Very interesting Ebay post

[vajo]

Total crazy. 

 

 

[Bruce Pennington]

I have to say, after cleaning, the kao's bottom stroke appears.  I've updated the collage showing the before and after cleaning, with the known mei I have on file.  You can see where a kanji was omitted (though, not knowing what the kanji is, this may be normal as smith mei can vary considerably in how many characters they use), but you can see where a vertical stroke is missing on his name, which seems unlikely to happen for a legit mei.  I know errors do happen, though.

[John C]

Still not sure about the signature. Here is an interesting thread from 2010 showing how Naotane changed his signature over time: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/5020-naotane-and-his-mei-and-kao/

 

Also, the pic below is from Markus Sesko's article on Fujiwara Ligature showing how he changed the Fujiwara radical over time.

 

The cleaned nakago, which the seller confirms, by the way, is a different story.

John C.

 

 

[Brian]

It is very gimei. Very poorly signed.

[Utopianarian]

On 12/14/2022 at 11:06 PM, noneed2hate said:

Made in the 10th Year of Tempo - 天保
Wasn't really able to work out the rest grammatically in a way that made sense to me- 伊藤昌盛因好作之

This is confusing to me as well. The chisel strokes are sloppily done and don’t know if this was a commemorative work done by another smith but have a hard time translating as George C. Commented on. I can understand Part of: No Kami Fujiwara then part looks like Masa Mori and of course saku kore. Other parts I cannot discern. Maybe not Gimei but made by another smith or commemoration which has been done before in honor of Naotane.

[noneed2hate]

On 12/23/2022 at 2:53 PM, Utopianarian said:

This is confusing to me as well. The chisel strokes are sloppily done and don’t know if this was a commemorative work done by another smith but have a hard time translating as George C. Commented on. I can understand Part of: No Kami Fujiwara then part looks like Masa Mori and of course saku kore. Other parts I cannot discern. Maybe not Gimei but made by another smith or commemoration which has been done before in honor of Naotane.

 

This was the best I was able to come up with but still wasn't able to piece together something that sounded grammatically correct - 
伊藤昌盛因好 - 伊(kore/i?) 藤 (to/fuji?)昌(sho?)盛(mori?)因(in?)好(yoshi/suki?)

I asked a gentleman in Japan who is also involved in the Nihonto community and part of a group I'm in, and he advised me that portion doesn't not make any sense.

[Curran]

On 12/21/2022 at 6:50 PM, Seth said:

OMG, wait, you mean the seller took the listing down cleaned the nakago, and then listed it again... I don't understand the mindset behind that. I wonder what caused them to end the previous auction? I wish it would have escaped now even though gimei. Justice will be semi-served if it doesn't make it back up to $1500 now.

 

Edit: saw the rest of the pictures did he hit the blade with the polishing wheel also?

 

wow.. the train completely jumped the tracks.

Got fugly real fast.

[Bazza]

On 12/24/2022 at 6:30 AM, Brian said:

It is very gimei. Very poorly signed.

'SINGED' with a laser???!!

 

BaZZa.

[noneed2hate]

Someone really wanted it badly, went for $3638 

I hope whoever got it was paying attention and realized the nakago had since been cleaned among the other lackluster aspects.

[rematron]

There are so many better swords to be had on this forum alone for that price range...

[Curran]

 

[Ian B3HR2UH]

Well here I go once again leaping to the defence of this sword and waiting for a kicking from the rest of you . I have only handled one genuine Naotane and the mei and nakago on that piece was  a work of art in its own right . When I first saw the nakago on this piece I thought, what a disappointment ,the mei was badly cut and ugly. Despite this I photocopied the mei and took it home to study . 

There are a lot of Naotane mei out there to look at,  however there were , on my very cursory examination , very few dated around  the same era as this piece (1839 ) . Iimura and Kataoka have no mei for this period . In fact I only found one that was  dated 1839 and that was a photograph of a nakago in one of Marcus Sesko's books . Guess what, it had the same coarse filemarks and badly cut looking mei as the ebay piece !

You have to be careful I think to compare this piece to others made years earlier or later . Bruce makes the point that it is missing a stroke on the Nao . True but that stroke is only present on pieces made before about 1830 . Looking at pieces made around 1839 the way the mei and the kakihan were cut didn't immediately disqualify it for me . I still think the mounts point to something good and I liked how the Hi ended . On the other hand Naotane is much faked and the mei on his katana/tachi  are usually longer . 

My gut feel still says it is not right but I don't think that it ( or the buyer who is not me  ) deserve the s**t being heaped on the sword and them .

Ian Brooks