"ho-No-To Kenma Project"

[Bugyotsuji]

A new project is now afoot to restore one long sword which was dedicated to a shrine 370 years ago.

 

The blade in question is by Hachirozaemon Kunishige, dated Kan-ei 18, kept in a split saya in very rusty condition at the Takaoka Jinja in Maniwa-Shi, Okayama. Only two swords of this Hachirozaemon smith are known and this is one. The plan is to ask for public support to fund the polishing and eventual display in a museum. Half of the money has been raised from members of the local sword study groups, and the rest, another 500,000 JPY will go to net cloud filing, donated by people throughout Japan. (Not possible to accept money from overseas apparently.) Those who give money will be recorded in a book at the shrine, and above a certain amount people will get an Oshigata.

 

The blade is 137.8 cm long, at a time when the average was around 70 cm. It will be displayed and discussed in rusty condition at a meeting next month, alongside other possible Kunishige candidates, (next popular name in Bizen after Sukesada) and will be polished between June and September, eventually being displayed at Osafune Sword Museum in November of this year. As it would inevitably go rusty again in the keeping of the shrine, the Kan-Nushi has agreed that it will be permanently donated to either of two museums.

 

Such a project was carried out 40 years ago, and another 32 years ago, but this is the first time in more recent history. There are some very high quality swords kept in poor condition in shrines around the country, and someone has to make the effort to start preserving them, is the idea.

 

If possible I will see whether before and after photos can be taken.

[Bugyotsuji]

PS When I posted the new topic, 奉納刀　Ho- had a capital letter, but the site has reduced it to lower case...!

[John A Stuart]

Yes, pics would be great. Honoto, why ho-No-to? Not that it matters a whole lot. John

[Greg F]

Hi Piers, thats a great thing to do and having people donate to get it done is a good way to get it done. Hopefully this will happen more often. Returning the lade to the saya would be interesting with that length. I also look forward to any possible before and especially after photos too. Thank you for sharing Piers. All the best.

 

Greg

[Bugyotsuji]

Thanks Greg. (Just found out that this project will be going online with before and after shots.)

 

John, Hono + to, give no indication that they are all long vowels. Hohnoh toh...? Hounou tou?

[John A Stuart]

Sure, or Hо̄nо̄tо̄.

[Bugyotsuji]

Ah, yes, but how do you get those long 'o's?

[Brian]

West has the problem of stuff dying in museums. Japan, the museums preserve the stuff, but the shrines kill it.

Collectors really are the best place to preserve stuff.

[John A Stuart]

Unicode. Google, how to type a macron. I have a link, but, when I add it here get an error message. John

[Ken-Hawaii]

Easier to just use a font that supports macrons, Piers, & then copy & paste (i.e., Hо̄nо̄tо̄ from John's post).  I can PM you with a few so as not to hijack the thread.

 

If the project is going on-line, does that mean we gaijin can donate?  I'd love to have an oshigata from a blade like that!

 

Ken

 

[Bugyotsuji]

Ken, many thanks.

 

They were explicit that they cannot take donations from abroad. (Perhaps it is related to why PayPal in Japan for example cannot accept foreign currency payments?)

 

The basic level of support was 3,000 JPY for your name in the book. For a 5,000+ JPY donation people will at some point get the oshigata, apparently.

[Nihonto Chicken]

Is there any guarantee that the shrine will take better care of the repolished sword than it did in the past?  Oops, okay, see it will go to a museum.  That may be better, depending.  Agree that a private collector who has paid dearly is the best guarantee of good preservation.

[Bugyotsuji]

Rick, it will go to the Bizen Osafune Sword Museum, or possibly to the Prefectural Museum in Okayama City. (I know that the Osafune storeroom is required to be kept at a constant temperature and humidity. Swords that they bring out for lectures, conferences etc., appear to be in pristine condition.)

 

Whether the 1,000,000 JPY is solely for the polishing or goes partly to the shrine as compensation, I do not know, but for the sake of future generations the shrine in such a deal agrees to let the sword be preserved and maintained elsewhere.

[DirkO]

West has the problem of stuff dying in museums. Japan, the museums preserve the stuff, but the shrines kill it.

Collectors really are the best place to preserve stuff.

Brian, a little nuance if I may. While museums or shrines aren't the best place to preserve swords, simply by the lack of means, they are one of the primary reasons one goes into collecting. So without museums and other public exhibitions, there would be far less collectors and this hobby/obsession (whichever applies) of ours would cease to exist quite quickly. 

[Brian]

Dirk,

Yes, but considering that in most cases, more that 80% of the goods lie in the back, in drawers or rotting away, that is not good for anyone.

Museums should not be taking goods permanently then. They should be on loan, and returned to the owners when they are not on display. People should not be donating items on a permanent basis either. They should maybe be in a trust, and available when needed.
Would take some fine tuning, but far preferable than rotting away while 10% is gazed at on display.

[Davis]

I agree with Brian on the subject of museums.  Three years ago it was discovered that one English museum had "lost" 140 plus valuable artefacts. Subsequent investigation found that many of these rare items, some of which were on loan had been sold off without the owners consent.  Another museum threw away five painting with the rubbish, all of which were by well known artists.  Some museum just don't know what they have actually stored away.  One museum had the skull of a Japanese soldier that had been dug up from the battlefield in Burma in 1945.  Fortunately that was repatriated to Japan last year.  It's not only British museums that have problems.  Did anyone else see the news coming from Cairo last month regards the damage caused to the golden burial mask of Tutankhamen?  Far fetched?  I think that it's the tip of the iceberg.

Mick

[Bugyotsuji]

In the West. Collections are left to museums in people's wills and lie untouched because there may be no person qualified to decide what to do with them. Years and years of records pile up, higgledy piggledy, and new staff move in and out, and it's no wonder that there is no-one all-round enough with the power or the will to sort it all out.

 

There are drawers of tsuba at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge that no-one has sorted, and at the Ashmolean in Oxford there is the amazing Church collection of Ojime that a friend and I looked at last year for the first time in anyone's living memory.

[Bugyotsuji]

Went to the kick-off of this project today. Quite a bit of interest from the general public, and the money they were hoping for has already been pledged.

 

Got some before shots of the Hono To, plus another brother (shorter) blade which is also wagging its tail. Will post shortly.

[Bugyotsuji]

There are actually two more swords at the Jinja, Daisho by Sukekuni. (The katana was displayed beneath the Kunishige yesterday.)

[Bugyotsuji]

Apologies, the iPhone photos think they know better... Heel! Heel! Grrr....

 

Hardly worth it now if the pc is going to mess around, but here is an oshigata of a previous project some years ago of a beautiful Henmi Toyo HonoTo, just before he switched professions.

[Bugyotsuji]

Taken with the regular camera before the opening speech. (30 years ago there were no chips in the blade, apparently...)

[Brian]

HTF does condition get like that in 30 years???
Are they pretend play-fighting in their spare time? That is a disgrace.

[Bugyotsuji]

Sadly the Jinja has no permanent on-site resident any more, and several things have been stolen. There is a lady at another shrine who is now now responsible for both, but the responsibility is too much for one person.

[Bugyotsuji]

This Kunishige smith was one of about 40, it is thought, not all of whom are recorded. I guess that includes the female smith, Onna Kunishige, mentioned on another thread here.

 

I have a Long-hafted (12 feet), short-tipped (7 cm), Sei-sankanku (equilateral triangular cross-section) spear, nakago signed "Yamashiro no Kami Kunishige" which some time ago I tried to research but "not Mizuta, probably Musashi" is as far as I got.

[Bugyotsuji]

The chairman of the local NBTHK said he is hoping that all this publicity will reach out-of-the-way shrines and lead to further discoveries and restorations. Apparently he took some heavy criticism for this adoption of 'western' crowd funding, but it looks as though he has been vindicated by the strong results so far.

[Bugyotsuji]

Spent the morning at Takaoka Jinja near Mizuta where the two Kunishige katana and one Sukekuni wakizashi have been brought back with fresh polish for blessing and public display before they are sent off to the museum. The ceremony went on and on until the priests were satisfied and my legs were dead. Ended with a Shishi-mai performed with 150-year-old Shishi heads.

[Bugyotsuji]

Spent six hours yesterday helping to stamp and roll up 300 oshigata and box them.

[Bugyotsuji]

Shishimai

[Bugyotsuji]

Like a scene from Spirited Away. I can't get it out of my mind.

[Brian]

What is being done with 300 oshigata?