Yasuhiro - Can't be, right?

[Cuirassier]

This can't be THE Yasuhiro, right?

The "Yasu" character is too straight, too normal.

Yes, on a gunto (what else).

:-)

Mark

 

[John A Stuart]

Absolutely Yasuhiro. John

[hxv]

Mark,

 

The signature looks OK, but its placement relative to the mekugi ana isn't right. See the examples below.

 

Edit: Here is also a papered example on nihontoantiques.com http://nihontoantiques.com/fss531(papers).jpg

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[Cuirassier]

Hoanh

I think the placement is OK against the top Mekugi ana, I just get jittery about such finds.

 

John

Thanks, I feared it might be kosher.

 

Dang

Not sure I can afford it

Spent too much money today on some mighty fine Scottish blades - shame I can not relate about my Gordon chieftan Culloden find here.

[hxv]

Mark,

Yes, I was looking at relative mei placement to the top mekugi ana. It doesn't look right - too much spacing on your example compared to the rest of the papered swords. It's just a hunch on my part.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[cabowen]

Gimei. Look at the nakago-jiri...

[John A Stuart]

Hi Mark, I thought you were questioning the kanji and I was not commenting on legitimacy. BTW, in the Izakaya you can post about the Culloden find. Those were hard times for my family and it is always interesting to see artefacts etc. relating. John

[Cuirassier]

No problem, I did not buy it; it sold for what I would have paid if I thought the mei were authentic / 100%

So thanks for pointing whay you did out.

 

I will now wander over to the Izakaya forum and tell you about my "turnip chopper"

[JohnTo]

I logged onto the Nihonto Notice Board hoping to find some info regarding Yasuhiro and low and behold found this discussion. It was of particular interest to me as I believe that I was the guy that bought the sword in question. So let me add my thoughts.

Firstly, let me say that I bought the sword because of what was on the other side of the habaki, though I must admit that the signature did make me put in a higher bid.

Secondly I don’t subscribe to the assumption that the old kaji spent careers, often spanning several decades, paying particular attention to carving their signatures in exactly the same way and with the same chisel (unlike today’s smiths who are making swords for the art market). I guess that some were also semi-literate (better than their European counterparts though). All the signatures that I have seen (in print) show variations and being a statistician, who specialised in a field dealing with the identification of outliers within small sample populations, I’m reluctant to draw firm conclusions based upon these examples.

I’ve attached a collage of signatures from various sources and these are as follows:

1> Sword under discussion

2> Shinto Shu by Fujishiro page 77

3> Sword for sale. (NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon, Yasuhiro I or II)

4> Advert

5> Wakizashi in British Museum (ex-Lloyd collection 1958.07-30.144) shown in Cutting Edge #45

6> Advert (NBTHK Tokubetsu ‘higher’ to Yasuhiro I)

7> British Museum (ex-Lloyd collection 1958.07-30.141) also shown in Cutting Edge #43. In my opinion this blade has a rather deep sori (2.4 cm) for a 17thC blade!

8> Wakizashi Compton II lot 288 (NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho to Yasuhiro I)

All examples were signed Bichu Ju Tachibana Yasuhiro (some mention a Kiku but were not usually shown) and I’ve focussed on a couple of the characters for discussion, namely ‘Chu’ and ‘Yasu’

The ‘Chu’ in #1 is definitely the most curved and has the greatest disparity between the length of top and bottom horizontal strokes, though most of the other examples show fluidity to this character, with the exception of #6 which is rather rigid and angular. The character ‘Yasu’ in #1 has three horizontal strokes in the centre, much like examples 2, 3, 4 & 7.

The ‘Yasu’ in #6 has very distinctive upward ends (ticks) to the horizontal strokes on the left character, far more than #8, Compton’s blade which also has an NBTHK TK paper. Couple this to the stem and leaf on the Kiku and I would have put this so far out of line with the other signatures as to be gimei! The Compton blade appears to have less distinctive ‘ticks’ to the end of the horizontal strokes in ‘Yasu’. My guess is that these two are Yasuhiro I and the other blades II & III.

To my untrained eye the signature of #1 seems most closely related to 2 & 7 and the position of the first character in relation to the mekugi ana in 1 and 7 seems similar. Add to this the sugikai yasurime, but take off the more rounded tip of the nagako jiri and I’ve still got an open mind as to whether it is a genuine Yasuhiro II or III. If not, it is by someone familiar with the Yasuhiro style.

However, all the discussion has been about the nagako. I bought the sword after just looking at the other end for just one minute. Despite the grubbiness, there was no serious pitting or edge nicks. The hamon was visible (see photos) and resembled example 2. Clouds of nie were clearly visible around both upper and lower parts of the choji midare hamon, which showed nice crab claws and tobiyaki floating above the low parts of the hamon. Itame hada from what I can see. The only unfortunate thing about this purchase is that, as it sold for maximum, I’m out of cash to have it repolished, something I feel this sword richly deserves.

[J Reid]

Secondly I don’t subscribe to the assumption that the old kaji spent careers, often spanning several decades, paying particular attention to carving their signatures in exactly the same way and with the same chisel (unlike today’s smiths who are making swords for the art market).

 

 

Actually- they did. But most similarities come naturally as they would write their mei by hand first, and then chisel. However it's not just the signature that helps verify authenticity... Your nakago jiri is all wrong. The placement of the mei is completely off.

[hxv]

Josh is correct. Look through all of the mei in your collage and you will find a consistency in the placement of the first kanji of the mei relative to the original mekugi ana (if there is more than one mekugi ana). Also look through your collage and you will find a consistency in the nakago jiri (if the sword is nakago ubu). These two things are the first things one would look at before diving into the strokes of the kanji. The hamon on your sword looks very attractive, and I see tobiyaki. I don't recall any mention of tobiyaki regarding Yasuhiro's work in Nihonto Koza and Fujishiro, or have seen it in papered swords of Yasuhiro's. You can always submit this sword to the August shinsa in San Francisco before investing in a fresh polish.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[cabowen]

Hamon is attractive but also atypical of Yasuhiro's work.

 

Your point though that there is indeed natural variation in signatures is without a doubt valid. In this case, however, the mei placement, nakago jiri, and hamon are all atypical and are therefore enough, in my opinion, to cast serious doubt on the validity of the signature.

[JohnTo]

Thanks for all the replies guys, sorry it has taken me so long to respond, but I have other interests.

The general opinion appears to be that this Yasuhiro is a gimei. One question that I have with this opinion is why would a faker want to copy the work of such an ‘average’ swordsmith? I say ‘average’ as Nippon-To by Inami Hakusui list swords from about 400 swordsmiths with values ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 yen (1935 prices). Yasuhiro (I) is rated at 6,000, which places him in the bottom half. If I were a forger I would be copying someone in the top 200. Robinson does not include Yasuhiro in the top 15 Shinto smiths. Not that I believe that the blade is by Yasuhiro I, more likely by Yasuhiro III (based mostly upon a hunch, as I can find no examples attributed to him, but the change in shape of the nakago jiri and more cursive style of the signature may be more consistent with a change in style over about 70 years ). Less likely the blade is by Yasuhiro II or a gimei Yasuhiro II (even less reason to copy II than I). Unfortunately, we in the West are limited in our reference material.

 

Which brings me to the subject of forgery. I remember being told about 40 years ago by an experienced collector of an old Japanese saying, viz: ‘Out of every 10 blades bearing the signature Masamune, 11 would be fakes’ (nice gold inlay ‘Masamune’ tanto sold recently in London in Part I of the Wrangham collection!) and reading that the Shinshinto smith Kawabe Masahide was described by his detractors as being in charge of the ‘forging’ department. I also remember going to see the Stowe school ‘Yasutsuna’ (9th C) when it came up for sale (beautiful blade), but thought to be a Kamakura forgery, so forgery of Japanese swords has a long tradition.

 

I imagine that forgery reached its peak in the 19th and first half of the 20th century when swordsmiths were struggling to make a living. I believe that the famous 19thC forger Kajimei started out by documenting oshigata of famous swordsmiths and so was able to copy their signatures quite realistically. Would he have changed the nagako jiri in view of his great reference material? I would expect that the majority of gimei made in the last 150 years would be shinshinto blades as the forger would not have to bother about aging the nagako (rust) and would also be familiar with the forging style, having possibly worked with the smith being copied. How prevalent was forgery in the Tokugawa era, which was effectively a police state with harsh penalties for breaking the law? Were daimyo complicit in running forgery smithies in their fiefdoms in exchange for a percentage of the profit. And what about today? With all new swords having to be registered in Japan and made by licensed swordsmiths what is the chance of a modern blade (say post 1970) being a forgery?

 

Josh states that swordsmiths use an inked in signature before chiselling. I would also think that this was standard practice. Consider the Yasuhiros, nothing could be worse than to finish chiselling a chrysanthemum and finding that they were half a petal out! I was on an English brewery tour last week and visited the cooper’s section. Apparently, after finishing his apprenticeship, the cooper is given a token with his initials to use as a template when signing the beer barrels that he subsequently made. An ‘official signature template’ was probably common among (semi-literate) artisans worldwide. I can easily imagine the master of an apprentice swordsmith popping next door to the woodblock artist and having a signature stamp made for the new ‘journeyman’ to ink in on all swords that he made before chiselling out his signature (that is apart from any really good swords that apprentice made, in which case the master would sign and attribute these to himself! Are these gimei?)

 

Hoanh and Chris say that the mekugi ana is in the wrong place and the hamon is atypical, having tobiyaki. The Nihon To Koza, vol V has a good section on gimei and shows two shoshinmei of Ishido Korekazu, dated just one year apart, in which the mekugi ana is above the signature in one example and right between the first two characters in the second. So, the placing of the mekugi ana does not appear to be a hard and fast rule with every smith. The example in Nihon To Koza has a suguha hamon and the one in Fujishiro has tobiyaki, so what is typical? It’s not that I am in denial regarding the authenticity, I just like to look at all angles, rather than just dismissing it as gimei because it is not a text book example of Yas I. After all, out of 100 Yasuhiro blades I would expect 30 Yas I, 30 Yas II, 30 Yas III and 10 gimei, from a simple statistical view. Of course a shinsa would be useful, but I live in the UK and I have another sword to have polished first (I don’t think this one is gimei as, although it is signed and dated, I can’t find the smith listed anywhere!)

 

Thanks for all the comments, they are all valid and have prompted me to look into the question of gimei a bit deeper. So thanks for the stimulus. How many of us make sure the labels on our clothes are fully visible so that everyone else can see we only buy upmarket designer items, even though they are probably churned out in a sweat shop in Bangladesh? I’m always amused when I read about some piece of art, which has eventually been attributed to ‘the master’ (following a lot of pressure by the owner), rather than being a studio piece. Overnight the value may increase 100-fold, but the intrinsic artistic quality of the item remains unchanged. I suppose ‘the name’ is everything, in ancient times as now.

[Guido]

It’s not that I am in denial regarding the authenticity, ...

Well, I have to admit you got me fooled there for a second.

[DirkO]

 

:D