Earlier blade in army mounts. What do I have?

[Harvey]

Hello again to this Forum,

 

Please forgive my lack of proper terminology. I have run across another unmarked sword that I believe to be smith-made. This one is about 25.5" long. The temper line appears to be straight but it has a dark wavy design near the edge. Could that have been someone's attempt to 'create' a temper line with some chemical? I thought the temper lines were always white. There are about 3 nicks to the edge and a couple of small spots where it looks like it has worn through the outer skin.

 

The mounts looks to be original but maybe not too early. There is a piece of jade set in the tsuba as well as faint traces of gold. The seller wants $1000 and I figured that, given the condition, that is about $400 too much.

 

Please tell me your thoughts on the sword and what should be paid for it.

 

Thanks,

 

Harvey

[Harvey]

more

[Harvey]

and more

[Guest nickn]

the hamon has been painted on with acid and i think the jade you refer to is the shakudo plug in the tsuba. can you see the genuine hamon?

[Guest reinhard]

A fake of the poorest kind (blade and koshirae). Sometimes I'm tempted to sue certain sellers for smart-money; just for the pain I suffer when looking at their products.

 

reinhard

[drbvac]

I figure the price is probably $950.00 too high. That said several years ago in the rush to get into these I may have looked at this and thought ?? If you look and read as much as you can eventually you can see and a couple of hundred spent on books before a couple of thousand on a blade is money well spent

[Harvey]

I can see the blade being a fake, and believe you on the rest being bad too, but the aging on the tsuba, seppa, etc.. is really good in my opinion. I don't know Japanese swords but I thought I had some expertise detecting faked aging.

 

Thanks for the information; obviously I'll pass on the sword.

 

Harvey

[Guest Simon Rowson]

Just because something's in crap condition and has been badly messed about with doesn't necessarily mean it's a fake.

The habaki looks silver-foiled and the tsuba plug shakudo - something I've never seen on Chinese fakes. Also the menuki and tsuba , although in awful condition, don't scream "fake".

Lastly, even the small details like the well cut seppa, correctly-seamed same and neat opposing tsuka-ito twists all suggest at least an original koshirae to me.

 

Obviously, the blade has had a lemon-juice sambon-sugi applied by Stevie Wonder at some point and the nakago looks highly suspect but I honestly don't think that this is a "A fake of the poorest kind (blade and koshirae)" as Reinhard does.

[Harvey]

The habaki does indeed have silver clad over copper. Answering another question, the hamon can be clearly seen down the length of the blade; it is straight and can be seen in the 3rd photograph. Probably wouldn't look too bad had someone not put the black crap on top of it.

[Mark]

sword looks "real" and handmade to me. It certainly has been messed with. It could be retempered and have a weak temper so someone added the "chemical" temper to hide that.

[zuiho]

Hi,

Looks to me like a late shinshinto katana of no great quality that has lost its polish, been steel-wooled and in general mightily screwed with

by someone's Uncle Carl in his garage to make an extra 100 bucks off some sucker when it came time to sell this genu-whine mossey- mooney.

You can see loose hada in some of the pictures. It is a true nihonto

pressed into service for the Imperial Army. I think you can compare it to the quality of Satsuma rebelllion blades.

If purchased, it would have to be polished.

At the end it would cost plenty of money and still not satisfy , aesthetically or financially.

 

William G.

[Jean]

Simon has written

The habaki looks silver-foiled and the tsuba plug shakudo - something I've never seen on Chinese fakes. Also the menuki and tsuba , although in awful condition, don't scream "fake".

Lastly, even the small details like the well cut seppa, correctly-seamed same and neat opposing tsuka-ito twists all suggest at least an original koshirae to me.

 

Totally agreed Simon, even if the saya seems quite new.

[Brian]

Not a fake imho. Agree with most. Badly acid treated, and bad chips. Genuine mounts and went to war in them. I have my doubts about it being restorable, and I wouldn't spend that money on it. I would think that acid treatment follows the real temper line maybe, but either way it is too much of a gamble, nothing there really worth taking a chance at.

Would be interested in knowing what makes it look like a fake? Condition aside, it has hada and all the rest is consistent with a low quality piece.

 

Brian

[Jean]

Brian wrote

 

Would be interested in knowing what makes it look like a fake? Condition aside, it has hada and all the rest is consistent with a low quality piece.

 

No yokote, no kaeri, too regular hamon (from pictures)

[Brian]

No yokote due to amateur polish (we see this often?) and hamon could look less regular if it had a proper polish, plus not impossible to have this hamon? Kaeri due to bad acid work or yakizume?

Either way, this is the not really worth debating too much as that acid etch is terrible anyways :D

 

Brian

[pcfarrar]

What your seeing isn't the hamon. If you look at the pictures closely you can see the true hamon above the etched one.

[Brian]

That looked like the remnants of a hadori finish to me, over the acid etched line.

 

Brian

[IanB]

I have to agree with Peter, the real hamon is clearly visible above the acid etch. The tsuba is real, the menuki look nice enough (of shakudo with touches of gilding) the binding is real and so is the same. The way the muck and dust has accumulated around the menuki and the build up of verdigris on the tsuba and seppa are just right and virtually imossible to fake. As for the yokote, its largely an optical effect anyway and once the polish has gone can soon be blurred. What I am seeing is a perfectly genuine sword with a blade that some idiot has scrubbed up with wire-wool and etched a false hamon on. I would get the black deposit from the etching off straight away to make sure it doesn't do any more damage. In the UK we have an impregnated wadding metal cleaner called Duraglit which will do the job and is mild enough to not harm the blade.

 

Ian Bottomley

[Guest Nanshoku-Samurai]

Not a fake. Just mistreated and of poor quality anyway. Noth worth $1000.00. More like $600 - $700.00 on eBay. However I would still not recommend buying it unless for Iai Do or Polishing attemps.

[Guido]

As for the yokote, its largely an optical effect anyway ...

Sorry for being so blunt, but this is simply not true, and shows a significant lack of understanding of the construction of the Japanese sword. It is a well defined ridge put there by the smith, and further enhanced by the polisher. Simply put, it's a change in geometry, and the lack of it shows a general lack of the talent of the smith and/or polisher. Yes, some very old (like Kamakura), many times polished swords have lost the Yokote to a certain degree, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there to begin with.

 

It really beats me why the myth of the Yokote being mostly cosmetical still stays around. Looking at (quality) Nohontô with an open eye should disperse of this nonsense in no time.

 

Again, sorry if my post sounded offensive, but there really should be an end to this "urban legend".

[Guest Simon Rowson]

Yo Guido,

You know I love and respect you but I have to say that I've seen a few Shin-Shinto and lots of Showa period gendaito (including my own beloved Yasukunito) that haven't got a yokote worth mentioning beyond what the togishi put there.

 

Really sorry, but I don't think that it's an "urban legend"

 

Simon

[IanB]

Guido,

I did not say the yokote was not a ridge, of course it is, but the sharp line you see with a well polished sword is caused to a large extent, by the striations from the polishing stones meeting at right angles - hence my comment about it being an optical effect. The loss of the polish through abrasion also rounds the ridge and it loses its definition. This is what I think has happened here. Unlike the shinogi, the yokote is a much more shallow angle which when rounded makes its original position rather indefinite except by reference to the junction of the shinogi and ko-shinogi.

 

Ian Bottomley

[remzy]

I think i can see a suguha hamon under the black stuff on some of the pictures.

[Guest reinhard]

1) Hada-looking structures are NO proof for Nihon-To. They are visible on every forged blade composed of at least two different kinds of steel

2) There is no hidden or obscured Hamon beyond the etched-one, telling from the pics here. This is wishful thinking. (I've got a high-res screen)

3) Have a look at the tsuba. Does it look like anything genuine you've ever seen? If yes, which one?

4) What about the menuki and its strange punchmarks?

5) The habaki does not fit the cross-section of the blade properly (maybe taken from somewhere else) and its "cat-scratched" marks are of the poorest kind. It shows the marks of a pincer used to make it fit (see added pic)

6) Show us both sides of the nakago without the habaki, please.

 

It is stunning to see, how much energy and time is used to discuss swords like this, obviously with the preconceived idea of making a discovery; while others, much more worthwhile, remain more or less neglected.

 

reinhard

[Guido]

I stand by what I said above: a *properly* forged and *properly* polished Shinogi-zukuri sword has a distinctive, physical Yokote. It might get "lost" to a certain degree after repeated polishes, but it's always there in the beginning. We shouldn't waste our time studying mass produced swords of the Bakumatsu, and especially ShÅwa, periods - there's nothing to be learned from them if our goal is appreciation of true NihontÅ. During times of high demand corners were often cut (pun intended), and those kind of low grade swords are of no use in serving as examples.

 

Anyhow, I made similar remarks on another forum not very long ago, until Keith Larman stepped in and explained things much more eloquently than I ever could:

On a shinogi zukuri blade *brand new from the smith* the degree of crispness and definition of the yokote depends completely on how far the smith takes it. I've got two unpolished blades by Komiya smiths in my safe right now with somewhat indistinct shaping in the area. But this makes perfect sense as the edge hasn't been totally cut in yet nor have things been properly formed. If polished correctly there will be a transitional line from the blade of the body at the yokote where the kissaki forms.

 

I have another Komiya blade that was started by one of the Fujishiro's as part of a polishing demonstration. The kissaki is clearly delineated in the foundation work. It is visible and physically there (you can feel it). It needs more "crispness" as the foundation work wasn't fully completed. But on that blade there is no doubt where the yokote is. I couldn't just "cosmetically" place it anywhere else. It *must* go there. Not just because the placement of the mitsukado is obvious but because the goemetry underneath is already mostly there.

 

And let me say out of a lot of years of experience that it can be *very* difficult to see the physical yokote in a blade as you are doing foundation work. The scratches from the stones make it very difficult to "see through them" to see the geometry underneath. And if the blade is at a place in polishing (binsui, for instance (at least in some schools)) the direction of the polishing of the body of the blade is the same as the direction of the kissaki polishing. Looking straight at the blade and you will be *really* hard pressed to see the yokote.

 

But as the blade is refined and as you sight down the blade you begin to more easily see how the light reflection on the surface "dips" once you get to the yokote. That "dip" is the change in geometry on the ji forming the yokote. And it is very real.

 

As others have said the crispness of the yokote depends on many factors. The smaller the kissaki the more acute the change can be. The longer the kissaki the more subtle it becomes. Also, if the blade has been polished many times the niku tends to go down and with a loss of material the *last* thing you want to do is grind the kissaki faces down more and more just to preserve the yokote. So the more a blade has been polished the less defined that yokote tends to get.

 

It also depends greatly on the skill of every polisher who ever worked on the blade. One that sticks in my head is a shinogi zukuri katana I saw years ago by Rai Kunitoshi (or was it Kunimitsu? - no matter). The yokote was crisp and clear. The blade was remarkably healthy and since the blade had been so well cared for the kissaki was still super crisp with a really gorgeous yokote. Of course it had also been repolished by the elder Fujishiro. Gorgeous work. And the Heian inspired tachi by Ono Yoshimitsu we used to have up on Moderntosho.com also was incredibly crisp and well defined. Ono was going for a replicating a blade from 1000 years ago but done as if it was made yesterday. So bright, vivid, healthy and crisp. The yokote was like a laser cut. Crisp and clean. Beautiful work. Also work by Fujishiro.

 

But lots of older blades no longer have yokote. This is due to age, neglect, and quality of polish. And once that yokote is gone a polisher *can* reinstall it. But if the blade is older and has seen that many polishes the question becomes whether the togishi *should* cut away sufficient material to redefine it. Often the answer is no.

 

The final stages of polishing include establishing the yokote. Yes, a mask of a strip of bamboo is used to cosmetically whiten the kissaki (narume). This mask will either create the illusion of a yokote existing where it has long been stripped off. Or it will be lined up exactly at the physical yokote to help set it off even more. If the yokote is there once shiage begins the polisher no longer has any choice where it is going to be placed during shiage.

And in another post:

The yokote exists when a blade is healthy and polished correctly, precisely and accurately to get that particular shape. In polishing a shinogi zukuri we want the blade to be healthy and robust all the way up towards the kissaki so we have a robust monouchi. Then where the kissaki starts we want a strong, supported in all directions, tough tip that can both slash and thrust. If it is done cleanly, precisely and with tremendous care there will be a transition "line" between the two. That is the yokote. The yokote is a "side-effect" of the geometry of the blade. Thinking it has a "purpose" in and of itself misses the larger picture. It is there because it *should* form if everything else is done correctly. Over time it will be one of the first things to slowly lose definition. And there are many factors which affect how pronounced it is (length of kissaki, thickness of blade, degree of niku and placement, number of polishes, etc.).

[Harvey]

Reinhard,

 

Sorry, but I haven't purchased the sword and don't have immediate access to it. I tried to remove the habaki when I took these photos, but it was too tight to remove without the use of tools. By the comments received I'm not going to buy the sword and therefore don't wish to ask the seller to dis-assemble it.

 

My photos are very poor but when seen first-hand there is without doubt a straight Hamon on the sword and someone crapped it up with the chemical treatment. The third photo I posted shows it best, but it extends down the full length of the blade.

 

You're certainly right about there being a lot of discussion here over a poor sword; but I'm very glad for all of your opinions.

 

Harvey

[Brian]

Thanks Guido and Keith, I think that is the definitive article on yokote.

I don't enjoy discussing swords like this..as there is little to be learned about good swords, but as long as there is still debate whether they are fakes or not, I think we need to come to a conclusion for the benefit of those that come across them. Once identified, we can move on, no need to further discuss the merits..just the identification.

 

Brian

[Darcy]

The hamon people are referring to is visible on one of the pictures, there is a clearly whitened area which may just be hadori. That is there. What is under the whitening needs to be seen with the eye. I don't see any nie or anything like that, just referring to the fact that there is some structure there before Picasso got to it with his brush of whatever.

 

The rest of it does not strike me as fitting in with any of the types of Chinese fakes we've seen, which can be grouped into series.

 

I think it is a Japanese sword.

 

Yokote stuff: maybe deserves its own thread?

[Guest reinhard]

" ..., there is a clearly whitened area which may just be hadori. That is there...."

 

This is just a different kind of scratch-marks. Everybody who ever polished any kind of steel with sand-paper or steel-wool knows this effect.

 

"The rest of it does not strike me as fitting in with any of the types of Chinese fakes we've seen..."

 

The word "Chinese" has not been mentioned yet. When saying fake, I meant:

What we can safely say is: There is a sword with the proportions of a Katana in horrible condition. It might has structures showing on the steel surface, though we can't safely tell of what nature they are. There is no true Hamon visible (including nioi-guchi), but an etched or otherwise drawn line, that looks like one. The koshirae is an assembly of pieces chosen lately without connection to each other and of poor quality. Some of them definitely not made for this blade and some of them of doubtful origin/craftsmanship.

 

"I think it is a Japanese sword."

 

Even if all pieces turned out to be of Japanese origin, it still would be a fake, meaning: far from being a Nihon-To in the true sense of the word. It still would be a devastated left-over of a katana, pretending to be just neglected or mistreated, with a koshirae made of disconnected components.

 

To me it looks like a dead beggar's body in clothes from the salvation-army and a shield hanging around his neck, saying: "I'm not dead yet"

 

reinhard

[Harvey]

To me it looks like a dead beggar's body in clothes from the salvation-army and a shield hanging around his neck, saying: "I'm not dead yet"

 

 

So....I take it you don't care for the sword?