Papers by JASMK

[DTM72]

I have searched the forums, and found only a little about this subject. NBTHK seems to be the most respected shinsa, followed closely by the NTHK-NPO. I just recently stumbled across a katana for sale with a JASMK paper. This sparked my interest, and I checked their website out.

https://jasmk.jp/index.htm

 

It seems geared towards Japanese collectors, as I did not see any avenue for foreign submittals. To be clear, I'm not advocating anything, just curious as to everyone's thoughts on this.

 

Dan in South Carolina

[Rivkin]

The issue of papers respectability is greatly debatable to the point few actually being troll enough to fully wonder there.

Here is my very personal list, in decreasing order of my very personal, erroneous and ignorant trust:

 

Tanobe Sayagaki

Honma Sayagaki. Pricewise I would say its the best in a sense that he did very few sayagaki while essentially he was the founder of modern kantei.

Published by Fujishiro. 

Modern NBTHK (note - very conservative). Fujishiro papers. Note - most put them below NBTHK, but in my personal experience Fujishiro papers that NBTHK "gimeis" have a solid chance to get sayagaki by Tanobe san.

NTHK. NPO is disliked by those convinced its a group completely dominated by one person, Miyano san. Non NPO is disliked by those having issues with almost 100% of this shinsa being active dealers (rather than polishers etc.). The groups also had a very ugly divorce with a lot of interesting accusations.

Kanzan Sato Sayagaki. Things like this:

https://sword-auction.com/en/product/2908/as20415-%E8%84%87%E5%B7%AE%E7%84%A1%E9%8A%98%E9%95%B7%E8%88%B9%E5%B8%AB%E6%99%AF/'

Are too common to ignore. It gets worse further towards 1976 or so. But it has to be noted - its an absolutely stunning blade and apparently his sayagaki sometimes have a tendency to reflect quality or provenance more than precise kantei per se. So it can be an indicator of those qualities and plus to have, but I would not bet on any of his attributions being 100% accurate.

JASMK. Its one dealer operation. This being said, they are not bad but almost never cover upper grade items.

Green papers NBTHK. 90% are completely ok, 9% are optimistic by a whole grade (Taima being called Soshu Yukimitsu) 0.1% were born to be absolutely fake. Note - there are whole groups of things that do not repaper by NBTHK modern like Muramasa with a calm hamon because the standards change.

Honami Nishu Sayagaki. They did like Sayagaki in 1970s and apparently this person was a second choice. Very large percentage of problematic blades.

Almost everything else - for reference only. It might be right, and then it sort of boosts the value, especially if its some early Honami judgement, but has a large chance to be wrong, fake or both or either.