Swapping out good koshirae

[Jussi Ekholm]

Well good thing about being with obsessive with tracking down swords is you'll often encounter lots of things that can leave you puzzled.

 

At the end of May Meirin Sangyo got a Nobukuni wakizashi as a new addition to their inventory. I was positive I had seen that same sword quite recently and as I keep track of things, this was sold by Aoi Art. Now there is nothing funny about that as swords get passed between dealers a lot. However when this was sold by Aoi this had Hozon papered koshirae along with it and now little bit later it has different koshirae.

 

There is nothing special in here as stuff like this probably happens a lot. I just thought I'd post this as it is important to keep your eyes open when shopping around.

 

Here is a link to the current listing and Aois old listing

http://www.nipponto.co.jp/swords5/WK328445.htm

https://www.aoijapan.net/wakizashi-nobukuni-saemonjo/

[Alex A]

Wow, good spot Jussi.

 

That shall i say, adds a little more perspective on the subject.

[Darcy]

It's because this class of koshirae is junk that is bought by weight, and matched up with blades at no cost to the dealer, in order to make them saleable to western collectors who feel sometimes there is something wrong if there is no koshirae. 

 

The flip side is that they don't want to pay extra for the koshirae.

 

So the solution are these consistently low quality koshirae that can come and go. Sometimes they are not even matched up to the sword. Other times you can see the remount holes. 

 

Very little of it is original as dealers, responding to collector needs, have played musical chairs with most koshirae.

 

I know a guy who speculated out loud about taking the tosogu off of a Tokuju koshirae because he didn't like koshirae. And sword collectors will not factor in the cost of a koshirae in their comparison shopping and often end up on the cheapest item. So adding expensive koshirae is something that loses a sale. So all you can do is add these shitbox koshirae so that some silly westerner won't say "it's not a complete sword."

 

A lot of great koshirae got stripped and boxed.

 

But the s**t ones, nobody does that. So they just go around accompanying blades.

[Dave R]

 This has been going on for a long time, I have heard dealers anecdotes from the 1970's that would, as we say in the UK, "make your hair curl"!

[PNSSHOGUN]

I would pay a premium for a sword with original Koshirae to the sword, a totally unrelated Koshirae holds zero interest beyond display.

[Hoshi]

What surprises me is the primitive nature of the procedure, there is a niche here for a business. 

 

Business model idea: Koshirae bottom-feeding company that provides sword outfitting services to dealer for cheap. Buy by the Kilo, sell a service with a margin. 

 

For instance, AOI loses money (via labor costs) by playing musical chairs with Koshirae and sometimes have to delay listings because they don't have an immediate fit. Some of their swords end up with none at all, which isn't good for business. Finally they end up with piles of Koshirae which takes up inventory space and thus costs rent, and lately they've been giving up on some swords and had Saya's custom made. And while they do go with the cheap guys it eats into their margins. 

 

This could be made more efficient by centralizing the harvesting and re-outfitting process: appraiser for tsuba and menuki auto-swaps, automated Koshirae fit prediction by renting an X-ray scanner, in-house artisan to make 'quick fixes' and tier-based services to dealers, etc.

[PNSSHOGUN]

Genuinely hope such a cold and clinical approach is never implicated, it would essentially mark the end of original Koshirae.

[Alex A]

What surprises me is the disregard of the blade. 

 

A chance it will end up scuffed due to an ill fitting saya.

[Vermithrax16]

Can only speak for me, but I prefer a blade just in shirasaya. If I want to fit it out, I am going to want my own set of fittings for it. Maximize a buy for best blade you can, ignore the koshirae is how I roll.

[Hoshi]

I tend to have a different approach. 

 

I highly value a good period koshirae which was designed for the blade. In fact, I'm somewhat of a collector of both. I strongly believe that having such a 'package' contains more value than the sum of its parts. I'm especially fond of Meiji and pre-Meiji koshirae and tosogu, with the great variety in style and creative blossoming you find in later Goto or Yoshioka work.

 

One could call it arbitraging on dealer's remorse. 

 

BC = blade collector

TC = tosogu collector

 

s**t Koshirae + good blade = BC$

Good Koshirae + s**t blade = TC$

Boxed Tosogu + Blade = BC$+TC$

 

The problem is:

Good Koshirae + Good blade =/= BC$+TC$. This is a bad deal so these get broken down. 

 

This is where I come in and do

Good Koshirae + Good blade = (BC$+TC$)*(1-arbitrage)

 

arbitrage=the value I need to find so that the dealers sells me the package. if it's 0, I pay full BC+TC. Anywhere > 0 represents an opportunity. Say .1 or .2 is good. Of course I still pay rent like everyone else in the end, because the arbitrage is not going to exceed the dealer margin because otherwise he would have broken it down himself already.

 

The key is to find the dealers with high 'remorse' e.g. those that have a higher threshold of lost profit before they destroy or separate Koshirae.

 

This is step 1 to offset rent. Step two involves a long bet that somewhere in the future, these original koshirae with blades will be valued more highly, since the great majority of them will have been completely destroyed and tosogu boxed. 

[Gakusee]

I am in the same camp as Chris. Quality period packages are valuable.

The only complication is that the blades I am usually interested in have already been separated from their koshirae in most instances (judging from the quality of those blades, the koshirae would have been very good).

 

A pity but understandable - we see how people are prepared to pay big money for high quality tsuba (well, these if mounted come from high quality koshirae in the first instance and sometimes are unmounted etc) and koshirae but might not collect blades and then we see the attitude above about not caring about koshirae but making one’s one. That is the reality.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Yes, but first you have to find the good koshirae, & ensure that it's real, & not whitewash. I'm still looking for Good Koshirae + Good blade after many years of collecting. I guess I've become satisfied if the shirasaya is pristine!

[Vermithrax16]

Arbitrage in any setting (trading stocks, currencies, etc) assumes one has information others do not. If you can do it, wish you well.

 

Unless a perfect package, I can't imagine buying a sword without a plan to have it fitted to my liking.

[Surfson]

I like your analysis Chris, and agree with it.  Ken's point is good too, and reflects the fact that total packages (good blade and koshirae) are rare in the US, since most of what the GIs brought back were either military or modified samurai plus, souvenir swords were generally poorly treated in the US, leading the koshirae to get beaten up.  Do you think that Japanese dealers subscribe as much to the profit dilemma?  

[Hoshi]

If anything Japanese dealers should be even more sensitive to it because the market they operate it in is more efficient (more competition, turnover, etc). After all, 10% can make the difference between turning a profit or a loss and getting overrun by competitor next door. However, for the reason you stated good packages come from Japan. Once and a while Darcy will dig one up and I will marvel at it until it gets sold. 

 

For instance these are absolutely top level packages. Kuniyoshi's Koshirae in particular is prime material for tosogu boxing and its a miracle it survived. If you let these things float in Japan, every time it gets into a dealer's hand you roll a dice to see if it ends up boxed or sold separately: https://yuhindo.com/kagemitsu-daisho/, https://yuhindo.com/awataguchi-kuniyoshi/

 

While these aren't top level makers of tosogu like the above examples, they are very aesthetically pleasing to me as the style just compliments the blade beautifully: https://yuhindo.com/ochiba-sanekage/, https://yuhindo.com/aoe-tsugunao/

 

More than the sum of their parts. 

[Gakusee]

I remember that Kagemitsu daisho.... still dream about it from time to time:))

Darcy often has complete sets, as Chris has demonstrated. Fred does occasionally.

[Rivkin]

Saw maybe once or twice packages at high level where koshirae matched the blade in quality.

Otherwise if one wants to collect quality things, koshirae and blades will sort of have to be purchased separately.

There are some exceptions, like Shimazu sale was filled with blades with koshirae, but I also saw Daimyo catalogues where all blades were separately in shirasaya, and all mounts separately as is.

 

It feels like there is a notion that can be substantiated to an extent through historical documents that blades and koshirae in Edo periods were considered as separate entities with separate values and were seldom combined as a "package" - either of the two was just a holder for the one with a true value.

 

Kirill R.

[Hoshi]

Kirill, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. 

 

I think that this evidence doesn't tell us much about how 'packages' were construed during the late Edo period. One could as well argue that the evidence you present is just more of the same thing that we see with modern dealers: separation due to the need to generate maximum cash from a sale. I don't think the term package is very good either, because it refers more to the process of a sale than the valuation by an individual during the period. 

 

Now let's look at it from the start of a koshirae's existence rather than the sales ending. A great koshirae was ordered to complement great blade. While this isn't a rule, there is a correlation between these things. The more the blade was valued, the higher the owner was willing to pay to make a koshirae to complement it. This reveals that these two things weren't boxed in different mental containers of appreciation, but designed to be valued as a pair. 

 

Now I think we would probably be wise to restrict the the argument to late Edo. Mid-Edo and Late-Edo have drastically different forms of Koshirae. The former focuses on court decorum and has very rigid and standardized norms of Koshirae, while during the late edo we have an explosion of creativity and styles begin to appear which break completely with convention. One could argue that the late edo period is really the time of 'complementary' Koshiraes because the artists had much more freedom around thematic expressions. 

[Rivkin]

My point would be a little different.

From the early eras like Nara and Heian the blades were deposited in shrines usually without koshirae, which was supplied if needed, and then again discarded. Some of the blades were taken out to war - and returned without koshirae. So there was already an unusual for us perception that koshirae is utilitarian add on, unless it is of extremely high quality. 

 

Skipping forward into Edo, from the records I saw I don't think the trade in old blades was actually that active following about 1660, especially as the great economic boom of Kambun period began to wane off. There was gradual loss of blades usually through them being pawned, but even exceptionally troubled clans like Uesugi did everything they could to keep the core set of blades they owned intact. And this is the clan regarding which accusations and suspicions of infanticide were common thing.

 

However good swords did change hands, in the very least to fufill the requirements of unoficial-official tax imposed by the core families like Tokugawa in terms of gifts that needed to be supplied for superiors on various occasions.

The thing is that these requirements usually demanded a blade of certain level (never mind the koshirae at all), and on some occasions could accept a high level (and likely contemporary made) or even mid level (lacquer and makie, contemporary) koshirae, but there are really no instances I saw (I am sure they do exist, but must be rare) where the two were requested as a set.

So having great quality koshirae gifted with tsunagi or tsunagi level blade was not offensive and absolutely normal, just as it was normal to gift a high quality blade in shirasaya or low to mid range koshirae.

As a result, there is a myriad of absolutely historical packages with great blades and utilitarian koshirae, or stunning solid gold koshirae and bland blade (well maybe at a time this was a retempered meito, who knows).

 

Kirill R.

[Gakusee]

Hi Kirill

 

So, in general you tend to write quite authoritatively as though you did have access, in the Edo period, to daimyo gift exchanging ceremonies. Or as though important families allowed you to survey their collections and historic annals.

When you say “requested as a set” I would like to oppugn, if I may - a senior daimyo would of course be interested in a blade (if top Kamakura piece) and he could commission his own lavish koshirae for it, so did not have to “request” a set - he was simply after the Shintogo or Sadamune or Mitsutada or whatever, and not the koshirae. However, that is not to say that daimyo themselves did not commission elaborate koshirae for their blades (and thus were not “requested” by a third party).

I have, on the contrary, in various DTI sessions and at top online or Tokyo dealers, seen quite a few top blades in what I could only describe as daimyo koshirae: sometimes extremely lavish, invariably intricate workmanship, sometimes more subtle but still of sublime quality (nanako, guilding, chiselling, etc). They were mostly combinations of Kamakura (or end of Heian) top smith masterpieces and mid-Edo exuberance. Of course, historically there were also instances of sets of koshirae for different occasions which would fit the same blade belonging to a feudal lord: battle koshirae, formal koshirae etc.

 

Next, please point us to some records where daimyo actually exchanged sub-par or low quality / poor-condition swords as presents (you describe them as “tsunagi level blades”). It will be beneficial to learn that.

 

Thanks

[Rivkin]

Well, I am not much of an authority - just expressing my personal observation that even in collections inherited from the late Edo-Meiji times with no record of later changes I still can't help but to observe a common dissonance between the quality of blades and koshirae. 

Regarding the gift traditions of Edo period, including tsunagi, "imitation koshirae" and so on, there are dozens of Ph.D. thesis and many more conference publications. People are welcome to register at a decent university library, find them, read them and to form any kind of opinion on the subject. This obviously does not negate the fact that today koshirae and blade often part, which can be traced in many cases based on auction records, or that there are great blades in great koshirae - though I have to be honest in saying the examples cited in this thread so far are not what I would classify as great koshirae. Say, Shibata Zenshin and Goto Ichijo is likely to be a great koshirae... and the only example I am greatly familiar with actually came with a gimei. Or the fact that often blades considered gimei or so-so today were in their time a prized (but maybe a tad burned) meito. So the problem is quite multi-dimensional to begin with.

 

Regarding the top dealers, I have to readily admit this is not really the type community I am comfortable with. 20 years ago I was always eager to collaborate with dealers, I mean they saw it all and been doing it for so long. Yet every single time after many reminders I would finally get a writeup - and the first 5 pages would be the dealer's biography. How he was the first person to visit this, and the first person to photograph, and the first person to see things no one have seen. Another 5 pages are about prime ministers and museum directors begging him for advice, accompanied by the list of all important people he claims to know. Another page is about hinting to Secret Knowledge only he received from the last words of the Great Sword Sensei on a snowy mountain. Another page filled with dealer's titles (like the Chief Scholar of the greatest Sword Club). And then there is one page on blades, which basically repeats things said 100 years ago, peppered with big words - Scholar, Research, Expert, Eternal Student of a Sword.

 

So now I am as a simple simpleton simply try to visit old collections and relay what I see with my own two eyes.

 

Kirill R.

[Hoshi]

You're a hard one to please. There are no Koshirae by Shibata Zenshin, as far as I know. 

 

For me these qualify as great at their respective levels. I'd be curious what qualifies for you? if we set the bar to a full set produced by Goto Ichijo well, I know of one Masamune paired with an Ichijo Koshirae and that's about it. Or maybe this one will do it, another fantastic koshirae paired with a Kencho: http://tetsugendo.com/swords/C_115_Kanenaga_Katsuhira.html

 

A high level koshirae that survived through late Edo with its paired sword is exceedingly rare. There are ten times less Juyo-level Koshirae than there are swords. Now if take the intersection you're left with basically nothing, and when you do find a pair that has survived the impetus of profit seeking then you know you are left with something truly rare and precious. Goto, Omori, Ishiguro, Mito... It doesn't need to be Goto Ichijo or Kano Natsuo to qualify as great to my eyes. And I thought I had posh tastes...

[Jon MB]

Thanks Jussi, good thread. Good contributions and thoughts guys, have been pondering the blades vs. fittings life-cycles recently.

[Rivkin]

Zenshin's koshirae is unfortnately expensive as everything connected to his name, but definitely is in this material plane...

In terms of quality koshirae, there are complete sets by early Goto, Omori, whole bunch of big names, but even some lesser names can still do very considerable work.

Here is a semi-decent piece, a tad heavish though. But it has not been through dealers' hands and directly from the Household it can be expected to represent the original set.

A nice wedding gift - yet the blade has quite issues. 

 

Kirill R.

[Vermithrax16]

Thanks Jussi, good thread. Good contributions and thoughts guys, have been pondering the blades vs. fittings life-cycles recently.

Agree, got a touch side tracked, but a good discussion.

[Alex A]

Lets face it, without provenance/documentation, then there is no real way to be be sure if fittings were made for a blade or not, especially with older blades as fittings have been swapped about since the start. 

 

I too like what appears to be a swords final koshirae, and like Chris, the best I can get to is good koshirae and good blade.

 

Come across good good examples maybe two or three times a year and unexpectedly, usually when im skint lol.

 

There was one a while ago, TH koto blade and also nice koshirae, both with NBTHK papers. It was a great deal, and didnt last long. Fittings were not top quality, but good, and didnt look cobbled together.

 

Not a fan of new tsuka. Might sound a bit padantic but on what seems like most occasions, it indicates a recent resurrection. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just not my thing.

 

I look for fit, wear, age and as above, good and good. Tsuka obviously not too worn, but good enough to want to preserve.

 

Tsuba are often swapped out, best to look for tsuba with hitsua-ana that match up with saya. Many you see listed are obviously swapped out, even in books.

 

The only issue isthat if you find good and good, then you might find yourself deviating from blades that you would not usually collect. Again, not a bad thing, as it opens new doors. A problem for some, as they might wait around for a long time searching should they want to stay true to their collecting ways.

[PNSSHOGUN]

Zenshin's koshirae is unfortnately expensive as everything connected to his name, but definitely is in this material plane...

In terms of quality koshirae, there are complete sets by early Goto, Omori, whole bunch of big names, but even some lesser names can still do very considerable work.

Here is a semi-decent piece, a tad heavish though. But it has not been through dealers' hands and directly from the Household it can be expected to represent the original set.

A nice wedding gift - yet the blade has quite issues. 

 

Kirill R.

That is a truly remarkable Koshirae, are the fittings solid gold?

[Rivkin]

All are solid gold. 

 

Kirill R.

[Gakusee]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Plus we have mixed up around 300-400 years of gift exchanges.

[Rivkin]

Not my personally preferred style, but extraordinary expensive when made and with a solid history since the Imperial Household and very few other places can offer provenance for items like this one, so for the purpose of studying original packages often these collections are the best option by far. The really interesting pieces unfortunately or not are the ones no money can buy.

 

Kirill R.