Osoraku Tanto (Part 3)

[Larason2]

This Tanto has been presented before:

 

First Time:

https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/40375-help-needed-on-tanto-possibly-osoraku/#comment-417645

 

Second Time:

https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/44261-osoraku-tanto/

 

The person who sold it to me goes by “Katsu” on the Sword Buyer’s Guide forum:

 

https://sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/user/54816

 

And “William Cardin” on this site:

 

https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/profile/6452-williamcardin/

 

He was very pleasant to deal with. I got him to take a picture of the sword with his name beside it, and he obliged. I ran into some troubles with paypal on my end, but I sorted them out soon after. He couldn’t ship it immediately because of family concerns, but he shipped it within a week, and it arrived less than a week later.

 

Here’s what I found:

 

I’ve never held a tanto before, but it doesn’t feel overly light or overly heavy. The blade is solidly in the tsuka, and overall the fit and finish is excellent, as you would expect from a nihonto. It has a pretty aggresive style, but the polish on the blade and the nature of the hamon feels quite refined. The polish is understated, in my opinion, but I think this goes along with the period that it was made.

 

Saya:

 

The shirasaya has quite a few scratches on it, primarily at the kojiri end, but I’m pretty sure it is made of nurizaya/honoki, and none of the scratches look too deep. On the ura side, towards the kojiri, it looks a bit like the original finish has been altered, maybe by a scrape against something hard. The koiguchi fits against the tsuka pretty flush, though there are a few minor scuffs on the ura side of the tsuka edge. The grain match is pretty good. The glue lines all around are pretty good, except for right where the koiguchi meets the tsuka, top and bottom. They are well glued, just not a perfect closure. The original mekugi was broken into a stub quite short. I popped it out with forceps, and made a new one from susudake I bought from Namikawa Heibei. I used primarily a fine woodworking chisel, though some sandpaper to help shape the ends. The new one turned out pretty good, though the Omote end turned out a bit narrow, and it is a bit loose when put in certain ways. I’ll carve another one when I have time, now that I’ve learned how to do it. The tsuka is the haichi shape, and the bigger mekugi-ana is on the omote side. It fits very comfortably in the hand. The shirasaya appears to be carved for the blade, and there is no blade rattle whatsoever. The fit over the habaki is very good, not too loose and not too tight. The seam is right at the top of the mune, which I understand is not usual practice (usually it is offset so the mune rides along just wood, not a glue seam), but I may be in error.

 

Habaki:

 

I believe the habaki is shibuichi, but I think it is fairly recent, because it is still quite light. There are some marks of black oxidation on the top and bottom, but they are very small. Inside the habaki there are two areas where the polish is worn off toward the blade revealing the original copper colour. It has two brass inserts to help hold the blade that have a very good fit. It has a slanted lines engraving, and the fit on the blade is very good. The polish is very good, with some clear hammer marks towards the end, but otherwise you can see the strokes of the carving tools on the surface to show you it was hand finished. As expected, it fits on the blade perfectly.

 

Blade:

 

The blade itself looks to me to be shinogi-zukuri, with the curvature appearing to be saki-zori. The hamon is a pretty broad gunome towards the nakago side (almost notare) that tightens up as it reaches the kissaki to almost be choji. There’s a fair bit of sunagashi throughout, not sure if that is typical of the style. The boshi of the kissaki looks like o-maru. it has a small “yo” on the omote side of the boshi, but not the ura side. The fukura is rounded. The mune is iori-mune, with a standard oroshi. Overall, the mune doesn’t look very heavily burnished to me, there’s still a lot of the texture of the metal left. There is a sort of yokote on the mune closer to the tip than the kissaki yokote, and the mune looks polished closer to the tip, whereas it looks burnished towards the nakago. Not sure what that line would be called? It doesn’t have the decorative burnishing lines of modern polishers on the mune, there are some lines where you would expect on the nakago side, but I think they are just scratches from the habaki! There is no mei for the polish. The shinogi looks average height to me, and there’s still a fairly decent bit of niku left on the blade. I see some nice nioi and nie here and there, but otherwise don’t see tons of activity, and the hamon could be a little better set off. The hada is a pretty gorgeous and dense masame. It has a long but very shallow what looks like a kitae-ware in the kissaki away from the boshi on the omote side in line with the axis of the blade. I’m pretty sure it is not a yaki-ware because it doesn’t look like it goes deep and doesn't look crack-like. There are also some kitae-ware on the omote side on the shinogi and the shinogi-ji, but they are small and look aesthetic to me. The blade has no hi or horimono.

 

The nakago is kurijiri style, and the yasurime look kesho-yasuri to me. Some of the yasurime are quite a bit deeper than others, especially on the mune side of both the omote and ura. The fit of the nakago in the tsuka is quite tight, but it doesn’t take too much force to get it out, just patience. Some of the rust/patina is actually yellow, suggesting to me that it was treated at some point, but I could be wrong. The nakago-ana is lined up perfectly with the mekugi-ana on the tsuka. There are two nakago-ana, and the one towards the nakago-jiri is the one used for the shirasaya tsuka mekugi. The other one also has quite a bit of yellow material in it, suggesting treatment, though they both have this. As mentioned before, the blade is mumei.

 

Measurements:

 

Overall Length in shirasaya: 46 cm

Height at highest point: 4 cm

Width: 2.5 cm

 

Nagasa: 30.5 cm

Motohaba: 10.5 cm

Saki-haba: 2.7 cm

Tip length: 4.5 cm

Kasane: 0.67 cm at mune machi,

0.60 cm at end of shinogi

 

Habaki: 2.5 cm

Tsuka: 11 cm

Saya: 35 cm

 

Overall:

 

I'm very happy. It certainly has some small flaws, but I still think it was a bargain for a gorgeous blade, and it’s my first (and currently only) Nihonto. I love the osoraku style, interesting hamon, dense hada, and aggressive curvature of the piece, and I think that’s what attracted me to it mainly. If I’ve made some errors above on the characterization, feel free to correct them, as I will learn that way! I’m still pretty new at this. Rivkin said in another post that this could be end of shinshinto/early showa. Part of me feels like it merits a modern polish by a Japanese togisho, but that’s in the future (as it will probably be quite a bit more than what I paid for it!), and then of course shinsa. I also plan to make a full ei-themed koshirae set for it in the future, a la Ford Hallam. But first learn how to make a proper mekugi!

 

Here are my pictures (still working on learning how to take better ones!):

 

 

 

 

 

[Michaelr]

Carlos, congratulations. It looks like you purchased what you like for a price that you are happy with and now with it in hand you are even more pleased, what more can you ask for. I am sure that this is only the beginning to a long relationship with Nihonto. Enjoy. Keep up the good work with your investigating and happy collecting. 
   MikeR

[dimitri]

Beautiful, I love its curvature.
very good purchase.

[Alex A]

Nice tanto, can we see the nakago ?

 

Cant ever remember seeing one of these that was not modern. Saying that though, you dont see them too often.

 

Remember SwordguyJoe was selling one some time ago, from memory. Think that was by a Mukansa smith. Yours reminds me of the sale.

[NewB]

I miss this blade

 

j

[Larason2]

Here's some better pictures of the nakago. I'm still working on how to photograph these beauties! I used to have a DSLR (Canon EOS 300D), but I didn't use it in so long I gave it away. Maybe using an LED light with my phone?

 

 

 

 

[Alex A]

Thinking maybe someone has tried to artificially age the nakago but not done a great job., whats your thoughts?

[Larason2]

On 5/5/2023 at 9:34 AM, Alex A said:

Nice tanto, can we see the nakago ?

 

Cant ever remember seeing one of these that was not modern. Saying that though, you dont see them too often.

 

Remember SwordguyJoe was selling one some time ago, from memory. Think that was by a Mukansa smith. Yours reminds me of the sale.

 

I would still be delighted with it if it was Gendaito, but I don't think it is. One is the polish is too different from modern polishes. The lack of the decorative burnishing lines, and instead a polish on the kissaki end of the mune instead of burnishing suggest against it. Also, I would say that modern polishes tend to emphasize the hamon more than this one does. Also, the strange yellow rust on the nakago I've seen on other swords on this site and suggests to me treatment, which I would assume points to this tanto having gone through the showa period. But I'm sure there are others on this site that know better than I do!

 

14 minutes ago, Alex A said:

Thinking maybe someone has tried to artificially age the nakago but not done a great job., whats your thoughts?

 

It's hard for me to say. If they tried the old candle and cloth method, it can be really hard to tell. The nakago does fit abnormally snug in the shirasaya tsuka though, which points to some modification after it was made. You're right the wear isn't super even, and there's the strangely deep yasurime. Maybe an amateur attempt to make the fit in the tsuka a bit looser (using a file to cut new yasurime, and filing off the nakago ridge a bit perhaps), looks like it was done after the second nakago-ana was cut. Doesn't look like an amateur attempt to age though, if anything the new file marks look younger than the rest.

 

Another point is that the shirasaya looks like it has gone through an abnormally high amount of wear for gendaito. It looks like this blade was used extensively in its shirasaya, which would be very strange for any gendaito tanto.

[Alex A]

Forgetting the nakago and looking at features of the blade in the original link, the hamon and the masame in the shinogi-ji

 

Kind of reminds me of Mino style

 

Maybe look into Shinshinto Mino/Jumyo as an idea or later that worked in that style.

 

Tricky with that nakago though,

 

Hamachi very healthy.

 

Be interesting what Shinsa would come up with.

 

Interesting tanto, like it.

 

[Larason2]

Good pickup on the Mino school, I agree with you it does have that vibe. For instance look at this katana:

 

https://swordsofjapan.com/product/mino-jumyo-katana/

 

I will send it to shinsa one day! Right now I just want to enjoy it!