on my scant understanding of the school and period I thought they were mainly producing larger nambokochu revial peices in Bizen style, everything infact that this isnt.

 

Not too long ago I had a Shinshinto copy of Soden Bizen work. It was large, straighter sugata, wide mihaba and sakihaba, o-kissaki, and a billowing gunome midare hamon. It was mumei, kiri nakagojiri, with yasurime and three mekugi-ana to make it look o-suriage. However, the hada was tight almost muji. The nakago was hardly aged and the steel very bright. I concluded Shinshinto and NTHK Shinsa agreed however I struggled to understand the attribution to Hosokawa Masachika. I gave up trying to find info and concluded that it must be a 'catch-all' for the Shinsa. I'm pleasantly surprised to read the attribution was probably fairly accurate.

[cabowen]

Many of the blades made by the nidai Masatoshi, the best smith in the group (and said to be the best student of Masahide after Naotane), were done in a large format with large choji-midare in a So-den Bizen style. There are many fakes of his work and it is said many had the signatures removed to make them into koto fakes.

 

Later smiths worked more in a standard size though I have seen a few larger works. They would seem to be scarce in comparison.

 

This was a fairly big school and it is a bit under appreciated. I have a catalog from an exhibit that I attended in Sakura city, Chiba Prefecture, where several of these smiths worked. The display had any number of impressive blades from, as I said, a relatively under appreciated group.