Juyo Koshirae

[Fred Geyer]

Has any one ever counted the number of juyo 

 

1) Koshirae

2) Tsuba

3) Kozuka

 

you get the point , it was very interesting how LOW the total number of tokubetsu juyo tosogu are out there only 130 total items  but to the relationship to how many Juyo are there ?? I am sure one of our members know this answer to this question. looking forward to seeing these numbers 

 

Fred Geyer 

 

[Peter Bleed]

This is an interesting issue. It truly does appears that blades are more "important" than fittings. Now maybe that is fair - soul of the samurai and all that.. But I think it may also be that it is harder for the current crop of experts to pull really outstanding koshirae in to focus. Maybe "we" don't quite understand what matters and what "we" want to recognize as good. It may be that at this time, historical context (i.e. which Daimyo owned a koshirae) matters more than intrinsic quality.

Is it too early to predict that the number of juyo koshirai will soon start to climb?

Peter

[Vermithrax16]

Fred,

 

I know it was here on NMB or on his site, but one time Darcy Brockbank shared the number counts for Juyo tosogu. I just can't seem to find it now.

[Fred Geyer]

Darcy was the man here!!

 

Koshirae 685

tsuba 786

menuki 181

F/K 99

kogai 122

kozuka 244

 

So as you can see look at the number of all these you have see on all websites for the last 10 years and shows and Ebay ...it would be tens of thousands and menuki 181 WOW and Koshirae was included with blades so just a raw koshirae would be a lot lower. So the number of swords through out the ages all took the above and only 2,117 TOTAL items can we say RARE !!!!

 

Fred Geyer  

[Vermithrax16]

Darcy was the man here!!

 

Koshirae 685

tsuba 786

menuki 181

F/K 99

kogai 122

kozuka 244

 

So as you can see look at the number of all these you have see on all websites for the last 10 years and shows and Ebay ...it would be tens of thousands and menuki 181 WOW and Koshirae was included with blades so just a raw koshirae would be a lot lower. So the number of swords through out the ages all took the above and only 2,117 TOTAL items can we say RARE !!!!

 

Fred Geyer  

That looks about the number I remember, great job finding it!

[Fred Geyer]

So with 193 countries in the world that leaves 11 for us in the USA....ok yea i know a great juyo Ichijo is the GDP of some of the 193 !!!

 

Fred Geyer    

[Guido]

... and Koshirae was included with blades so just a raw koshirae would be a lot lower.

 

Blades and koshirae are judged independently of each other, there are no "package papers" for both as a unit.

[Fred Geyer]

I will let Darcy comment on this with his research on early Juyo papers    

 

Fred   

[seattle1]

Hello:

 I have the NBTHK Juyo Index volumes published in 1999. As it is laborious to do the counting does anyone know the terminal date for the numbers given above? The foregoing mentioned is an index, not the individual year by year volumes.

 Arnold F.

[Gakusee]

Dear Guido

 

I beg to differ. If a blade is submitted with koshirae and the Juyo Zufu Nado mentions the koshirae or ensemble and documents the whole as a package then the koshirae automatically becomes Juyo koshirae.

A couple of examples are attached.

 

Best regards

Michael

[Darcy]

OK, exceptional reason to post as some of my stuff is getting dragged in here and I want to make some clarifications and explain, or try to, what is going on. I told Fred I wanted to blog the answer but he got a bit excited, now I'm drawn in here for some other things I've said, so I should clarify the situation about the sets passing Juyo.

 

The early history of it is that swords and tosogu have been treated separately. 

 

In Juyo 4 two swords were submitted together with koshirae and those got folded into the papers. As Michael showed above some koshirae have kind of an equal billing with the sword on the oshigata. Sometimes they didn't photograph the koshirae but only described them or noted them, and sometimes including signatures. I had an example where they extensively described a koshirae withe elements by Yanagawa Naomasa but did not photograph it. 

 

When I first saw these notations showing up, sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back, and they are also broken out in the Juyo paper, I asked Benson what the deal is. His words to me is that the sword and koshirae passed Juyo together. 

 

In one of these cases with a text only annotation on the koshirae, I told a dealer in Japan the koshirae were great and I was going to send them back in for their own Juyo paper. He told me this wasn't permitted, that they would be rejected and returned as already designated Juyo. 

 

That hasn't stopped it from happening though, because it's very hard to match a submitted koshirae against a text description. There are examples around then where the koshirae passed with the sword and then in later years the koshirae went back in and got its own paper.

 

In the English Token Bijutsu there is an article about koshirae going in with swords, and basically it seems to be something started by sword collectors rather than put in place by the NBTHK so it was not handled very uniformly. The statements from the NBTHK in this article were:

 

1. we want to improve internal judgment abilities on koshirae and tosogu (NBTHK being primarily devoted to swords and had outside judges frequently for tosogu)

2.  we've noticed more people sending in koshirae with their swords for Juyo consideration and we think this is a good idea, and we want to encourage it

 

If the koshirae is not significantly Juyo quality, or historically does not belong with the sword, it won't be written into the paper. 

 

So, Guido is technically correct, there is no specific paper for a Juyo set of sword and tosogu, the sword I say leads the package and then the koshirae is added, and from everything I can tell they are Juyo together. It's in the papers, it's on the setsumei, Benson told me about this in the first place and if you can't resubmit it to Juyo on the grounds it's already Juyo that means it's Juyo.

 

There is another form though, where the koshirae are significant enough to pass Juyo but the sword is not. 

 

In this case, the set can still be shown as a set but will fall into the koshirae section in the zufu. If the sword were significant it would go in as a sword with the koshirae accompanying it. In this case the sword though is most likely not considered Juyo if the koshirae are leading the set. 

 

Sometimes the sword is noted on the back of the oshigata in the setsumei but I have not gotten a look at any of these to see if the sword is noted in the papers. But again my feeling is that if the sword is Juyo strength the whole thing would go into the sword section.

 

Sometimes just the mei of the sword or the nakago is shown when the koshirae passes Juyo or Tokuju.

 

It is probably true that when they pass together there is some leverage on the koshirae provided the sword is excellent, that is, that the package of sword + koshirae with a strong Juyo sword and a koshirae that may be difficult to pass on its own, can go together on the strength of the sword. But a weak koshirae won't go in with the sword.

 

This was inconsistently handled in the early years and is a bit more consistent now, but it is still fairly loose in how it's implemented.

 

Because there are also examples where people have sent in their sword and koshirae on separate submissions in the same session. There is a Masamune and it has a Goto Ichijo koshirae, both of these passed Juyo separately in session 22 and then passed Tokuju again together but separately in Tokuju session 4. 

 

In this case the Ichijo has a notation on the front that it belongs with the Masamune from the same session. 

 

In Tokuju 23 there is a Horikawa Kunihiro that passed Tokuju and there is also an Ichijo koshirae with it, but this time on the back of the same page as the Kunihiro and would be noted into the papers.

 

I sold an Aoe once and failed to notice that the koshirae was written into the Juyo paper, because the owner had also separately gotten Tokubetsu Hozon for it. Again, that probably shouldn't happen once it's on the Juyo paper but if it's written in as text only there is no way of really figuring it out. So I just saw the Tokubetsu Hozon and described it as that. 

 

So formally, there is no category for these sets. 

 

In practice there is, and the koshirae is to be considered Juyo if written into the paper with the sword. Considering if the koshirae was junk they wouldn't do it so the koshirae is satisfying some quality and importance criteria, as well as a judgment that they belong together and it's not a mix and match special. 

 

It would be nice to formalize this further but also formalizing it means that they will be really forced to make strong judgments about whether the koshirae has been there forever and this is not always possible. 

 

By my count there are about 300 koshirae that have been written into Juyo papers accompanying swords, maybe half of these are further photographed on the front or back of the oshigata. 

 

If you have great koshirae that goes with a sword you are submitting, you should certainly send it along with the sword for Juyo consideration as a set. 

 

Some of the above determinations may also be because of how the owner submitted it. In the case of the Masamune/Ichijo clearly the owner submitted them separately. If the koshirae passes with the sword noted the owner probably submitted the koshirae and brought the sword along. 

 

In mathematics we would call something like this "ill defined". But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. 

 

I won't follow up here due to my personal no arguments policy, email me if you have questions. 

[Pete Klein]

Thanks much Darcy!

[Fred Geyer]

Yea my fault....... I acted like the teenager on his first date with the hot girl!

 

BUT it does show how rare this stuff is in the world...Thanks Darcy for the numbers!

 

That was all I was trying to get was a discussion about was the numbers and the rarity of these makers compared to swords 

 

Something new to discuss!

 

 

 

Fred Geyer 

[b.hennick]

A sword needs to pass tokubetsu hozon to go for juyo. Does the accompanying koshirae also need tokubetsu hozon papers if submitted with the sword?

[seattle1]

Hello:

 After all of the Darcy reply to a subset, I suppose, of the 2117 total number mention by Fred Geyer as having come from Darcy's count, still no information on the terminal date in the NBTHK run! It is hardly an irrelevant or argumentative issue when talking about scarcity.

 Arnold F.

[Fred Geyer]

Arnold please explain to us "terminal date"

 

 

 

Fred Geyer

[seattle1]

Hello:

 I meant what is the run of the years surveyed, the terminal one being the last one. As mentioned above the NBTHK published one summary recording set covering from the beginning of Juyo to 1999, and that I have, and perhaps they have put out another set, or not, and perhaps Darcy has just counted the yearly Indexes year by year to 2017 - I just don't know. If the statistics cover from the start to 1999 and tosogu Juyo having being issued since, that would make the numbers seem rarer than if counting were to have been continued. In any event they are all scarce for sure, but just how "scarce."

 Arnold F.

[Fred Geyer]

I maybe out of turn here but I understood this as "ALL" counted from the start to today 

 

Fred

[Jussi Ekholm]

Very nice post Darcy and thank you for posting that information.

 

I'd love to see you participate more often. I don't see reason that no arguments policy is cutting off normal forum interaction.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Thanks Fred. for if so that does help underscore the rarity of tosogu at the Juyo level since the inception of the NBTHK's Juyo designation.

 Arnold F.