Fine Tanto With Dragon And Bonji Horimono

[brannow]

Beautiful tanto Ed!  I would be very happy with it!

[Jacques]

Below a sword by Shodai Tadahiro and bearing an horimono engraved by Umetada Myoju. Please, pay attention at the ken handle, quite different with  those on this tanto...

[Darcy]

The ken handle is called a "Vajra" (maybe only by itself, as a tsuka, maybe sankozuka) ... the identical horimono (to Jacques' post) is found on one of his own blades that is Juyo.

 

 

This style though is not common at all in Myoju's horimono. He did a lot of free standing dragons and then traditional horimono like you would see on works of Rai Kunitoshi. There are no horimono set in panels among any of the Juyo work, though there is one Juyo Bunkazai. 

 

 

Set inside panels in relief is much more frequently found in Echizen (Yasutsugu, Kotetsu) smiths. But Myoju did at least one and I can't find the other Juyo Bunkazai to check others. Not much to go on in the Juyo stuff. 

 

I think if the NTHK felt it was Myoju they would have said Myoju.

[Darcy]

Because Darcy has not seen it - it does not exist?

 

The burden is not on me to disprove that swordsmiths signed in gold mei. I have looked at 13,000 Juyo works. In none of them did the swordsmith sign in gold. 

 

The burden of proof is on the person who is making the extraordinary claim. It's always like this. If everyone thought the earth was flat, and you said it was round, it's not up to them to disprove you. Even if you're right. It's for you to prove your extraordinary claim. This is why I said above I would be happy to be shown a counterexample. In a world that we now know to be round, if someone wants to say it's flat, it's up to them to prove their claim if they want to be taken seriously.

 

In the modern round world, one can go about showing the flat earth guys the proofs that the earth is round: but it's also fair to suspect that they have already encountered evidence for the world being round in their life, and have rejected it. Thus, trying to provide them with a sound logical argument that the world is round and disprove their claims of it being flat is about as productive as trying to hold water in a sieve. If they cannot understand the facts and logic that shows that the world is round, repeating it to them doesn't win them over. You're lacking a mutual language to have a logical argument. So it becomes pointless. It falls back then to the simplest case that the person making the extraordinary claim is the one who bears the burden of evidence. If they use pseudoscience, conjecture, appeals to emotion and other fallacies to make their point and they believe all of this is logical argument, then again you will have a failure to ever communicate to them that they are wrong. You can however though say they never did produce hard evidence for the validity of their theory and until they do that it's fine to dismiss.

 

If you want to claim that Tadayoshi and Sukehiro are the same person, you need to provide evidence. Real evidence, not one of your strange flowcharts that make sense to you. Facts, and evidence, not conjecture and handwaving. If you want to claim that the Umetada school signed swords with gold mei then you need to show some works that are universally accepted as having been made like that.

 

You can do that at any time. If you're right then they are out there and you can find them and can substantiate your point. Until then it's fair to believe that no, they didn't sign swords like this. This is a reasonable point of view. 

 

If you want to claim that you can make a perpetual motion machine, then you need to actually make it and other people need to be able to duplicate your approach. If your proof of perpetual motion machines is to link a Youtube video and say "look!" well, those are all funny things that people make with hidden motors and batteries and generate millions of hits which make them money. They are appealing to the uninformed and the stupid, or to those who will just giggle and enjoy the contraption they've made for the cleverness. But it's not a proof of anything. Your charts fall into this kind of example. They're basis for speculation but they're not evidence of anything other than that you may believe this.

 

This directly addresses the kind of logic failure seen here:

 

Because Darcy has not seen martians - martians do not exist?

 

Putting my name into the statement is an appeal to emotion, trying to make it personal, that I am putting myself up as the arbiter of what is true and what is not. Secondly, take my name out, and you're asking us to believe that:

 

1. It's reasonable to believe Martians exist even though there is no evidence for them.

 

-or-

 

2. That a lack of evidence of Martians existing implies that martians must exist. 

 

Rather, when we examine all the evidence and we see no evidence for Martians the RATIONAL conclusion is that Martians do not exist, failing the production of evidence to the contrary.

 

If you want to make claims based on your "research", then you need to substantiate them. If you want to claim that this is a gold signature made by one of the Umetada smiths, then you need to find established, published evidence. You're not allowed to rely on appeals to emotion or to your own personal "research" which at best is highly questionable and at worst has received a lot of derision on this board. If you want to take it seriously, you need to produce real examples.

 

You don't get to make these charts that look like Glenn Beck conspiracy theories and think that because it looks reasonable to you it's a proof. Any two Japanese characters written by two people share similarities, if they didn't, they would not be interchangeably legible. I think part of the problem that you're experiencing is that they all look the same to you, so you draw these strange conclusions from things you think you "see" that are not there. If you see a mekugiana in a certain place in one sword, and it's in the same place in another sword, you make an unsustainable leap of pure faith that therefore these are the same smith. Even if the books say that one is long dead by the time the other is a child. 

 

You don't let the facts get in the way of these imaginary connections that only you can see. You just plow ahead with more charts.

 

The charts are not convincing in the least because they don't make any sense to anyone but you. 

 

In the case where nobody has seen anything, for instance we can say Rai Kuniyoshi, does he exist? Well, nobody has seen any, but the old books say he did exist. So, basically any opinion is fine to take because we have no true evidence one way or another. We cannot disprove his existence. We also can't prove it. If you want to say he certainly did exist, then it's fair for someone to say no, you can't know that for sure without evidence of a signed sword. Similarly you can say well you can't know for sure he didn't exist, because you can point to the old books as citations and make a reasonable statement that these people didn't usually pull things out of thin air. Whatever conclusion you want to make is then based on faith and what type of source you make. The NBTHK handles this by straddling the issue, saying that old books say Kuniyoshi existed and is the founder of Rai, but we don't see his works now, so Kuniyuki is the de facto founder. If someone finds evidence one day of a signed Kuniyoshi and it is universally accepted then the books can be rewritten and Kuniyuki becomes the nidai. These are cases though where we have no strong evidence one way or another.

 

It's not the case of looking through 13,000 examples of the top works, and also failing to find any evidence anywhere to support the point that smiths signed swords in gold mei. Making up a reason why it could have happened is not facts or research, it's speculation.

 

But believe me, if you can find an expert citation from someone who saw evidence of this, or an actual example, I will certainly change my mind to it being a process done in rare moments for some known or unknown reason. But not because you made it up or are speculating. Because you're not a reliable expert by any means. If you discovered the sword yourself and other people accepted it, that would be fair for me too. But I don't think you have.

 

Now, in the case of the NTHK, it's very simple, you can write to Bowen or whomever and show them this paper and ask them if they believe this mei was made by the maker of the sword and filled with gold. If they say yes, then here is one example that will have some support by experts. That is called gaining traction. If the NBTHK will also say the same then it starts moving toward acclaim. But this is not the interpretation I get from the papers. I'm open to being wrong.

 

You just need to show me. Not with magic handwaving, conjecture, and poorly reasoned arguments. It's for you to substantiate the claim if you're going to make the claim. Until then, the reasonable response is, "No." 

 

Graphologists would label the sword Myoshin/Shigeyoshi by the niji-mei.

 

Speculation again with no basis.I think that you have trouble identifying differences in signing styles and because of that you can't differentiate easily and think automatically everyone else sees like you. A color blind person who cannot tell the difference between red and green can shout at the top of their lungs that the two colors are identical. He can say everyone will surely agree with him because they are exactly the same. Only in his perception is that true though, someone with better eyes will see the differences. Every time you post your stuff, I surely don't see what you see nor do the more educated people of this board seem to see it. They don't even want to expend the energy engaging with you on it. At some point it's just wasted energy. Like trying to argue with the guy who says the earth is flat and rejects all evidence to the contrary but cannot at the same time prove his point with evidence. To expend energy (like I am now) is a lot of waste.

 

Simply UMETADA will suffice. The client requested it as such.

 

This is called conjecture. Conjecture and speculation are the things that hold your charts together. Similar to Glenn Beck's beautiful work. 

 

What you need is evidence and proof, and that stops it from being conjecture and speculation, but your posts never have any of this. You present it all as statements of fact. Because you believe it doesn't mean it's fact. The confusing part is that either you're a really well intentioned but poorly studied guy who is putting a lot of effort into a misguided approach to study, or else you're a very hard working troll. It's hard to understand how else these things can be generated. Most of the board believes you're a troll but I don't necessarily believe that. Maybe I'm the fool then, I don't know. 

 

Go see "Atakigiri" in the Fukuoka Museum. You may just have to get out and see more blades. Expand your knowledge.

 

How many good blades have you studied? And in person? I think you're entitled to say that if you have studied them. There are not a lot of Norishige katana. The NBTHK has made 50 of them Juyo. 97 total works of Norishige Juyo. I am aware of five below Juyo and probably there's some more waiting to be found and by no means can anyone firmly conclude past what is documented what is out there. But I owned a reasonable percentage of Norishige blades (for one person). Around seven percent of them have been mine. I feel capable then from intimate study to make some reasonable statements about Norishige. I don't say conclusions or state facts but I can make some reasonable observations based on first hand study. If someone wants to say Norishige is no good then I'd say you need to go out and see more blades like you did, but I don't see any reason to believe that you're in the same boat. Benson's personal experience with great blades is far greater than mine and I would expect someone like him to make a reliable first hand statement like this. I would bow down to his experience and knowledge. Similarly someone who has only seen Norishige in books, I would hope would take something I have to say about Norishige as having some utility and insight that they may never have had. But, I don't see that you're in that position unless you want to tell us how you got there. I know myself it's hard and expensive. 

 

DARCY...You do love "quotes" and semantics and I agree that you do have a vast knowledge (compliment<<).

 

What you call "quotes" is called addressing the point directly if you're arguing with someone. It's useful to make a point by point disassembly of the magical handwaving that holds together these speculative arguments. Quoting something else in support of your argument is substantiating your point. Refusing to do either is appealing to various forms of fallacies. If you want to say I'm relying on semantic arguments for instance, you can substantiate that accusation. But without substance it's just noise in a "fight."

 

BUT please talk about the blade in question as you've talked a lot about what 'I have actually said' (flattering) and totally ignored identifying the blade in this blog.

 

This illustrates a failure to recognize what kind of discussion we're having here. 

 

I don't even have an opinion on who made the blade.

 

I'm trying to explain why the NTHK's approach in this case was reasonable. I'm trying to explain why your approach is unreasonable. In order to show why your approach is unreasonable I need to address your points. Since I am not making any claims myself about who made it, I have nothing to directly comment on this blade about. 

 

Consider if you said that you found a painting and it's by van Gogh. I say it's not by van Gogh. You get upset because you want me to argue about who made it and venture an opinion. However, I am not saying I know who made it. I am arguing that your statement that it was made by van Gogh is based on conjecture and limited knowledge. I'm not even arguing the absolute truth. If one were to accept that an Umetada smith made this, then if everyone on the NMB picked one smith of this school and then made a handwaving argument about why that smith made it, one of the members would be correct. He would be correct for the wrong reasons: if it must be an Umetada smith, you run out of options, and if you cover all the options, then someone will be right. But his reasoning is the problem. Your reasoning is the problem. IF this is an Umetada smith then you certainly have a chance to be correct in your conclusion. But that can still make your argument a failure.

 

Back to the painting, If someone else says this is certainly an 18th century painting and no more can be said about it, and you want to attack that person for not being specific enough, I will also tell you that this is not an argument based on a well founded approach. If you further claim that if an expert will not go further than a period statement based on pure knowledge, that he should GUESS and sign his name to it, and you think that is a valid approach, I will also argue that this is not the correct approach either.

 

In none of this am I required to have an opinion about who made the painting. My opinion can just be that the answer is not easily known and if you're going to wave magic wands while your approach is in your own words authorizing "leaps of faith", that you have already invalidated your own methods by including that phrase in the arsenal of tools to be used in assessing who made a work. 

 

Leaps of faith are OK for sitting around having a beer with your friends. Experts will indeed make them. But when serious time comes and they need to create a document and sign their names to it, then they don't use leaps of faith. Criticizing them for not leaping to a conclusion isn't founded on anything scientific. Boeing engineers don't go and make a plane and put it in the sky based on a leap of faith. They don't take stuff from suppliers, with the suppliers signing off on the parts as working to spec based on leaps of faith all around. Now you will buy a ticket to fly on that airplane based on a leap of faith. But your leap of faith is also based on known published safety incidents which are very, very small, so it is not requiring a lot of faith.

 

Go fly on a 1960s spec Tupalev in Idunnowhereistan and now you have to take a real leap of faith. Leaps of faith like that are not currency in the real world though, because they're not reliable. Experts trying to give you something you can rely on will stop at the first statement that they cannot firmly back up. Or should anyway. To fail to do so is to lose out on reliability.

 

Failure to understand that this is important (reliability) is a failure to understand why we want papers at all. 

 

If you think that your methods are excellent and beyond reproach, that your leaps of faith are justified and accurate, and your opinion is higher than the NTHK in these matters, then it's a reasonable conclusion that you can start issuing papers online from pictures. How well you do in the marketplace will indicate how strongly people agree with you.

 

It's fine to challenge the findings of a paper. You can come to your own conclusion. But to be blinded to how they got to where they got and why, that's not reasonable, that's showing a lack of study and experience. 

[Stephen]

Darcy id hate to see your manifesto....LOL 

[Darcy]

  On 5/15/2016 at 1:27 PM, Stephen said:

Darcy id hate to see your manifesto....LOL 

 

 

When I die this will be it. Still evolving but it'll all be there.

[Ed Hicks]

Darcy, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

 

Thanks for your commentaries.

 

Ed

[Ed Hicks]

NTHK-NPO Shinsa Paper

[SAS]

Darcy, I am amazed at the patience, knowledge, and intellect shown in your responses above!