Please Help To Translate Trigram

[Gordon Sanders]

Hi all.

 

I have a sword that I just purchased and would like you all opinion on the inscriptions on the blade

 

希妙来

無別法

 

Sword that has this inscription is on is:

A signed Kinmichi Katana (2nd generation) Edo Period Keian era: 1648-1652 (76.0cm, ubu) Fujishiro Kanteisho Certification

 

This is a sword by 2nd generation Kinmichi, called Daihoshi Hokkyo Kinmichi (sometimes read Kanemichi).

 

The cutting edge is a 76.0cm. The was actually longer at one point, and so the cutting edge was slightly shortened to a more manageable length!

 

The hamon is a choji midare, wavy clove blossoms. Gorgeous.

 

The sword presently has a rare Fujishiro Kanteisho. Fujishiro was a master sword polisher and became a Living National Treasure.

 

 

 

 

Thanks very much

[John A Stuart]

Strive to understand; (there is) no other way. ?? Maybe. John

[Gordon Sanders]

Thanks very much. I have attached the picture of the characters and also a pic of the Daisho I am putting together. The characters are on the Dai

 

Thanks for any other suggestions you can give

 

I believe at time this sword was made that kinmichi was a priest/monk

[Greg F]

Hi Gordon nice Daisho. I hope we get a look at the whole package all together. Interesting habaki too. All the best.

 

Greg

[Gordon Sanders]

Thanks Greg. Here is a apple cloud album of my pieces

 

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0S5qXGF1utDtV

[Greg F]

Ive got to Say that i like the lot Gordon well done. Have you got tsuka and saya with these nice blades and fittings yet? Cheers.

 

Greg

[Gordon Sanders]

Swords were bought shirasaya and the. I compiled the lot! Wakizashi just received yushuto. Waiting on Shinsa result for katana. I believe it will be Tobetsu hozon (sp?)

 

Plan is to have black tsuka wraps over ray skin and the. The saya will have Black Sea snake at the top 6 inches or so with the rest gloss black.

[Gordon Sanders]

Just added a couple of more pics of the katana

[Greg F]

Hi Gordon, do you have somebody planned to do the tsuka wrap for you? I look forward to seeing the finished daisho mounted. Thanks.

 

Greg

[Gordon Sanders]

I am working with Pablo Kuntz on this project, he is building both sayas and tsukas

[Greg F]

Very good. He seams like a good person to work with. He gets some beautiful stuff.

 

Greg

[Gordon Sanders]

He is who I have been working with to put it all together. Wish I had a tsuba for the wakizashi that matched the goto tsuba better. I like the gold rimmed tsuba, but want the Daisho to have a better match. What do you think. Do the two tsubas work well together?

[Greg F]

I think they are both nice and on ok match until you find a closer match. Im sure you will find one sooner or later with all the good resources available here. Goodluck.

 

Greg

[Gordon Sanders]

Thanks Greg... I hope so too

 

 

Anyone else have a translation that sounds appropriate for the katana?

 

希妙来

無別法

[Gordon Sanders]

FYI... I have worked with Markus Sesko on the translation, and will share it later.  I was thinking that having fresh eyes on it would create a revelation :-)

 

He was a great help too,  very very knowledgeable 

[SteveM]

While the individual kanji are all relatively common, the phrases themselves do not occur in modern Japanese. I doubt they occurred normally in pre-modern Japanese as well. Putting them into a search engines turns up a whole lot of nothing (or predictable near misses).　

 

無別法 appears as part of the Buddhist phrase 心外無別法, which means all of the outside world is a manifestation of what lies in the heart/soul/mind. To break it into its components a little bit and reverse-engineer it: there is no distinction (無別) between the inner world (心) and the outer world (外). So from that we can surmise that the 無別法 on your sword also refers to this Buddhist concept of unity and continuity (non-distinction). 

 

希妙来 is a bit more difficult to dissect. 

希 = hope, beseech. Also can mean rare, scarce

妙 = strange, odd

来 = come, arrive

 

I think trying to concoct a meaning by stringing any of those options together would produce gibberish, especially when combined with 無別法.

If the kanji represented contradictory ideas (say, rigidity and flexibility), it would be easy to guess that the phrase was expressing some realization of the fusion of opposites to form one whole. But I don't sense any basic contradiction. Rather, I think 希 and 妙 have some meaning in esoteric Buddhism that I am not aware of. 妙 probably relates to a concept found in The Lotus Sutra (南無妙法蓮華経) Nammyōhōrengekyo. Depending on your reference, 妙 in this context can mean correct, life, good, beauty, or any of another million things.

 

Perhaps its an idea of making no distinction between this life and the afterlife. Or it could be an expression of living as though you had already attained Buddhahood (satori).

[John A Stuart]

To me it is a Chinese couplet and I translated what the meaning was to me. Not word for word, the intent. Hei Miu Lai, Mou Bit Faat. Strive for wonderful return, no separate law (Buddhist teaching). Since Buddhist teachings are a 'way', that is how I derived, "Strive to understand; (there is) no other way." Anyhow, there must be better interpretations. John

[Gordon Sanders]

Thanks for that

 

To add maybe more material for this incredible group...

I had presented this to Markus Sesko (such a huge wealth of knowledge) and he came up with this:

 

Looking online is kind of difficult as the first character (希) means "Greece" in Chinese. But it also means "hope, beg, request, preach" what should IMHO be the context here. The second part, (妙来), is sometimes translated as "wonderful, splendid, magnificent" when consulting Chinese entries. The term does not exist in Japanese. Possible is, that actually Nyorai (如来) is meant, i.e. Tathagata (Buddha).

 

The other inscription, mubeppô (無別法), comes from the Zen proverb "shinge-mubeppô" (心外無別法) and means "Nothing actually exists outside of your heart" or "Everything that exists and happens only takes places in your heart." But I think you already know that context.

 

So for the time being, the only interpretation I am able to come up with would be a literal one, that is seeing this inscription as kind of prayer which goes: "There exists nothing but the hope for Tathagata Buddha."

 

Also keep in mind this sword was made by Rai Kinmichi after he became a Shinto Priest. And the Nagasa has been shortened by a few CM by lengthening the tang

 

Any opinions?

[SteveM]

Hello Gordon,

 

Also keep in mind this sword was made by Rai Kinmichi after he became a Shinto Priest.

 

I think you mean Buddhist priest, no?

 

And, is Markus OK with you posting his comments above? If so, I would make a couple of comments, but I don't want to do it if he didn't intend to his comments to be speculated on by the crowd here.

[Gordon Sanders]

@markus. - if it offends then I do apologize.

 

@the group - when we are looking at something, such as this inscription, I feel we are all speculating since we do not know the exact circumstances that they are written.

 

We have 6 characters , 3 make perfect sense as they are well known, the other three are very open to interpretation and how they then tie in to the whole sequence -AND- the sword are why I am reaching out to the group.

 

Just as in interpreting a sword, or a Mei... There are many opinions, but we all actually do not know for sure :-)

 

I hope to learn from this group and contribute when I have enough knowledge

 

Yes I meant Buddhist

 

RAI KINMICHI Received his title Izumi-no-Kami

in 1689, 2nd Month. A priest, Daihoshi, his

affiliation Hokkyo Rai and Buddhist name: Eisen

 

[Markus]

No problem here from my side, of course. Gordon got in touch with me and I ended up at a dead end with this one, thus my literal approach of the first trigram.

[SteveM]

妙来 (myōrai) or 希妙来 (kimyōrai) I think would be something different from 如来 (Nyōrai). Very possibly related to Dainichi Nyorai (大日如来), but I feel that there must be some specific reason for the use of 妙 that I am not clever enough to sort out.  

 

心外無別法 > I don't think this is a negation of the outside world. Rather, it is negation of the distinction between the outside and the inside. So the maxim 心外無別法 means not that there is nothing outside of your heart. It means: what you think of as two separate things (the outside world and the inner world), are actually both one and the same. Hence, whatever you experience on the outside, is reflected in your heart/mind/soul, and whatever you feel in your heart takes on a manifestation in the outside world as well. When the soul is not well, the outside world is not well (and vice-versa).

 

So that is why I was looking for some contradiction inherent in the kanji 希・妙 but coming up with nothing, 

 

My two cents. 

[Markus]

You are right Steve. I was just focusing on this isolated part because like mubeppô, as seen on the sword, is an abbreviation for shinge mubeppô and that in turn is just an abbreviation of sangai yui isshin, shinge mubeppô, shinbutsu kyû shujô, zesan musabetsu (三界唯一心, 心外無別法, 心仏及衆生, 是三無差別), a line in the Shôbôgenzô. That means, you so to speak presented an explanation of the entire meaning of the line, what transports much more context, whilst I was just focusing on one part of it what was too narrow and what I realize now. Are the others still following? Kind of Inception here

 

The fact that we all ended nowhere with the first trigram makes me think that its meaning is somewhere buried in a deeper Buddhist context, maybe an allusion or wordplay, that we might not get today.

[k morita]

Hi, Gordon san,

Because Markus is a genius, he considers the meaning of the characters too much difficultly.　

 

The carving on the blade means "There are no shortcut to success" by an English proverb.
This proverb apply to practice of martial art, business and study.

[Brian]

Somedays I just love this place.

Well done to all! There should be a prize.

[Gordon Sanders]

Thanks very much

 

Can you list it in either Japanese or Chinese so I can understand the relation?

 

 

Hi, Gordon san,

Because Markus is a genius, he considers the meaning of the characters too much difficultly.　

 

The carving on the blade means "There are no shortcut to success" by an English proverb.

This proverb apply to practice of martial art, business and study.

[SteveM]

Yes - I too am starving for an explanation!

[John A Stuart]

Well the proverb given by Morita san fits well with my uneducated interpretation, nice and simple. Perfect for me. Haaaaa! John

[Gordon Sanders]

I have tried to research on what the phrase would be and how ties in to "no shortcuts to success".

 

It is beyond my small brain, so could someone help and explain. So then I am able to explain to others when they ask?

 

--- Gordon

[Kurikata]

Gordon, 

 

I found this explanation visiting a Buddhist Thai Temple site (http://www.buddhapadipa.org/dhamma-corner/no-shortcut/)

 

No Shortcut

We human beings don’t want to go to any trouble. When we want something, we like to have it without making an effort. It is impossible to have things without making an effort as we know from life. What we want can only be gained through a lot of effort. There is no shortcut for getting things. There is a story told by Ajahn Jayasaro which provides a good example of this. Here is the story:

There was a man who was hungry. When he walked past a bread shop, he bought a bread roll and ate it. The first roll did not satisfy his hunger, so he had to buy a second one. The second one did not fill him up either, so he had to buy a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. But he was still hungry, so he bought a seventh one, and then the seventh one took away his hunger. He said to himself, "If I had known that the seventh bread roll would have filled me up, I would have bought it and eaten it first!"