Kantei By Photo - April

[CSM101]

Dear members,

 

it´s Aprils Fool´s Day and I found a sword right for this moment.

 

 

Osuriage mumei, nagasa 57,2 cm,   motohaba 25,5 mm,   sakihaba 17,0 mm   and sori 13 mm.

There is a kinzogan mei.

 

Please compare both sides hamon and boshi.

 

I´ll give the answer on Wednesday.

 

 

Uwe G.

[CSM101]

More photos.

 

 

Uwe G.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Quite frankly the blade looks like something in the Horikawa group, rather like Kunimichi, but the kinzogan mei probably wouldn't fit.

 Perhaps Late Nanbokucho Shidzu???

 Arnold F.

[CSM101]

Both sides as a download:

 

http://daten-transport.de/?id=N69VRgD8ExA6 

 

Uwe G.

[SAS]

Made last week by a Chinese man from Suzhou who had garlic chicken for lunch.............and made 2 different hamon and boshi, one for each side.

[Alex A]

April fools day hey? , O-suriage and the hamon clearly ends at the Hamachi??, Nakago patina appears strange in first pic, unusual jigane/hamon?

 

Re-hardened is my first thought, please tell me I'm wrong and I will look further into this school   

[CSM101]

Nambokucho is already a good call. And not rehardened.

 

BTW. I think my camera would commit suicide if I wanted to make photos of china crap.

 

 

Uwe G.

[BIG]

Senjuin school...

[Alex A]

And not rehardened.

 

 

 

 

Uwe G.

 

I see, meticulous job at removing the hamon, I will give it more thought, thanks

[Jussi Ekholm]

Can't get the both sides file downloaded. This is too difficult one for me to guess but here goes.

 

Late Nanbokuchō to Early Muromachi - Hokkoku-mono - Uda school - Kunimune

[Alex A]

Tricky, files wont download for me either.

 

Going with Mino, leaning towards smiths of the O-Shizu, as I see a Soshu influence.

 

Now where does Aprils fool day come into it?  

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

O-suriage and the hamon clearly ends at the Hamachi?

Guess a small part of the ha (the one that usually flattens) was wiped out wit nagako reshaping after the Osuriage. She surely stopped before original hamachi anyway that fits with a Nanbokucho uchigatana/kodachi.   Scratching my head...

[Mark]

late nanbokucho SoShu maybe Masahiro

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

正広, ? Quite rare, this would explain the kinzogan. Not sure there are signed examples of katana lenght.

[CSM101]

Gentlemen,

 

Put down your pens, time is up and here is the correct answer. And the correct answer is: there is no correct answer!

 

Before I come to that, I want to thank the owner of this sword for letting me take photos for over a week. :bowdown:

 

And now let me explain. Nambokucho and Soshu is clear and most of you recognized it. And at this time we have Soshu Hiromitsu and Soshu Akihiro. They almost did the same and it is very hard to distinguish between them.  I can´t remeber where I read or heard it but when you have a different boshi and hamon you can say it´s Soshu Akihiro.  And so this is what it says with the kinzogan mei and the papers from the NTHK: Soshu Akihiro.

 

But! And this is where the April Fools´ Day kicks in, the blade is also accompanied with papers from Fujishiro-san saying that this sword was made by Yamashiro Nobukuni.  And who wants to stand up and argue against Fujishiro-san?  Not me, that´s for sure. So, you have two opinions and now you can decide which one you prefer.

 

In the end it is what Darcy always writes: as long as you don´t have a time machine you can never be sure for 100 percent. (I´d prefer The Time Tunnel.  Worm Hole related and so it needs less energy.) And that´s why I picked this sword to make this point a little bit more understandable.  

 

For a better understanding of Nobukuni and the change from Yamashiro to Soshu I recommend two articles by Markus Sesko, who was very helpful (as always) in the beginning:

 

https://markussesko.com/2016/05/30/kantei-4-yamashiro-26-nobukuni-%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BD-school-1/

 

and

 

https://markussesko.com/2017/03/17/kantei-4-yamashiro-27-nobukuni-%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BD-school-2/

 

 

But now the results: Masahiro as a later generation Akihiro is very good. Late Nambokucho and Shizu is good, because time and tradition are correct. But Shizu is not that irregular.

 

Senjuin. Well, I haven´t seen many and those I remember were suguha. There was for example a very beautiful tachi in the A.Z. Freeman collection.

 

Uda Kunimune = I can still hear M. Hagenbusch:  “When somethings looks like Soshu that isn´t Soshu it`s most likely Uda.” Means: Uda lacks in quality.

 

And last but not least: “Made last week by a Chinese man from Suzhou”. That was very funny. Really.   

And at least you got the gender right.

 

Thank you all for giving their statements. You know, you can only learn by making mistakes. Photo will come in the evening.

 

 

Uwe G.

 

 

To be continued….

[CSM101]

The photo.

 

 

And the download: http://daten-transport.de/?id=JdKtSKaeCfrg

 

Uwe G.

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Thanks for the exercise, Uwe .  

[Jussi Ekholm]

Thanks for posting this Uwe this was really fun one to try. Sword was very interesting.