Help with this japanese sword!!!

[knifenutcollector]

Relatively new to the sword circuit but have picked up a few NCO's etc but picked this one up just because it was so beautiful, I HAD TO! The cutting edge is 27 1/8 inches, it has a silver mon on it that i looked up and I believe it is the Ashikaga, it is just beautiful. Who made it and when? the tang is rusted solid, 3 holes, I know it isnt a showa piece but is in showa mounts with a company grade tassle, blue and brown? It is just phenomenal, but I cant match anything in Yumotos book. Does anyone know and what kind of a value does this have?

[John A Stuart]

Excellent fittings and do I love that style of habaki? Yes. I can't read the signature from that pic. John

 

It may be by Yasuyoshi 安吉

[knifenutcollector]

More pics

[Mark]

maybe Yasuyoshi

[knifenutcollector]

What year???? I find a few with that name but no definite year and nothing for sale to gauge a price scale.

[Grey Doffin]

Your pictures show 3 Kanji. The last 2 are Yasuyoshi. I'm wondering if there is a 4th Kanji (1st actually) before the one above Yasuyoshi. It might be mostly obliterated by corrosion and the 2 mekugi-ana (holes). Take a close look and let us know what you can see.

Grey

[Gunome]

Hello,

 

3 mekugi ana, I guess the gunto koshirae is not the first one of this blade.

1rst kanji looks like 大. I can believe a kanji under the mekugi ana, but to fint and dark to read it.

Could you please show us photo from the overall blade, the ha machi and the kissaki ?

 

Thanks

 

Sebastien

[Stephen]

Nobody and i worked on this last night, what i gave Chris to give to you is your best bet. As advised id take it to Chi town this weekend. Here is a close up worked up photo by Koichi san, he gives it a very broad 1% chance of 長州道元安吉 – Choshu Dogen Yasuyoshi. it does need to be seen in hand. and show the pix of one flaw that i never recived. pix of kissaki ha/munimachi is also needed.

[mdiddy]

How about Tota YasuYoshi (Fujishiro - Shinto Hen - pg. 282 - Chu Jo Saku).

Fujishiro states he was part of Omura Kaboku mon so would be Shitahara school.

 

I attached some extra pics from the auction house that sold this. Hamon based on suguha, gunome present, muneyaki and some tobayaki can be seen so Soshu influenced. If you look closely can see swirling jihada with some coarseness. Seems to align with Shitahara school in my mind.

 

Went for a nice amount at auction last weekend in Maine and was purchased by a lady...

[Stephen]

Thanks Matt

 

dont have Fujishiro anymore to see the kanji. I have a feel for a older blade made in 1500's to look like nambokucho any pix out there of sugata with out the tsuka?

[mdiddy]

I've attached a couple more pics I had, but I don't have any that are composite w/o tsuka. The blade looks pretty healthy to me and the yakidashi looks Shinto-style. Nakago def looks aged though. Hard to see yasurime.

 

Fujishiro didn't provide any kanji, just listed the smith and provided some info on him (Enpo, school, lived in Edo, good sharpness). Maybe we could get a Toko Taikan scan from someone?

[knifenutcollector]

Well, I did travel to Maine and did purchase this sword at auction, wasn't my cute lil wife that bought it, but the auctioneer sure loved her. I went for the other swords that were there and saw this one and had to have it. Believe me, I paid for it! I was eager to find a value on it, just to see if I got a bargain or more than I bargained for! What really sucks is now I am going to have to reluctantly part with it I'm afraid. Son got three front teeth knocked out with a baseball! Easy come, easy go I suppose. I try not to sell any Japanese swords now, I sell all the other stuff to fund the addiction, upgrade and put away, this is the first really high end piece I bought and well, hate being superstitious but bought a high end German dagger last year and wife totaled the car... that sold too!! I will post pictures of some Tantos in the next few days that i picked up and i also grabbed a beautiful Wak, unsigned but looks really old. Question, can they carbon date the tang if there is no readable signature or no signature present? You guys are fantastic, no kidding i learned more about this sword reading the posts then i did with days or research in books and with other collectors. Thank you for your assistance in the reading and dating.

[John A Stuart]

Sorry to hear that. Carbon date the tang? Interesting. Admittedly there is carbon in the steel and there might be a process to extract it and possibly get a isotopic ratio, but, the date would have too big of a margin of error on something so close to now in age. Really, I suspect that because it is usually done on organic materials found in conjunction with a mineral artifact, like metal or ceramics, that to try it, if even possible, it would be very cost prohibitive. Non-organic artifacts are usually dated by potassium/argon dating. Your sword is too modern for that test. John

[YukouYukimura]

Sorry to hear about your son, a similar thing happened to me in a baseball accident a few years back! Needless to say it cost a good bit of money and now have a half fake tooth up front! I thought I bit a chunk of the baseball haha :lol:

 

About the wak, if the hamon and the blade shape are still intact then people on this board might be able to give you information/date so you wouldn't need to carbon date it.

[Markus]

On the basis of the sugata (i.e. the shallow sori, the length, and from the position

of the signature on the tang I assume it is not [at least not much] suriage), I wouldn´t

say Kanbun but somewhere close. This in combination with the accentuated gunome

repetitions which allude with much phantasy somewhat to sanbonsugi, I would go

for Shitahara, which leads finally - with incorporating the parts of the signature (namely

a "Yasuyoshi" [安吉] and the remnants of a 大 which could also be a 太) - to Tôta Yasuyoshi

(藤太安吉), who worked around Enpô (1673-1681).

 

Just my 2c so far and maybe far-fetched.

[Jacques D.]

Hi,

 

Just a little remark about carbon date, It can be used only on living things; it cannot be used on mineral objects.

[kusunokimasahige]

The MON is not Ashikaga, it is IMAGAWA or MOGAMI or SATOMI.

 

 

You can find more about their family on the Samurai Archives message boards.

 

Ashikaga has this mon:

 

 

As did the Toyotomi clan.

 

KM

[Stephen]

The MON can be alot of things, this is what i went by.

[kusunokimasahige]

Depends indeed on the family line, inter clan marriages etcetera..

 

Mon are one of the most difficult study subjects of the samurai era.

 

KM

[Guido]

The MON is not Ashikaga, it is IMAGAWA or MOGAMI or SATOMI.

Stupid as I am, I tend to trust Japanese research over Westerners who run around in cardboard armor, playing Samurai. Edo period lists of Kamon seem to be especially untrustworthy, but according to the material at hand the Ashikaga used the "Maru no Uchi ni Futatsu Hiki" as their primary Kamon, and the "Go Shichi Kiri" only when in Kyōto. The Toyotomi's primary Kamon was the "Go San Kiri". But then again, what do I know?

 

Stripping off my heavy layer of sarcasm for a minute: it's pretty easy to come up with a Kamon for a certain family, but it doesn't work the other way around. Most Kamon were used by more than one family (and this is an understatement!), so without supporting evidence, it's almost impossible to be certain from which family an item decorated with a Kamon came.

[kusunokimasahige]

Which was indeed my point Guido,

 

sarcasm or not, i am still studying Japanese history.

 

and my gusoku is metal, and was made in the 1850's so thats also wrong

 

KM

[reinhard]

Which was indeed my point Guido

 

By telling ".....it's IMAGAWA or MOGAMI or SATOMI." you are contradicting yourself. - KaMon is a giant jigsaw puzzle with many pieces gone forever. Hawley and (western) web-resources are creating the illusion of simple answers, but they don't exist. You better forget about them.

 

reinhard

[kusunokimasahige]

True, i used a Japanese book too, and used the web based info as reference since i dont have a scanner.

 

KM

[ronjeez]

i think it depends of the blood line,

 

 

_________________

Rapid prototyping

[george trotter]

Hi all, not to keep this ka-mon thing going too long, but it really is impossible to work out the gunto owner's family name from the mon on the hilt. In my memory bank is a vague remembrance that in 1913 (or was it 1911?), the Japanese authorities permitted anyone to adopt any ka-mon they wanted (excepting Imperial and some associated mon). It may have been at this time also (or earlier?) that peasants were permitted to adopt a family name (probably why there are so many Tanakas in Japan; means middle of the fields). So, many family names and ka-mon only became associated in fairly recent times and won't appear in any book. Many descendants of these "newly named" citizens were soldiers in the Imperial forces and took "their" mon to war with them.

It is always interesting to try to pin the mon down to the most important of the original owners, but it won't identify the present gunto owner....

 

Regards,

George Trotter