Hitatsura Versus Abundant (Large) Jinie

[hxv]

Greetings,

 

I have a question that may be naive to most people, but I am going to ask it anyway. Where does one draw the line between hitatsura and having (relatively) large jinie that literally cover the entire ji surface? The extremes are easy to recognize (overt hitatsura versus  subtle but evenly distributed ko nie on the entire ji), but when hitatsura is subtle and the jinie are large and overt??? What got me thinking about this is the wakizashi Marius just sold today. Any discussion is appreciated.

 

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/17620-hitatsura-wakizashi/

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[paulb]

As always Hoanh I dont think there are hard and fast rules just interpretation of what is seen.

From my own limited expereince most of the hitatsura I have seen are nioi based rather than nie. It appears as  distinct milky clouds or patches on the ji    ( in fact all over) whereas ji-nie shows as distinct seperate crystals of martenite. Even ko-nie is visible as seperate entities rather than a patch. As nie is strung together it forms other activity such as chickei inazuma and kinsuji.

[hxv]

Thank you for your insight, Paul.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[seattle1]

Hello:

For hitatsura, if I understand the question posed, the scattered bits of hamon are encapsulated by a temperline boundry, whereas reference to ji nie is in the context of a peppering, so to speak, of nie within the jihada, differing only in individual particle size and density.

Arnold F.

[Peter Bleed]

This question made me think. Thanks.

I had always thought of these two variables as essentially different, but maybe the world is more complex than that. I thought that hitasura was essentially part of the yakiba and a result of the clay applied by the smith. Ji nie by contrast is the result of control during heat treatment. I am quite sure that ample nioi up in the blade would not be a good thing. But maybe I need to look at more of each of these. Good question.

Peter

[hxv]

Peter and Arnold,

 

In my overly simplistic thinking, nie (especially ara nie) are formed by sufficiently high temperature in the metal and a sufficiently rate of cooling as the metal is quenched from its high-temperature state. This is how the yakiba is formed, is it not? If this is the case, and my thinking is not erroneous, then in the presence of uniform and ample ara nie in the ji, the entire sword may be thought of as a giant yakiba.  As Peter pointed out, this is also the case with hitatsura. Then, what sets hitatsura apart? Is it the Swiss-cheese appearance? Is the "full temper" term we use interchangeably with hitatsura not quite correct, then? Below are a couple of pictures to illustrate my point.  Keep in mind that the entire sword has the appearance depicted by the pictures below.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

 

[paulb]

Think I might be in danger of being a minority of 1 (not unusual) but I personally would not describe what you have shown as hitatsura. It looks like areas of ara nie. As I said I think it comes down to interpretation but hitasura should form distinctive although irregualr islands in this case it appears to be a regular continuous line of ara nie and that isnt like any hitatsura blade I have seen either in hand or illustrated.

Thanks for the topic it will bring to gether a number of different ideas I think.

[hxv]

Hi Paul,

 

I agree with you that the blade illustrated by my pictures is not what we think of as hitatsura, but comparing it to Marius's just-sold blade http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/17620-hitatsura-wakizashi/(which I clearly see as hitatsura), I see so many similarities, and it is these similarities that prompted my question. Note that in Marius's blade, the hitatsura is not so overt, but does show island of activities. However, in many of the pictures, you do see a lot of ara nie covering the ji, not unlike what is illustrated in my two pictures.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[Pete Klein]

http://www.nihonto.ca/yosozaemon-sukesada-3/index.html

 

Hitatsura.

[Jean]

Hitatsura is, to make it short, a blade covered by tobiyaki. Ara nie shall never be more than large nie dots. Cluster of nie is mura nie but always distinct dots.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 This discussion centers around words that only imperfectly describe reality, but which help us make our discrimination in observations more clear. In references I am familiar with "hitatsura" is always grouped under the discussion of hamon. Thinking of the hamon proper, without a nioi-guchi is just isn't hamon; it is a break in the hamon. All the references I could quickly lay hands on say something similar to Gordon Robson's Glossary of Japanese Sword Terms (JSS/US), wherein he writes: "Hitatsura-ba (ie, hitatsura-hamon). All over tempering. This hamon is marked by a particularly wild o-midare-ba with intense muneyaki. There are spots of temper in the ji between the hamon and the muneyaki..." Kanzan Sato in his The Japanese Sword (Kodansha), p.61, writes: " In the hitatsura style the marks left by the tempering appear in the area round the ridge as well as near the edge of the weapon." Hamon and tempering are the operative words and they direct us away from features that are the products of nie and nioi size, pattern and distribution such as utsuri, jifu utsuri, chikei, yubashiri, etc. I believe it is thus fair to say that there is a boundry involved. A few area of tobiyaki are tobiyaki and are encapsulated with a boundry; it probably is not entirely crazy to think of hitatsura as tobiyaki on steroids.

 Arnold F.

[flemming]

Hi there, if i may I would like to expand Jeans explanation a bit from  my experience with Hitatsura; I think Nobuo Nakahara agrees with his definition as he does mention Tobiyaki. The difference between Shintetsu or perhaps Rai hada patches,Sumigane etc., is that a Hitatsura spot or patch is surrounded by a "nioi line". In some cases you can see habuchi activity, but I think to qualify as Hitatsura, you need a stand-alone patch, whether tobiyaki, Muneyaki, Tamayaki, Uchinoke etc, they are all seen with a surrounding of nioi.  This is how Hitatsura is shown in some old Oshigata, like Hawleys Koto book. In hand, works like Soshu Akihiro do show the nioi border distincly at least in the 2 samples I have examined. I snapped a photo of such an extended patch of Hitatsura, whether by design or accident it was made, and I have tried to highlight the nioi border. This blade has a dim nioi-guchi to begin with...

 

Lloyd Flemming

JSSC

[flemming]

I Just read the previous post erected while I was concocting mine....Kudos to you Sir, I think that sums it up.

Lloyd Flemming

JSSC

[Ken-Hawaii]

I think of hitatsura as the "overall activity" in the blade. This includes nie & nioi, of course, in nie structures like chikei, sunagashi, & inazuma; & nioi structures like nioi-guchi. I think we know it when we see it.

 

Ken

 

[Guido]

I think this entry from Markus Sesko's "Encyclopedia of Japanese Swords" sums it up pretty nicely:

[hxv]

Thank you gents for making it clearer for me.

 

Warmest regards,

Hoanh