Second Nihonto...

[Isocyanide]

Well after getting my first nihonto in May I was hooked.  I've spent most of my free time since then immersed in the world of the Japanese sword, buying and reading books, reading the forum, surfing sites with swords for sale, researching sword smith rankings on nihontoclub.com, ect and decided I was going to make another purchase.  

 

I was initially dead set on getting a sword from the Yasutsugu school due to my long time fascination with the Tokugawa shogunate.  I found a couple wakizashi that I liked and the prices were in the right range, but as I was browsing websites, I kept coming back to one wakizashi, an Omi Daijo Fujiwara Tadahiro the 2nd. It looked amazing, had recent Tokubetsu Hozon papers and was in my price range, so I did some research on the smith.  Lo and behold there was entire book dedicated to just this one school, so I went to Roger Robertshaw's site and bought the PDF.  Great read!  Awesome history behind the school, Hizen province and the school's connection to the Nabeshima daimyo.  So I decided I'd go with the Tadahiro.

 

The unexpected part of this was I sent Roger an email thanking him for the book and I attached three pictures from the sword dealers website of the sword I purchased.  He promptly got back to me saying it looked like a good start and hinted that I should pay careful attention to the yasurime and the chisel marks of the mei and hinted that the 3rd gen Tadayoshi was the best of the school.  So I spent a ton of time with the pictures from the website and Roger's book.  I found that the yasurime was strong and slightly katte-agari suggesting that Tadayoshi 3rd made the blade.  All of the chisel marks of mei were consistent with that of Tadahiro 2nd and I was able to narrow down the date of signing to around 1672.  So I concluded that the blade is daisaku mei and Roger agreed.  Awesome!  Big thanks to Roger for his guidance and correspondence, great guy.

 

The sword has sated my crazy need to add to my collection for the time being, though I'd really like to add a Hizen Tadayoshi katana to it some day.

 

Here are a couple pictures, there are more on the flickr site    https://www.flickr.com/photos/46661974@N06/

 

Steve

 

 

[Toryu2020]

Well done Steve - few people make such a good start,

and few will find a single piece that could make a collection all by itself.

-t

[paulb]

When I was focussing on Hizen school work I dreamed of including a 3rd generation blade in my collection and after many years managed to do so. You have done it with your second blade. Well done. If you continue to progress at this quality level I would love to see your collection in 10 or 15 years time!

congratulations

Paul

[Jean]

Congrats

[mywei]

Nice.

[mdiddy]

Great start to a collection and thanks for sharing. Well done!

[Ray Singer]

Congratulations Steve, it would be hard to do better than this. I likewise have an Omi (no) Daijo that Roger feels is a sandai work (though in my case a daisaku daimei from 1680 - 86). This smith was apparently very careful not to let substandard works out, and generally the sandai I have seen were extremely well made with few or no kizu and have very beautiful, well-forged jigane. I remember this piece from when it was on Tsuruta-san's site. Beautiful sword I am sure you will enjoy for years...

 

Regards,

Ray

[Isocyanide]

Thanks gentlemen I really appreciate the positive replies!

[gauze3539]

That a beautiful suguha.

 

Jason

[Ken-Hawaii]

Glad you spent the time, money, & effort to research what you wanted, Steve - quite unusual for a novice.

 

Interesting that you're fascinated with the Tokugawa Shogunate, as Ieyasu was the primary reason that Nihonto went "out of Koto style" --> peace = no wars = less business for tosho = loss of Koto techniques = more flamboyancy to attract buyers

 

Ken

[SwordGuyJoe]

...quite unusual for a novice.

I was thinking the same thing. Well done on your new addition.

[Isocyanide]

Research and a fair amount of luck.