Some Times A Master Piece Can Be Boring

[lonely panet]

Hi guys,

I was just looking at some nice things that I can never afford as saw this.

 

just thought I would open myself up for some shame pie,

 

 

its got some excellent evan hada, nice subtle active hamon, but yet it dosent arouse my attention.

 

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-omi-kami-hojoji-tachibana-masahiro19th-nbthk-juyo-paper

 

 

what am I lacking in my education.

 

 

kind regards H

[paulb]

Hi Hamish

I think the problem with swords with veery fine hada such as Yamashiro, Enju and Hizen they tend not to show their best in photos. When you hold a Masahiro in hand the fine konuka hada sparkles with ji nie and chickei and the activity running through the hamon is sublime. For control freaks like me there are few better examples of a smith in full control of his art. Think of what he is starting with and the tools available to him With this limited arsenal he is able to work material and judge the right amount of times to fold steel the temperatures needed just by sight and then produce an incredibly consistent and refined product that looks as good as new 400 years after it was made.

His work is about as good as hizen work gets and there are few that make better quality swords.

[Dojikiri]

This sword is by Hojoji Masahiro not Hizen Masahiro but your remarks still mostly apply.

[Jamie]

 

I'd like to look at it in hand.

[Jacques]

  Quote

This sword belongs to Saijyo saku ranking

 

 

Aoi art is very generous with his ranking. Only jo saku for Fujishiro....

[Jean]

Aoi Art ranking is not based on Fujishiro's one which is an average one but on the quality of a given blade and NBTHK kanteisho. Almost all juyo blades are Saijo made according Aoi Art. This one, from the pictures and the fact that it is papered on the early Juyo Shinsa is undoubtedly Saijo made.

 

All Saijyo smiths did not forge saijyo blades and all saijyo blades were not forged by saijyo smith. I have juyos made by Jo saku smiths (using Fujishiro scale)

 

Some of the blades which will never achieved Juyo for some NBTHK lacking criteria can be saijyo saku.

[paulb]

well that will teach me to write an explanation in the early morning. Explanation is valid just about the wrong smith and school. Sorry!

Having said that I have seen 3 or 4 Hojoji Mashiro blades and have liked every one of them the workmanship is very good and they are a joy to study (almost as much as Hizen Masahiro )

Sorry for the confusion Iwill wake up a little earlier and use my glasses more!

[Stephen]

[Swordlook]

Jean,

 

Thanks for that clarification. I was wondered how or where Aoi was getting their rankings as they often do not match Fujishiro.

 

Out of curiosity do others agree or follow this kind of ranking by NBTHK kanteisho?

 

Thanks

[Ray Singer]

  On 1/21/2016 at 3:45 PM, Swordlook said:

Jean,

 

Thanks for that clarification. I was wondered how or where Aoi was getting their rankings as they often do not match Fujishiro.

 

Out of curiosity do others agree or follow this kind of ranking by NBTHK kanteisho?

 

Thanks

 

Its seems that the internal Aoi rankings are not so much a rating of the smith but of the actual sword at hand. There was a shinsakuto tanto for auction recently that they ranked as Saijo Saku. He commented that it was an extraordinary work for a modern smith resembling Awataguchi and gave it his top ranking. I do appreciate seeing him use a rating system because it gives insight into how he personally feels about the sword. Jojo Saku or Saijo show that he thinks it is an especially good example worth collecting, similar to when he writes that a piece is 'highly recommended'. It might have been better though to use a ranking system that was named differently from Fujishiro though, to eliminate customer confusion.

 

To get back to the sword at hand, Hojoji Masahiro is one of my favorite smiths and I do not find the Ju-to example at all boring. His work often have a beautiful hamon with a wide/deep nioguchi that is very bright, along with thick ashi. I acquired one by the nidai a few years and became an instant fan.

 

Best regards,

Ray

[Darcy]

  On 1/20/2016 at 1:19 PM, Jean said:

Aoi Art ranking is not based on Fujishiro's one which is an average one but on the quality of a given blade and NBTHK kanteisho. Almost all juyo blades are Saijo made according Aoi Art. This one, from the pictures and the fact that it is papered on the early Juyo Shinsa is undoubtedly Saijo made.

 

All Saijyo smiths did not forge saijyo blades and all saijyo blades were not forged by saijyo smith. I have juyos made by Jo saku smiths (using Fujishiro scale)

 

Some of the blades which will never achieved Juyo for some NBTHK lacking criteria can be saijyo saku.

 

 

Jo-saku, the perception that this is a kind of an average grade and it may be a shock to someone that such a guy may make a Juyo is wrong.

 

There is no surprise that a Jo-saku smith may make a Juyo Token. Jo saku especially in the koto period is very strong. When you get to someone like your Tametsugu now, in context he is being compared to Norishige and Go Yoshihiro, his teacher and his father and both from his home province. And he's being compared against Shizu Kaneuji, and Kinju the master smiths of his ultimate residence. To get Sai-jo in that crowd means you are a peer of Go, Norishige and Kaneuji. There are not so many. Tametsugu is equivalent to Kinju in skill though Kinju is Jo-jo saku. Kinju just has to be ranked against his Yamato roots and against Kaneuji and that's easy. He's number two. Tametsugu has to be ranked against Go and Norishige. There is a larger gap because those two are both superior even to Kaneuji. So this is how he ends up at Jo-saku. 

 

Why do Norishige and Go together have the same rating as Kaneuji if I just said there is a gap there? Well it's a five term system and at some point guys are going to inhabit the same bucket but on different ends of it. Juyo and Tokuju are the same thing and it's an important thing to think about and remember. There is no equivalence between items that have the same paper because they have the same paper. They inhabit the same bucket. They are living in the same city. One may be in the expensive end of town and the other in the low rent. Some skills at assessment are critical in this regard.

 

Keep in mind that there are four grades above Chu-saku and Chu-saku means average, literally middle-made. If there are four ratings above average it stands to reason there are four below it but we just don't want to think much about them. That makes Chu a score of 5 on a scale of 9. And Jo-saku then is a score of 7 out of 9. It's a five term system but it's a grading scale between 1-9 with the first four omitted because we don't care to talk about the smiths who would receive those grades.

 

So, Jo-saku needs to be taken seriously and there is no need to start trying to redefine Sai-jo to mean a blade that passed Juyo because that's not what Juyo is. Juyo is closer to Jo-saku than anything else. It's the superior items made by superior smiths. It's their home and destination. Keeping in mind that Jo-saku is something a bit weaker as time progresses and as you muddle around the schools. 

 

To try to impart the best meaning, I usually will describe them as this:

 

Sai-jo = grandmaster

Jo-jo = master

Jo = superior

Chu-jo = above average

Chu = average

 

I don't see a reason why someone would want to use a term that is associated with - grand-master / nothing can be better - on this blade or with this smith just because it's a good looking Juyo work. There is no headroom then for Tokuju if this is Sai-jo and there is no room for his better works at all to fit in. There are grades within Juyo that are not visible to the naked eye but they exist. This is a superior blade. This is a superior smith. That's all and that should be good enough because those are strong terms. 

 

A weaker smith will have his own personal masterpiece. This does not make it Sai-jo saku. This means it's his own masterpiece and nothing more than this. It may or may not qualify for Juyo. There are Chu-jo saku Kozori smiths that I would choose to look away from if they were put in my hands that have Juyo Token. These are not redefined as Sai-jo saku because they got Juyo.

 

The biggest sin with with what they have done though is that this is a standard candle and they're redefining it to be something vague. Taking Fujishiro's terms and redefining them is confusing by definition and that's why they should avoid it. They are trying to dumb it down into a digestible pill for low information buyers and for that, I salute them, they know their market. But at the same time Aoi should not muddy the waters by redefining existing rating systems to suit their purposes. That's what I think about that, everything is confusing enough as is.

 

People always discount that attribution to maker is the first form of quality assessment so you get this stuff that not all Sai-jo maker's works are Sai-jo. Sai-jo is a general reputation. It's true that not all works are the same quality this is easy to agree on and is fully logical.

 

But when it comes to unsigned works, the thing is, a very weak Nagamitsu would go to someone like Kagemasa. A weak Norishige would go to Uda. A weak Shizu would go to Naoe Shizu. A weak Masamune would go to Shimada. And so on. If the work is not consistent with the skill and reputation of the smith it won't be attributed to the smith.

 

Correctly or incorrectly.

 

In this way they form a tautology. It's how kantei works. If you take a mumei Shimada and say it's Masamune, you might be right. We don't know. It's unsigned. We don't have a time machine. 

 

But it's not the right answer. The right answer is Shimada. It's right because it got assessed as Shimada. It got assessed as Shimada primarily because it was a second-rate Soshu-like item. Still can be nice. Still can be Juyo. But it's not Masamune by definition because of what it is.

 

There is no "off day" for Sai-jo smiths. There's only a lack of condition. 

 

Now, slap a signature on it and you have a bigger problem. Off day plus 100% legit signature means we need to reassess the level of the smith.

 

So on some of this I agree: quality and skill variations exist within a smith's body of work. Surely. Clean and logical. 

 

Should we say then that some are Sai-jo and some are not? I think it doesn't clarify anything but confuses stuff. I think the idea is right but the terminology is poor. 

 

Should we take a Jo-saku Shinto smith and call his work Sai-jo? Never.

[Darcy]

  On 1/21/2016 at 3:45 PM, Swordlook said:

Jean,

 

Thanks for that clarification. I was wondered how or where Aoi was getting their rankings as they often do not match Fujishiro.

 

Out of curiosity do others agree or follow this kind of ranking by NBTHK kanteisho?

 

Thanks

 

In a way we all invent our own rating system because we give our opinions on the blades.

 

I'm not aware of anyone who has tried to formalize their own system other than Aoi. It's not clear who is doing the ranking and what their criteria are. And repurposing existing terms as can be seen is confusing. 

 

I think they'd be better off just giving it a score out of 10 and be done with it. 

 

If everyone is allowed to call a work Sai-jo saku because they feel like it, you can pretty much predict where that ends up.

[Kronos]

I agree with Darcy about Aoi's system as it doesn't leave much room at each rank. Using the analogy of chu-saku being rank 5 on the scale it appears what they've done is taken that down to 5 ranks from 9, so ranks 1-4 which no one talks about is actually chu and chujo saku so it's not until you get to jo saku on Aoi's system that you would even get onto the Fujishiro scale. This basically leaves jojo saku and saijo saku (on Aoi scale) encompassing everything from the lowest of Jo's  to the absolute summit of Saijo's (on fujishiro scale) into these 2 ranks. This all means there can be a massive gap in even just Saijo stuff, especially when you consider there's a big gap anyway between smiths at the top on Fujishiro's scale.

 

Whats more is that it's judging the individual blades as opposed to the smiths and this is where I disagree with Darcy. Taking the Juyo Kozori smiths works for example, some of them are up there with good works of Masamitsu (or other mainline osafune smiths of the time) that got him ranked Jo-saku. Fujishiro was just a man after all so was only able to rank what he saw. Therefore there's plenty of smiths that got ranks based on reputation and many more unranked or ranked based on their best or worst work depending upon what fujishiro was able to view so it's not a perfect system.

 

Saijo smiths did have "off days" and while for the purpose of Kantei of mumei items they don't due to things impossible to know that are buried in history, in reality when you look at a large body of signed work from a prolific smith it is easy to see and cannot be put down to condition.

 

I also Don't think Aoi takes into account when and where the blade was made unlike fujishiro, so it's more based on the sword for what it is than where it fits in so a Jo saku kamakura would be equivalent of a Jo saku Kanbun shinto.

 

All this just muddies the waters so while Fujishiro can give a good indication the majority of the time nothing will ever compare to your own eyes which is why seeing as many swords as possible of all levels but especially the best of the best allows each individual to form their own internal ranking system and nothing can substitute for that.

 

I do like the idea of ranking items out of 10 as you would do for films etc as at the end of the day the variety is so great that you need a lot of places to put something, this is why i think Toko Taikans system is good because it is a large, open ended scale although not without it's own flaws.

 

Speaking for the Masahiro sometimes it's hard to tell from photo's alone and in person it may be a lot more impressive. This seems true more so of swords in suguha and small activities/grain and the beauty maybe found in different areas such as the refinement and efficiency than wild activities, large nie particles and O-hada one associates with Soshu. Not to mention different dealers have different photography techniques and some swords are just a pain to capture what you want.

 

Personally I'd give this Masahiro a perfect 5/7