Unsigned Muromachi period sword

[Cola]

Hello all,

 

Just for your entertainment here are some pictures of the sword I bought on my honeymoon to Japan.

We visited quite a few museums and I was really fascinated by all the art and history that went into making swords.

So when we visited the Tozando store in kyoto, I fell in love a little bit with this old sword.

At the time the Ito was falling apart and there was no Sageo anymore.

The friendly people at the store told me the sword was from the late muromachi period, when the war was starting and they quickly needed a lot of swords.

In any case it looked pretty bad with the broken Ito, so I decided to have it re-wrapped in the color that was most similar to the old ito (which was rather hard to tell).

They did a really nice job, and I think it looks very nice right now.

What strikes me as a little bit odd is that the tsuka seems very nice and detailed, but the tsuba is very plain. So possibly the original tsuba?

And curiously the sword has not signature, but the tsuba does have a hidden signature. 

 

 

 

Curious to hear if any of you can deduce anything else from these pictures (and I can make more of course!).

 

 

 

 

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[Cola]

Also the blade seems a bit on the long side, total length of the blade is about 1 meter.

Do you measure "blade length" from the top of the habaki, or from the tsuba?

 

[Bazza]

Cola, the length of the blade and tang suggest this is a KINNOTOU of the Bakumatsu period ca 1850.  Do a google search to find out more and also search the Board with KINNOTO (omit the U for the search)

 

BaZZa.

[Cola]

Interesting! From a quick glance the description seems about right, will read some more about it!

 

Also this topic was about the permit for this sword:

 

[Baba Yaga]

I don't like to make jugement at all from photos, but the blade doen't appear muromachi period. 

Who am I to say the The friendly people at the Tozando store are off by a few hundred years.

[mywei]

To be fair Tozando is really a budogu store that also sells shinken for martial art purposes - not really a store that specialises in nihonto

[Cola]

9 hours ago, mywei said:

To be fair Tozando is really a budogu store that also sells shinken for martial art purposes - not really a store that specialises in nihonto

 

Well, they do have an area with lots of nihonto on display (and a decent webshop with some interesting swords as well). 

I understand it can be difficult to date a sword like this, with no signature. The Kinnoto theory seems to fit quite well.

 

Do you guys think it could be possible to tell from the rust on the nakago whether it's 160 or 400 years old if I take it to a local expert?

[Rivkin]

Late shinshinto to Showa.

[Jon]

On 10/8/2023 at 8:05 AM, Cola said:

the rust on the nakago whether it's 160 or 400 years

Black rust forms can form under red and yellow rust..but it takes different length of times to develop…it takes a while for a thick layer of Fe3O4 (ferrous ferric oxide, magnetite) black rust to form under red rust or convert from brown rust …but can you tell the difference between 200 years of fe304 formation or 400 years…not really…as a rule of thumb..it’s likely a  nakago will be clean on a blade that’s less than 50-70 years old..unless it’s been badly stored in a high humidity wet environment..at which Point you would see a lot of red rust ( this is bad and would need the nakago to be oiled to remove oxygen and water to convert the red rust to black rust) on a well stored blade after 50 to 100 years you will see brown rust formation begin (Brown Rust. Oxide Fe2O3) which forms in a low moisture environment ( the sort of environment your tang should be living in)…this will slowly convert to Fe3O4 ( black rust needs low moisture low oxygen)…from around 100 years onwards..this magnetite layer can and will get thicker over time…so very old blades 500 years will have a thicker and blacker looking magnetite than a 100 year old blade….but differentiating between a late koto and Shinto on magnetite thickness and character alone…I would say any expert that says they can is probably fooling themselves a bit and they are actually using profound knowledge of everything in front of them..not just the magnetite layer…it’s called intuition from profound knowledge…the person will be triggered by so much knowledge and experience they will not alway really know the full dept of what triggered that view…it’s why we have formal processes of assessment..in complex fields of study and assessment  to try and rationalise what is hugely complex knowledge and why a person makes a judgement …( it’s like when I see a person and I twig they are going to die on me…I will probably say it was a specific observation that triggered me… resp rate or colour of skin etc… but infact all evidence would suggest I was using intuition based on profound knowledge of the whole person and what presents when a person is going to drop dead developed over 25 years of study and experience).

 

so black rust is one part of the puzzle but is affected by the environment and time…so not a definitive thing…