Mumei Shinto Blades

[Bryce]

G'day Guys,

 

Why do mumei Shinto blades seem to be viewed with distaste, while mumei blades from other periods are not? I am a little confused as members often say "buy the blade not the name".

 

Cheers,

Bryce

[Vermithrax16]

Welcome Bryce,

 

I think a simple search will tell you why. Just Google your question. 

[PNSSHOGUN]

Larger amount of blades made with an average quality below that of the Koto period. Buyers market on these if you're after particular qualities, schools or smiths.

[Rivkin]

The very best koto blades could still be unsigned from the beginning, though there are competing opinions regarding exactly why.

In Edo period you were supposed to be known by others personally as a smith, personally involved in comissions, most likely reside in some big city and definitely sign your blades.

Unsigned good blades do exist, but they often suggest foul play, someone making mumei Hankei or Horikawa and passing them as Masamune.

 

The second problem is that for all their quality, the works of many high end makers were copied so often and so reasonably well, the chances of them papering (and thus securing signature premium) without the signature itself are sort of nil.

 

How many papered mumei Kotetsu, Sukehiro and Shinkai are out there? With the very best work you might have a chance, especially if its Kiyomaro, Hankei or Horikawa, but its a slim chance still. Again, assumption will be that someone took Kiyondo and tried to make it into Kiyomaro.

 

So the commercial upside of unsigned late blades is strictly limited, while most of them are simply born bad. A rare exception is probably the best quality blade, likely made after some respected koto style.

 

Kirill R.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Bryce, there was no large-scale fighting during the years of the Shinto period, so sword quality was pretty much marketed for show, rather than utility. Part of the showiness was the tosho's mei, so blades that aren't signed are viewed as substandard.

[Dave R]

A little illumination here.... http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/ubumumei.html

[Stephen]

Thank you Dave i had forgotten that page.

Like so many things nowadays.

[Hoshi]

It's shinto and upward. Loss of 80%-90%+ value for mumei. That's the market reaction to mumei. 

 

Here are some factors affecting Shinto Mumei

 

• Loss of moral value: its ubu mumei because of foul play. It was ruined by someone with bad intentions, and it's an ethical duty to reject those blades regardless of their quality. The sword is a sacred object, and foul intentions defile it forever. 
• Loss of aesthetic value: The signature of part of the beauty. The Nakago is an area which is appreciate, and any alterations reduce its beauty
• Loss of historical value: The maker cannot be identifier because during Shinto times and later, iron production was centralized and the Mino school dominated. This led to a vast homogenization of work which makes kantei incredibly difficult or all together uninformative. 
• Loss of rarity value: because mumei shinto and later can't be attributed well, they go into a big bucket. Stuff in this bucket is less scarce than a signed example of the smith's work. 
• Loss of completeness: signature is part of a package, collectors value having the complete package. 

 

Now let's look at Koto mumei through the same lense. Devaluation of a koto blade due to absent signature is highly dependent on the school and it's beyond my punching weight to make a statement here, and it interacts in complex ways with the factors below. Since mumei is the norm, it's easier to think about this as a signature premium. 

 

• Loss of moral value: If the sword was a tachi and was shortened, it's likely that the full signature was removed to comply with the rules governing sword length during the Edo period. Moroever, it was more common at the time not to sign blades. While we know some blades were made mumei intentionally for purpose of trickery, it's not the modal explanation. Thus, the corruption is lesser for Soshu, nill for certain schools such as Yamato, present but tolerated for Bizen. 
• Loss of aesthetic value: Same as Shinto. Some signatures of the Koto era are highly valued for their aesthetic appeal. 
• Loss of historical value: It's easier to attribute a Koto blade to a maker, or a quality tier level within a school via a maker's name. Technics are very different, and iron is locally produced, giving it different properties (e.g northern iron tends to be blackish, etc). 
• Loss of rarity value: It's less the case because mumei koto are easier to attribute. 
• Loss of completeness: Absolutely still the case. 

Hope this helps. 

[Geraint]

Dear Bryce.

 

Hmmmm!  Lots of thoughts here and if you have not already then I suggest you get a copy of Facts and Fundamentals by Nakahara.  He has much to say about mumei blades and a good deal else that bears scrutiny.  As far as mumei shinto blades are concerned his basic tack is that there is no reason not to sign your work.  Removing a signature might allow someone to judge it as the work of a better smith and hence increase the blade's commercial value.  See Chris's first point above.  I think the answer is complicated by a number of factors.  In the first place all collectors love categories and if it is hard to ascribe a blade to a category then it losses something.  Secondly, there are a lot of them about and availability is not necessarily a good thing for marketability.  Scarcity indicates a premium.  Third, coming from a largely peaceful period there is less chance that they have fulfilled their primary function as a weapon of the Samurai.  You will often hear of swords described as merchant's weapons if they are in highly ornamented koshirae and the feeling that certainly wakizashi are not Samurai artefacts does them no good in the market.  (This last is always problematic in my view, if you compare some of the daisho in The Boston Museum for example they are, to put it mildly, extravagant.)

 

Just some more thoughts to add to the pile.

 

All the best.

[Dave R]

 I see a couple of conflations here. The first is lumping together blades that never were signed, with those that had their signature removed. The other is collectable value  being considered the same as commercial value and vice versa. Just my two pennyworth .

[Bryce]

Thanks Guys,

When I posted this I was thinking specifically of ubu mumei. I can understand why the lack of a signature makes a mumei blade worth less than a signed one for all of the reasons you have outlined above. What I don't understand is the thinking that an ubu mumei blade must be inferior to a signed one. To my way of thinking it means a collector can buy a good quality blade at a much lower price than a similar signed one. No harm in that.

 

I collect British swords from the early 1800's. Most of these are signed by the maker, but many are not. Those that aren't signed tend to be high quality swords from some of the best makers of the day. I wouldn't consider not buying a good sword simply because it wasn't signed. Collecting British swords is a lot different to collecting nihonto, but my point is there must have been valid reasons for a maker to not sign a sword, we just don't know what they were.

 

Cheers,

Bryce

[Rivkin]

Bryce, there is a greater problem at hand, which is that nihonto was a coveted collectible already in 1550. And for all the chaos of occupation, maybe around 1% of highest quality blades disappeared or went to the US at that moment, so even this event did not destabilize the market completely.

 

So if you are going after something really good the question should be why it is not papered accordingly and does not have a verifiable daimyo history. 

Which brings you to the problems excellently covered in "Fake or Fortune" series.

You basically either buy something that is papered on Juyo-Tokuju level for the money this type of blades command, or you are very arrogant and targeting blades that were probably at some point highly thought after, but recently someone got scared, or needed money fast, or had unwarranted issues when papering etc. etc.They can be absolutely top class things, but there is almost always something about them which is out of the ordinary and complicates appraisal.

 

If you start in addition targeting unsigned shinto blades, you are running against a limited upside (Horikawa or Hankei at the very-very best and those examples are very much seldom encountered), with a lot of questionable examples floating around. There was really not a lot of valid reasons to produce an unsigned blade at the time, so likely you will be targeting uncommon quality cases involved in "attempted frauds". Plus how well can you judge by photographs etc. etc. etc.

I would love to be offered real, but o-suriage, Sukehiro. But I am not sure such things exist in principle.

It becomes kind of like Chagall, unsigned and cut-down from a much larger original painting. A highly theoretical possibility of such thing crossing your table.

 

But on the bright side yes, you can buy shortened Naotane or mumei Kiyondo at a substantial discount compared to ubu signed version. You might find unsigned shinshinto a slightly more rewarding field actually.

I personally feel there was a lot of crookery involved in Meiji period market. Signatures getting upgraded, prepared to be sold to the west, whole bunch of appraisers acting on behalf of shops, clubs, polishers, publishers, even universities and museums writing their appraisals. Complete chaos, but as a result you get probably a greater percentage of quality blades being unsigned.

 

Kirill R.

[Hoshi]

When I posted this I was thinking specifically of ubu mumei. I can understand why the lack of a signature makes a mumei blade worth less than a signed one for all of the reasons you have outlined above. What I don't understand is the thinking that an ubu mumei blade must be inferior to a signed one. To my way of thinking it means a collector can buy a good quality blade at a much lower price than a similar signed one. No harm in that.

 

 

This is absolutely true. You can buy a top quality Shinshinto ubu mumei blade for a fraction of the price. My first sword was an ubu mumei 'Naotane/Korekazu/insert JoJo Saku shinshinto maker name' Katana. The thing to keep in mind here is that the attribution reflects quality, because you can't really recognize the work very well during this time compared to the Koto period. So it basically says this is a very high quality blade for the shinshinto period, which is about as much as there is to be said.

 

Word of caution: Make sure you don't overpay for such blades though, they're absolute bottom tier blades in terms of collectability. This means avoid online sellers with fixture on the western market in my opinion because they know some collectors don't care much about ubu mumei, but just want quality and their prices won't reflect the real devaluation attached to ubu mumei. Many times I've seen such blades overpriced, and nobody would pay these amounts in Japan. Rule of thumb: if the discount isn't close to 80-90% compared to the closest signed example, don't touch it or you'll get burned.