Fake mei

[PacificRim]

Greetings, hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy during this pandemic. A friend just informed me that the sword makers in Longquan China are engraving high quality fake mei on their “Japanese swords.” Photos attached.

[Brian]

Damn. They just upped their game. This is not going to be good.
3rd Pic looks to have a Kai Gunto seppa. If they fake Gendaito it is going to be a huge problem.

[Ontario_Archaeology]

Sooner or later it is going to be important to track the swords owners back as far as possible to try and predate when these good fakes start coming onto market....hopefully they miss a major detail on the final product that screams fake.

[PacificRim]

Here is a type 94 in question, the fittings appeared to be genuine but the blade seems off.

[BANGBANGSAN]

Tang look kind of new to me

[16k]

This is frightening. This has got to be one of the best repro I’ve ever seen.

[Bruce Pennington]

Alex,

Do you know the source of the information? Is your friend over there? Are these pics from there? I'm just hoping someone is messing with us.

 

Having said that, if you had brought this to us without the cover story, I'd have to agree with you that certain things bother me about it.

- The sakura on the fuchi is wrong.

- The tsuba has that new, brass look

- The nakago seems bent rather than a natural curve

- The nakago is obviously falsely aged.

- I'm no nihonto buy, but that hamon looks wrong

 

Much of the rest is very convincing though, enough so, that it would be one of those where guys say "Nothing I can prove, but enough flags that I'd walk away from this one!".

 

PS, please tell me someone is just messing with us!

[Dave R]

 Some time back Hanwei aka Paul Chen produced a good repro'  Shin-Gunto, it cost as much as a decent real one, because that's what quality costs....Not made any more for one reason or another. I awaite developments.

[PacificRim]

Bruce,

 

I got the info from a Chinese gunto forum in China (similar to NMN) where most of the gunto and nihonto enthusiasts import their swords from Japan. This sword was posted a few days ago and questions were raised by many collectors. As more collectors put in their opinions and someone brought up that the recent improvements of mei faking/engraving skills, done by the sword smiths working in Longquan, a city that is famous of making swords ( mostly replicas ) . The photos of the tang with alleged fake mei were posted by one of the collectors.

[BANGBANGSAN]

Bruce

Those photos are taken in China.Check other similar photos I post.

[PNSSHOGUN]

This is most disturbing, many new or even intermediate collectors would easily mistake this as authentic. These will no doubt be encountered like sea mines over the coming years.

[Brian]

Luckily they won't be cheap. But if they are faking bigger names like Yasukuni smiths, they might fetch high prices and many collectors aren't on groups or forums, so may just keep their treasure in their collection and never find out until years later. Yeah...this was bound to happen, but it is disturbing.
I know that Chinese forum. There are a surprising amount of serious and decent Nihonto collectors in China, even though they are semi illegal.

[vajo]

Thanks a lot that i have sleepless nights from now. 

[BANGBANGSAN]

Fortunately , as far as I know , those swords with Fake Mei were made in China for the Chinese market(try to fool the inexperience collector). 

It's very hard to get the swords into China legally, most of the time they use the "grey clearance" channel in Hong Kong to smuggling swords into mainland China. Since China enact National Security Law from NPC to HK a few weeks ago, It's going to be very difficult to do so. Even before this law passed, it's harder to get them out of China then get in.

The collectors outside of China shouldn't be that terrified about it just yet, but we do need to be more careful though.

[DoTanuki yokai]

Also check out this 1300€ piece of acid etched scrapmetal https://www.yarinohanzo.com/Tokugawa-Katana-blade-in-shirasaya.html

 

Edit: the chinese always fail to match hamachi and munemachi because they dont want to change habaki making.

[16k]

Yes, so far, mune machi and ha machi are an excellent way to identify Chinese swords, but I dread the time when they start correcting that. Now, they even offer hadori polish..

[Bruce Pennington]

For reference, and for new guys learning to spot fakes, I thought I had come across a sukura like the one above, but it turns out it was a Manchukuo plum blossom. So, it looks like the faker in this example is using plum blossom imagery in his head when trying to craft the cherry bloom. The one on the right is what this reminded me of. You can see the faker got the petals right, but used plum-blossom stamen.

[Dave R]

 

...... it's harder to get them out of China then get in.

The collectors outside of China shouldn't be that terrified about it just yet, but we do need to be more careful though.

 

 

 Alibaba sells swords all the time, starting at $99, the saving grace this time is that the money is held in escrow until the customer confims satisfaction with the item. I bought a replica Dadao from them some years ago, not happy with the quality, a couple of messages back and forth and I got a large discount.

 Regarding these, in another 20 years they will be illegal to export as originals, because of the PRC law on antiquities, nothing over 100 years old may leave the country.

 Of course secondry dealers will be the route then, and probably are already.

[Dave R]

To me, the real nightmare is the unsigned modern steel blade in original WW2 koshirae.