The Swordsman Shigemoto

[Darcy]

I have one more nice thing I am working on a listing for... doing the research on it.

 

The sayagaki says it was done at the request of Swordsman Shigemoto in 1967... sayagaki was written by Sato Kanzan and also says the sword was polished by Ono Kokei which is the first I've gotten to see of his.

 

I have no clue who this fellow is and it is probably going to be difficult to impossible to place him with such an abstract reference. It's possibly some high level kendo or iaido practitioner I would think based on Swordsman being used this way. The actual Japanese is:

 

ôju Shigemoto kenkaku

 

應需重元剣客

 

I love a mystery.

[Ken-Hawaii]

No one famous in iaido who I've heard of, Darcy. I'm not as knowledgeable in kendo, unfortunately.

 

Ken

[Darcy]

It's possible that he just had more money than skill with a blade haha...

[Toryu2020]

Darcy -

 

This raises a more interesting question, Did Sato Sensei keep records? Where are those records kept now? Perhaps this is an avenue our friends at the NBTHK could help you explore...

-t

[Darcy]

Oh I have a worse mystery than this. A client of mine owns a TOKUBETSU JUYO Go Yoshihiro.

 

This comes with a vague statement that the sword was recognized in the Edo period as work of Go.

 

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ARGH.

 

Were there papers? Did it have a name? Who recognized it? Did someone important own it? What's the history of this sword????

 

I can't even get information from the NBTHK on what the hell they meant with that statement. As far as we know, it must be in an old book somewhere. Which one, no idea. But it's been irritating both of us for a long long time.