kogatana What Do You Normally Do With Kogatana?

[ckaiserca]

A question for the group. Pardon my ignorance, but what do you normally do with a kogatana in terms of polish and restoration? I most often see kogatana for sale in a fairly distressed condition with quite a lot of age and staining on the blade. 

 

I have a kogatana in a kozuka that I bought along with my sunnobi tanto to fill the empty space in the saya. I think that the pattern on the kozuka goes nicely with the rest of the koshirae.

 

 

The blade is almost black. Is there any value at all in having something like this polished? 

 

 

It is signed "Hizen Kami Fujiwara Kuniyoshi"

 

 

Using the forum's kaji pages, I think it is as follows in kanji:

 

肥

前

守

藤

原

国 (?)

吉

 

I know that mei on kogatana are most often false.

 

Thanks for your input!

[b.hennick]

Most of my kogatana are in poor polish - they were bought in that condition. I have one that I bought in shirasaya, with a sayagaki by the smith. It is in full polish and ill stay that way in its shirsaya. I do have two others that have an amateur polish.

[John A Stuart]

Just keep it clean and it is a tsunagi for the kodzuka to slot into the koshirae. It would have to be special to warrant polishing. John

[Spartancrest]

You might find that the 'black' rust will protect the blade from destructive 'red' rust - that's one reason most tsuba are the colour they are. A black blade is better than no blade.

[Brian]

If well made, kogatana are sometimes polished like swords, to show a nice hamon and hada.
But note, ONLY the flat side is polished. The other side is left like a nakago.

[Ron STL]

I have had several kogatana polished over the years and they can be quite enjoyable to see. As Brian pointed on, only the one side is polished, not the signature side.. While many kogatana mei can be ignore, you do find those that were forged and tempered. If the signature appears well made is well cut (as on your kogatana) I would feel pretty good that it was hand forged. The sugata of your kogatana also seems well made. Truly as signed? Hmmm...here you need to go at least the kogatana book (I forget the official title) to see how close the mei comes to the book example. Lucky for me, I have a local friend who does an excellent job on kogatana, so it does not cost much to bring out their beauty. A miniature shirasaya would be nice too, but I haven't ventured into those. John Yumoto used to say if you wanted a big name kogatana your went into a shop and picked out what you wanted. Nothing was hand made in those shops, but the lack of craftsmanship can be easily spotted. A well made kogatana should show its quality craftsmanship (just like a sword would do). 

Ron STL

[John A Stuart]

Here is a shirazaya for a kogatana. It also has a polished bamboo tsuka not shown. John

[IanB]

Liverpool Museum in the UK have an entire collection of kogatana blades bearing signatures of famous smiths, all polished and in shirasaya. The collection is housed in a purpose made box and was assembled by a daimyo. Although I have no proof, making kogatana would be a way of using scraps of steel and iron that would otherwise be wasted, and no doubt brought in a little cash.

Ian Bottomley