Seki Blade Queries: #2 Yoshimichi

[JohnTo]

The second Gendaito I would like information on is signed Yoshimichi.  Much as I would like own just about every sword that I see for sale, financial constraints force me to be selective.  Usually I pass over Gendaito that I see at auctions but I bought this one last year as it appeared for sale about the time of a special birthday, looked interesting and was in perfect polish, thus obviating the need for an expensive repolish costing more than the sword itself.  Besides, I was short on funds, but my wife said ‘Yes’.

The first interesting feature is the koshirai.  Cheap leather bound wood saya and civilian tsuba/fuchi/kashira (see Military Sords of Japan 1868-1945, Fuller and Gregory, plate 63, a).  The unusual feature about the koshirai is that the same is black.  Anyone know the reason for this?

The blade is a standard shinogi tsukuri construction and is signed Yoshimichi and has no arsenal mark.  Could the lack of arsenal mark indicate that this was a civilian commission (see koshirai)?  The smith is probably the same Yoshimichi in the Seki Tanrensho listed by Dr Jinsoo Kim but the kanji for ‘michi’ differs in execution from the example he gives (which if either is genuine? The difference may just due to a change in signature over the working life of the smith; my personal signature has changed a lot over the years).  The blade has a medium width gunome midare hamon and the jihada appears to be a fine tight linear masame (industrial steel rather than tamahagane?).  As with my other Seki blade (see posting for Seki Ju Fukuda Sukemitsu), the hamon is nioi deki and the peaks in the hamon contain    1mm bright ‘nie’ particles just inside the nioi line.  On one side of the blade (ura for katana) a single peak extends beyond the shinogi and with a bright area inside the ha about 4mm in diameter.  OK, that’s the general description, now for the details and queries.  Hopefully the photos of the Yoshimichi show these features, but I had a lot of trouble taking them over several weeks under different lighting conditions.  What is clearly visible by eye was difficult to capture on film.  

 

1.  At first sight the hamon looks like a typical nioi deki, but looking closely it actually has three distinct bands.  The outer band (nearest the shinogi and hamon) is a white band of nioi about 1 mm thick.  Adjoining this is a dark (black) coloured band also about 1 mm thick.  Below this is a feint white band with ashi extending below the tani of the gunome hamon.  The dark band widens in the tani and forms fine black sunagashi striations as it interacts with the masame jihada (see Q3).  The three bands extend along the whole length of the blade, on both sides.

I’m used to seeing a dark area above a white hamon, where the polisher has extended the outline of the ha and darkened the ji, but not the other way round.  I also have a Meiji period tanto made for the tourist market, in good polish, which shows a similar effect.  In this case the hamon is a regular gunome, but the dark and light bands are coincident, i.e. just one band, the colour changing as the blade is rotated in the light (note: the ashi band on this sword can also appear white or black, depending upon the lighting, see photo).  A few months after buying the Yoshimichi another Seki Gendaito came up for sale, reportedly signed Nagamura Kiyonobu, with a medium width togari gunome hamon.  It was not in such good polish as my sword and appeared muji.  Although not so distinct, the hamon appeared to be the same three band construction as my Yoshimichi and also had the contrived nie particles (see below).  Is this the result of a polishing style or forging technique characteristic of the Seki forge?  I suppose the three band effect could be produced by painting on a coating to protect parts of the hamon during polishing, but this seems too complex a process for a sword produced under (presumably) wartime conditions. The only explanation that I can come up with for the dark band is that there is a gradation of size in the martensite crystals across the hamon, the larger ones nearest the ha.  They were all given a black patination of magnetite (like some tsuba) which was then preferentially removed from the smaller nioi in the final polishing, leaving the usual white nioi hamon on the outside.  Maybe completely wrong, but as I used to say when working in a research lab ‘A cr#p idea is better than no idea at all.’

1. I hesitate to call the dark striations seen in the tani of the gunome hamon ‘sunagashi’, as the particles are only just visible to the naked eye and black.  They are probably darkened steel at the interfaces of the layers in the masame.  Hakikake (sweeping) seems a better description, but nearly all the books that I have only describe hakikake in relation to the boshi.  Nagayama also describes hakikake as a feature on the main part of the blade, but his pictures show this to be on the ji side of the hamon (The Connoisseur’s Book of Japanese Swords, p 100 &118).  So what are they called?
2. The nioi hamon contains the same type of ‘nie’ spikes seen in my Seki Sukemitsu blade (see Sukemitsu post), but this time they often appear in pairs at the apex (yakigashira) of the peaks.  Again, they also appear to be open at the bottom in many cases, but this may be a result of the polishing.  The placing of these ‘nie’ spikes is deliberate, which is why I hesitate to call them nie, besides, I have no way to determine if they are the same martensitic material of true nie.  That makes three Seki blades where I have seen this type of nie.  Is this a feature of the Seki arsenal forge and is there a special term to describe these?
3. Although the gunome hamon is fairly regular, on one side the swordsmith has created a single peak which extends beyond the shinogi.  Quite an attractive show of exuberance.  A similar peak appears on the other side, but not so large, remaining below the shinogi.  Inside this peak is a large ‘nie’, a bright tempered area about 4 mm in diameter.  Seems a bit big even for ara nie!  Nagayama defines mura (“uneven”) nie as ‘an irregular particle much larger than other nie, which partially intrudes upon the hamon’.  Is that what this should be called, because it sure is ‘much larger than other nie’?  Similar, but much smaller ‘nie’ particles (1-2 mm) can be seen inside the yakigashira of the larger peaks in the hamon on my Sukemitsu blade (see other post).

I have other swords where I’m happy identifying nie, nioi, sunagashi, inazuma, tobiyaki, mune aki, etc, but I find the exact terminology to describe the metallurgy in these two gendaito a problem.  Amazing how after all these years that naming of features in an inhomogeneous piece of steel can still present challenges.

[paulb]

[ohn

Unless iam missing something I am not seeing nie in these blades. The dark patches you identify look more indicative of oil quenching than the steel composition. You say you are happy identifying features in other blades but are struggling with these, I think that is because what you are seeing is something totally different. Without wishing to tell you things you already know I have attached three images of a koto blade that clearly show nie within the hamon and sunagashi. This is very different to the things you are pointing to on the showa blades.

 

[Jean]

John,

 

Have a look at the Hosho/Tegai blade pictures in this thread. Look at the hada, the hamon and the nioiguchi, same for the Naoe Shizu. Nothing to do with your pictures. You will see chikei, nie, nioi....

 

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/17414-achieved-collection-gokaden/page-1

[raaay]

hi John

 

Sorry for what it is worth, it looks like IMHO , an acid / lemon juice polish on an oil tempered Showato blade, but obviously I could

well of the mark.

[paulb]

I think you are right Ray the dark line under the very white hamon suggests acid to me too.

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello,

 

Have to agree with Paul and Ray, I see no nie on either swords you've posted, nor water quenched clear nioi here on this sword, almost certainly looks to be oil quenched. Sorry, I'm sure this is not what you were hoping to hear, can only go by what is and is not seen.

 

 

[JohnTo]

I’m rather disappointed with the level of comments posted so far, which seem to regard any non-Yasukuni gendaito as a piece of old iron from the railway in Manchuria that has been oil quenched and acid etched.  I think that I made it clear from the outset of this posting that the Yoshimichi blade was a Seki arsenal gendaito and not a blade worthy of Juyo rating.  If you read carefully I said that the ‘nie’ and ‘sunagashi’ were not the classical type found in older blades.  I was hoping for some scholarly information that might spread some light on the correct terms to use with arsenal blades and how they achieved the effects seen in the hamon of this blade.  Books like Fuller and Gregory’s ‘Military Swords of Japan 1868-1945’ deal mainly with the koshirai and markings found on gendaito.  Kishida’s ‘The Yasukuni Swords’ deal with blades made in the traditional way.  Kapp and Yoshihara’s ‘Modern Japanese Swords and Swordsmiths’ is the only book I have seen with detailed description of the practices in the Seki workshops.  They maintain that although the majority of blades were made from ‘railway lines’, or namban tetsu as it was called in Shinto times, they were forged and water quenched.  Many people do not regard blades made with anything other than tamahagane as real Nihonto, so if anyone out there has a worthless Yasutsugu made with namban testsu, preferably with a Juyo Bunkazai rating, I’ll be pleased to buy it from them, but at a greatly reduced price!

There seems to be little detailed information regarding the manufacture and features found in arsenal gendaito.  This is a shame as these blades are now being sold for upwards of £1000 and many Notice Board readers will never be able to aspire to owning anything other than gendaito due to financial constraints.

My own guess is that a range of forging techniques were used in gendaito, ranging from the Yasukuni shrine blades down to the machine made blades with serial numbers stamped on them.  I expect that all the smiths that worked in these forges are now dead, but hopefully someone (at the NBTHK) recorded their experiences before they died and will someday, soon, publish a book.  Many gendaito are signed and I find it difficult to believe that a Japanese craftsman would bother to sign his work if he regarded it as a piece of junk.  Is their work really inferior to many of the swords (mainly mumei) produced during the late Koto period (civil war) or late Shinto (low demand and poverty) when conditions were not favourable to the production of fine blades?  Understandably, many Japanese would like to forget their recent military past, plus, I believe, swords from that era are still banned in Japan.  Therefore, a Japanese collector is likely to see more Koto blades than gendaito, the reverse of what we see in the west.

As for my Yoshimichi, I believe that it a folded piece of railway line (fine masame hada) which was water quenched to produce a nioi based hamon.  There are bright flashes which look like nie, but as I said originally, they are outside the normal range of what nie looks like.  Surely the Japanese must have a name for them.  I have reposted the photo of these as I posted the original one without a legend pointing out the ‘nie’.

Paul, yes, I do know what ‘real’ nie, sunagashi, inazuma etc look like.  To illustrate this I attach a couple of photos of blades in my small collection.

The first is a modern blade, dated 1980 and inscribed ‘ustsushi Kiyomaro, Minamoto Moriyoshi’.  Without a shinsa I would not claim it to be by the mukansa smith Tanigawa Moriyoshi (1920-1990), it might be a copy of a Moriyoshi copying a Kiyomaro copying a 14thC sword, but it is typical of his style, a large Nambokucho style piece.  It has sunagashi and more inazuma/kinsugi flashes than a thunder storm in summer.  I had the pleasure in examining the Kiyomaro (Masayuki) of Field Marshal Festing when it came up for sale in 1993, the inazuma on his blade almost had thunder as well as lightning, this blade is quieter interpretation of Kiyomaro’s work.

The second blade has been shortened but has a NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho attribution to Midzuta Kunishige.  It is crammed with nie based activity, including long patches of sunagashi along the length of the blade which ends up as a kaen boshi.

 

All the best, John

[CSM101]

Dear Admins,

 

if I violate any copyrights, then please delete this post.

 

But here is the famous photo from Fujishiro-san explaining Nie and Nioi. The text is in german. But I think it is selfexplaining.

 

 

Uwe G.

[nagamaki - Franco]

John,

 

In regard to disappointment where nihonto are concerned, it's just when you begin to think that you're finally beginning to understand something, that you find out just how little you know. While you seem to be well read and versed in nihonto recent history and vocabulary, based upon these images with labels you are presenting here, it appears that your practical knowledge does not match your book knowledge. In the first image labeled "sunagashi Kunishige," that may be sunagashi to you, but to me, imho, that is nothing more than tired steel in the jigane, not even in the hamon. As for your 2nd image, again, I'm not seeing what you are describing as inazuma and sunagashi. Nie spikes in the 3rd image, really? Hmm, I'm not even seeing nie, let alone what might be described as nie spikes!

Sorry, you can talk all you want about old classical nie and sunagashi, but you cannot redefine what nie and sunagashi are in order to fit your swords. 

 

 

 

SUNAGASHI - Activity in hamon like brushed sand. http://www.shibuiswords.com/glossary.htm

 

 

http://www.shibuiswords.com/hataraki.htm

[Dave R]

John To, the problem is that you are posting in the wrong area of the forum. I would suggest moving to the Military sword part of the forum, where there is more interest in Seki blades.

[David Flynn]

John, my humble opionion, unfortunately concurs with above.  I would consider this an above average showa to.  As to prejudace against Seki swords, well I am not.  I own five Seki Gendai blades ( Jumyo, Kanenobu, Kaneshige, Kanetoki and Kanetsune).   I personally believe that good Seki Gendai will match with any others.  There is another telling factor in your sword, the lack of Jihada.  Although many wartime polishes will not bring this out, I have spoken to a very talented Japanese trained polisher, who (Hon'ami School) was taught to bring Jihada out on blades.  In fact most Muji is very tight Itame and hard to discern unless brought out by the pollisher. Saying that, I believe your Jihada to be homogenous also indicative of a showato.

[GregD]

Oil quenched Showato.

[paul griff]

Hello,

Very interesting lessons from this post...I struggled with identifying blade construction when I started collecting despite buying many books....Thank you..

Regards,

Paul.