an interesting China made katana

[Guest pleasemx]

Hello everyone,

I have recently found these photos of a China made katana.

I'm a little shameful that I couldn't discriminate it and those "authentic" Japanese swords I had seen ( I had some suspicion on its jigane).

I just wonder your methods of distinction.

Thank you!

 

[Brian]

Moved to General Discussion as it is not Nihonto.

What does the nakago look like?

If you take good iron, and have the time and resources to forge and temper it properly, then you are going to get an item that isn't bad..and in the style of a Japanese sword. But it will never be a Nihonto because it is not made there, from tamahagane. Similar to some of the custom sword makers. Even Paul Chen claims to have a tamahagane range. But they are expensive custom swords, that are not the same as the cheap Chinese junk. And yes..they may get close to looking like a Japanese sword, but aren't. The aim of junk swords is to make money as fast as possible. The time, effort and knowledge involved in the better forged blades hopfully puts them somewhere else. But we have to keep vigilant of course. Buyer beware and all that.

 

Brian

[Bungo]

looks better than my Bungo...........

 

milt

[Guest reinhard]

Thanks Brian, this is about all there is to say, as far as this particular sword is concerned.

 

Milt, I wonder , if you've ever really appreciated your "Bungo" (whatever it is), for some of them are really good.

 

Anyway, instead of giving some more clues to Chinese copying industry, I would like to know from the members of this board: What comes to your mind, when looking at the hada of this blade (time,school) and what's wrong with it (from a "Nihon-To point of view")? I don't intend to "enlighten" anybody (or worse: any fakers). I just want to start a discussion about "Hada" and we will end up with the question: "What makes a Nihon-To ?". - Needless to say, that our friend "pleasemx" is starting to make me sick with his efforts to make some money at the expense of other people's serious enthusiasm.

 

reinhard

[Bungo]

" Milt, I wonder , if you've ever really appreciated your "Bungo" (whatever it is), for some of them are really good "

 

Meinen dear " O couple/partner ", that statement of mine was meant as a joke.

How often you see yo, nazumi ashi , utsuri in a sword with gunome choji hamon ? Like I say, a poor man's Bizen . That brings me to another pet gripe. In O-suriage sword, the shinsa can pin point to specific Bungo smith's style/school, yet in tsuba and such, if mumei, they call it kyo kinko, Mito kinko.

Those shinsa experts must be a bunch of Bungo swords experts, LOL, studied the school in depth !!

 

Milt

[Guest pleasemx]

Hi reinhard,

 

I didn't mean to buy or sell that fake sword to make money.

I just posted it here as a warning to novices like me who can easily be deceived if someone is selling swords like that under the name of 'nihonto'.

And I intent to study more by konwing how to discriminate fakes.

[Brian]

I want to use paintings as an analogy here to better illustrate the problem.

You might have a very good artist that is able to copy an old master very well, to the point that only an expert can identify it as a copy. In this case, the best way to spot it ourselves is to become and expert ourselves. This just means that we have to keep studying, and the more we learn, the better we will be able to avoid these fakes. None of us will call ourselves an expert, but you get the idea. Learn more, and you will not fall into these pitfalls.

The other thing, is that you don't study all the good copyist artists to try and identify their work and hence the fakes. You study the best paintings, and the copies will become apparent.

Hence, don't try and study fakes so that you can identify them. Study the best swords you can, and the fakes will identify themselves.

Not saying it is easy sometimes, as in this case. But when spending a lot of money, just follow the advice of buying from reputatable dealers and sellers, and you will be fine. If you are spending a lot of money with a source that is unknown, without proper validation, then you take your chances.

And if it isn't a lot of money and worth taking a chance? Well...then you didn't lose too much if it was a fake. If the sword here was $100, you wouldn't lose too much. If it is $2500 or more...then refer to the advice about dealers and backups like papers/origin etc.

 

Thanks about all I can offer.

 

Brian

[Jacques D.]

Hi,

 

Have you thought it can be a real nihonto just bought to serve as a bait?

[dkirkpatrick]

I agree with Jacque's suspicion, the hamon shows what might be decent hataraki and the overall geometry just looks too good to be true to my eyes. I would very much like to see more pics to include the nakago. From what I understand, it takes 5 years to get a forging license so figure maybe half of that to be able to produce something "resembling" a real nihonto. Still, rather than shinsaku-to this would still be more something on the order of a Rick Barrett piece perhaps, quality but without the cultural roots. Again, not disparaging Mr. Baretts's work in the slightest as it appears to be quite nice and I certainly will claim great ignorance to his training and forging methods.

Again though, there is something about this that looks "authentic" if you will and I think Jacque might be on to something, a little "salting of the mine" to use an American expression.

[Brian]

I had considered that, but not being able to read the Chinese, I assumed it clarified the situation and maybe proved the opposite. But it is always a possibility not knowing any background on it.

Might be a high level smithy doing better work at high prices..who knows?

Someone must be able to read it and post what the price is, and find a nakago pic.

Not that it matters, none of us would buy from China and it isn't really relevant except to theorise a bit. Either wway, we all agree you are not getting a Nihonto

 

Brian

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

See

 

http://forums.swordforum.com/showpost.p ... stcount=18

 

from

 

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread ... inabbz.com

 

and

 

http://forums.swordforum.com/showpost.p ... ostcount=2

 

from

 

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread ... inabbz.com

[Brian]

Thanks Carlo, that does clarify it a lot. I assume this is the same maker and some of his work on a Chinese bulletin board?

These cost a few thousand dollars each, and would fit into the class of modern custom swords for collectors of those things.

 

Brian

[Guest reinhard]

What I'm up to is: The sword looks nice at first sight. Some effort was put into it and there are no obvious mistakes. My compliments to the Chef. If this sword is declared as what it is, namely a contemporary attempt of a self-taught smith to reproduce a Japanese sword, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, except placing it on a forum dedicated to discuss "NihonTo"; but if the NMB starts to include all attempts of reproducing NihonTo into its discussion, it will end up in total confusion. - Money is always tempting and we will see swords like this one in the near future with altered tangs, pretending to be NihonTo.

What looks like Hada is carefully forged steel, but when you start trying to attach it to a school/style, the road ends. Instead you will notice wavy layers of welded steel running lengthwise.

Brian gave you the key for understanding NihonTo: Look at and study the originals (the best you can find) and you will see the difference.

 

reinhard

 

P.S.: I wonder what the pro-smiths can tell about this sword.

[Stephen]

Im in line with Reinhard this thread need to be sent to whence it came the Sword form....after all its not Nihonto

 

or better yet to the great trashbin in the sky.

[John A Stuart]

I agree, unless as a warning of what to look out for these replicas should be given the sweep. Question though; what category are swords made by contemporary smiths outside of Japan to fit in? Replicas? Unless tamagahane? Or should they be discussed at all? I think we should only include swords made in Japan by recognised smiths made of tamagahane in the traditional fashion even excluding machine made gunto. Pure Nihonto. But, that's me, what do you think Brian and Stephen?John

[Brian]

Have no fear, we won't be making a habit of discussing these. This one example was a good representation of what to look out for, and the growing popularity of this style. We won't be going into manufacturign techniques or the benefits/disadvantages. It was interesting to come to a conclusion of what it was and where it came for. It belongs with other modern custom swords, and as such I think the topic is done for, and we won't be analysing it

I'll leave it up for a few days so that everyone who wanted to know what it was has seen it, and then remove it. We won't be visiting this topic again, back to genuine Nihon-to.

Gunto are tricky, as we come across so many that need to be positively identified, and there are so many manufacturing techniques that blur the lines between traditional and machine made. Emura used a power hammer. Murato? Koa-Isshin? Not easy to always come to a fast conclusion. So their discussion will be limited to identifying them, maybe showign who the maker was. Not much further than that. Some of us trade them to buy better swords. Many of the Gunto mounts contain old blades. So that is too tricky to ban outright here. I don't think we have a problem with too much discussion on them, it's not like the forum is flooded with them

We won't be having lengthy discussions on them once they are conclusively identified though.

 

A happy medium? I hope so.

 

Brian

[IanB]

All, A few years ago a gentleman in the UK sent me some photographs in an email about a couple of swords he had bought from a friend in Northern China and asked for my comments. One showed the side of a saya with embossed plaques showing samurai galloping around on horseback and similar scenes. The overall shots were of a pair of tachi with the usual, if somewhat over-done mounts and applied ornaments along the saya. One had the hilt covered in metal plates, the other same with applied ornaments. I replied to the effect that they seemed as far as I could judge from the pictures rather elaborate Chinese copies of tachi. He was however persistant and sent more photos. One of which showed an ashi which far from being crude was superbly chiselled in silver, of a mass of sakura, with the stamens in gold. A careful look showed that all the conventional mounts were en-suite, silver sakura with gold details. Intrigued, I asked about the blades and was sent two large photos of each sword with close-ups. Both had blades signed 'Sa Yukihide saku kore', one dated 1853 and the other 1857. Neither tang showed much patination and the two signatures were by different hands but reasonably cut with sujikai yasuri. The nakago-jiri in both cases was kiri. One blade had a dragon horimono on the omote with a prunus branch on the ura whilst the other had prunus on the omote and bamboo on the ura. Again, in both cases nicely done.

 

So what he had were two court-tachi style swords, one with the hilt and saya covered with not very nice metal plaques (apparently copper) and the other covered in same, both with matching mounts of high quality, but with rather unpleasant 'samurai theme' ornaments and a pair of interesting but almost certainly fake Yukihide blades. Further enquiries revealed that the guy he had obtained the swords from told him they had been hidden by his family during the Cultural Revolution and only brought to light now that things have relaxed. My gut reation is that they might be relics from the Manchuko court that were supplied in the early Showa period. Since I have not permission to publish the pictures, I hope you will forgive me in not doing so.

Ian Bottomley