Osoraku Tanto - Are They Ok?

[Peter Bleed]

                For some time, I have been meaning to ask this august forum about the standing and significance of what are called Osoraku tanto. These are shinogi-zukuri blades with a with a very long kissaki, like up to half the total nagasa. I do not remember any of these in the old days and the term only seems to appear in the polite sword literature quite recently. Ogawa doesn’t define it, for example, although it is there in Nagayama and briefly discussed by Nakahara and Sesko. There have also been some mentions of the style here in NMB. Still, I’ll say it again, although we never used to see these things, they seem to be showing up nowadays. Some clearly are new, wearing the signatures of gendai smiths. And there appear to be older blades in this style.

                An essay in the last Token Bijutsu moves me to bring my suspicions about these blades out for discussion. Are they ALL dummied up fantasies, or are only some of them?

                The piece in TKB is presented as a “Shiron” which is, I guess, something like a thought piece. It is by Mr. Toshihiko Wagaharu. I do not know this gentleman and I will not try to speak to the substance of his note. But it appears in the journal using words like “recycling” and presents a clear graphic that shows how a daito could be bobbed off to become an osoraku tanto. And if that ain’t enough, the title of the piece is “Satsuma Age Ni Tsuite.” Which I think would have to be translated as  something like “Concerning Fish Dumplings.”

                So how suspicious should we be. Some guys, like these blades so some osoraku blades may have been made as special orders by modern smiths. But how could we separate those blades from ones that were cranked out of older broken/flawed daito? And if that is what is happening, is there anything wrong with it?

Peter

[Surfson]

Hi Peter.  There is a good discussion of these here:

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/11570-osoraku/

 

The first one is attributed to Sukemune, but Kurihara Nobuhide and Kiyomaro school makers made them as well (Kiyondo, Masao...).   There are some noted gendaito smiths (Sakai Shigemasa) that made them too.  I think you might be right that there are some "replicas" that are being made now.  

 

One feature is that the Yokote is actually wider than the hamachi, so I would doubt if they are shaped out of older blades very often, but really can't say.  

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello Peter,

 

Never mind. The discussion linked above is much better than my memory.

Edited December 24, 2018 by nagamaki - Franco

[Geraint]

Dear Peter.

 

As far as I understand it Satsuma age refers to an unusual style of reworking a blade with a damaged kissaki to produce what one might call a clipped point.  I would be interested to learn more.

 

Satsuma age was discussed here a while ago, as was the alternate translation of fish cakes.  Also here, scroll down to the bottom,   http://www.ksky.ne.jp./~sumie99/suriage.html

 

All the best

[Peter Bleed]

Geraint,

Thank you for the ksky link. Indeed, I had not seen it and found it very interesting. We ALL must read it.

I also apologize for my naive treatment of Satsuma-age.

The larger issue I was hoping to expose is how we should treat altered blades. I am sure that shortened blades - and osoraku tanto in particular - are much more common now than they were - say - 30 years ago. This is work that is going on now. And there are guys actively selling these blades, calling them "flawless" and "beautiful". There may be precedent for them, but I think they reflect 1) the modern market, 2) modern methods, and not to mention 3) the fact that there are lots of seriously damaged blades available in the modern world.

I wonder what people in the early Muromachi era thought about cutting up old nagamaki to make mere daito. Today we see "Nagamaki naoshi" becoming ju-to. But I  bet that at that time, some people were aghast at the damage that was being done to antique weapons.

Peter

[Peter Bleed]

I've learned my lesson and should let this thread slip below the waves, but I think kissaki-shortening still deserves bit of discussion here on the NMB.

The reality that was cogently exposed by Geraint and Robert does not hide the fact that currently blades are being shortened from the front end to a degree and in ways that we should not ignore. I won't discuss ongoing auctions, but I urge others to go to eBay and search for  terms like "rare hoko spear tanto" and see what you find.

I think the reality is that as interest in Nippon-to is high, the world has also discovered lots of seriously compromised blades AND craftsfolk (in Japan and elsewhere) who have the skills and tools to rework them from trask to shiny trash with a lot of historical sounding hooey. The techniques involved in this reworking may have some history, but the rationale for Satsuma-age recycling in the Sengoku jidai was different from the goals and intentions that are feeding modern reworks on to the world sword market.

Peter

[Brian]

Peter,
You are referring to this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-HOKO-Spear-TANTO-sword-w-White-sheath-EDO-17-4-10-6-530g/123567149124

Clearly a broken blade. I think the boshi is polished on, and the hamon continues straight, right off the tip.
But I hardly think we have a crisis in the Nihonto world when it comes to things like this. I think if you see 5 a year, that is a lot. I don't see anyone doing this to healthy blades to create a more interesting offering. I think it is just a way to salvage broken blades, and when they are misrepresented that is indeed a problem. But how many do you think we would come across like that? I expect this is not anything to concern ourselves over.

[Jussi Ekholm]

Peter, unfortunately my Japanese is not good enough to read the article in full but I think the picture shows very well how broken tachi could be salvaged into a working weapon of (in this case) tantō length.

 

I think the sword study has progressed a lot in Western world in the 30 year time frame that you mentioned. Sure there were really knowledgeable collectors and connoisseurs back then too but the easily accessible amount of information makes it a lot easier to modern collectors. Or at least it should, we have incredible amount of information available to us in many languages.

 

Likewise you can access thousands of swords being sold around the world at any moment if you start to browse through the various sellers. That would have been really difficult to achieve before the Internet. And I'll try to be politically correct when describing that some Japanese sellers are using platforms used by many in the Western world to unload stuff that would be difficult to move inside Japan for profit while they are taking advantage of the intrest towards Japanese sword in the West and in many cases ignorant buyers.

 

There might be some "shenanigans" going on but I don't think it is anything major that would be of concern.