What one would want in a book

[Rivkin]

Imagine one can get a new book chapter on a topic of one's choosing. or the entire book. What would it be about?

[GeorgeLuucas]

- Whole book: Kentei for beginners / intro to kentei
- A book in English about early Koto Yamato-Den
- Now that we're well into the 'future of photography', I'd love a book with high definition photographs that focuses exclusively on blade forging quality, flaws, and features. 

Disclaimer: maybe one or more of these books already exists, but escaped my searches. I have many books that touches on these subjects, but does not dive deep into them as much as I would like. Including but not limited to Marcus Sesko koto kentei  + supplement, facts and fundamentals of Japanese swords, connoisseurs guide, etc... etc...

Edited May 15 by GeorgeLuucas
Kentai -> Kentei

[DTM72]

What he said  @GeorgeLuucas

[Okan]

Whole Book: Habaki! 

[nulldevice]

Translation of Nihonto Taikan into English.

 

I'm almost done indexing the first 5 books.

[Shuko]

A chapter on "interpreting listings" e.g. what may not have been accurately describe, what is missing, incredibly bad photos and masterful bullshit descriptions etc  

[Cola]

I would like a very big "kantei table" with one row for every known school and characteristics in the (many) columns. 

And maybe examples of how kantei was done for specific blades.

For a bonus I would love to see one blade go through multiple independent kantei sessions and see a comparison of the results. 

[John C]

Not sure if this exists in Japanese, however a chapter on the entire WW2 sword making process, illustrated, from A-Z - including lists of shops, smiths, military inspectors, polishers, etc. My only concern is that it would put Bruce out of business . 

 

John C.

[Bruce Pennington]

 PLEASE DO!!!

[GeorgeLuucas]

On 5/16/2024 at 8:11 AM, Bruce Pennington said:

 PLEASE DO!!!

Out of curiosity, and sorry if you've covered this before, but: What are you plans with your information gathering endeavors? Do you plan to write a book / provide info for a book? I imagine it would be more comprehensive than what we currently have available on gunto nakago. 

@Rivkin you thinking of writing a book?  

Cheers,
-Sam

[Rivkin]

I am primarily interested in what people see as lacking from the current publications and comparing it against my own opinion. 

 

I do have 600 pages text much of it is different people appraising the same 100 blades and arguing (virtually) against each other's points, and another 100 are modern photographs of kokuho and juyo bunkazai items taken with Fujishiro technique - like the attached image.

 

If I am alive I might get back to it.

 

[Bruce Pennington]

6 hours ago, GeorgeLuucas said:

What are you plans with your information gathering endeavors? Do you plan to write a book / provide info for a book?

I don’t have any plans beyond what I have already published, the stamps document, the Mantetsu article, and the souvenir article. You do have me thinking, though! It would be interesting to see how much material we would have if we combined all those with the articles Mal Cox is writing on smiths and forges. If we could get Stegel or Shamsy to write an article on type 95s we might actually have something.

[Kanenaga]

Kirill,

I've asked about this before: Utsuri -- what is it, different types, importance for quality judgement and kantei.

With good photos (probably the hardest part).

[Rivkin]

1 hour ago, Kanenaga said:

Kirill,

I've asked about this before: Utsuri -- what is it, different types, importance for quality judgement and kantei.

With good photos (probably the hardest part).

My take will be unorthodox, per usual. It is a variation in hardening, but the causes are varied. For example, Nambokucho Aoe dan utsuri - the bright belt of nie utsuri is usually caused by a strong foldover of steel right in this area which isolates it from heat conduction either up or down and therefore causes high temporal temperature gradients and therefore - strong martensite formation. That's also quite a few circa 1360 Aoe have ware in the same area. 

There is utsuri which is formed by the core iron being placed very close to the blade's surface and this can produce the whole range of very distinctive utsuri patterns which are usually associated with a weaker jigane, irregular spot like appearance and dark color which is actually quite well observed with the light source from above, compared to most utsuri which require a sideplacement of light.

Then there are blades where it is complicated since the core iron, the lamination and the hardening are all at play. As a result the same "midare utsuri" can actually refer to rather different things.

Here is the same image as above with jifu utsuri (its kobizen/ko ichimonji Juyo Bunkazai) after a color correction for the lens I used, next is typical Nambokucho Aoe dan utsuri which is a bit simple but does illustrate nie formation well (and its really bright), then there is shirake utsuri.

 

Utsuri is probably my favorite photography subject so I do have a lot of photographs. I feel like I did not see utsuri as well represented on as diverse set of blades even in Fujishiro's album, and few were able to raise to his level in photography.

 

[DoTanuki yokai]

I respect the work and quality of your pictures Kirill but I don’t think your pictures really give me much. They are high quality everything visible but simply not as I see blades with my eyes. 
I also tried to make pictures like you do but then I decided that a more natural picture serves me better in showing the blade. 
In the end a video is much better because of it change in angles that can really show the Jinie what is impossible in one picture no matter how good it is. 
So I switched my complex photo setup to a more simple and closer to the real life experience setup. 
I have seen in other threads that your pictures seem more popular than mine but I would like to understand why that is the case. 

But im also the guy that says that Hadori is a reflection of classical Japanese society behavior and definitely the better polish then Sashi Komi. 

Here some pictures that I have made with my phone and could be much better done with a camera but this pictures show me much better what I can expect from a sword in my opinion. 
 

[Schneeds]

I recently obtained a copy of the Soshu-Den Masterpieces book.  I love it. 

 

If I could have one book, it would be a guide/book on how to identify quality across the Gokaden, with photography and quality on par with the Soshu-Den Masterpieces book.  It would contain macro, fine art photography comparisons of works by each school and smith, and explain why one muemei blade might be attributed the high ranking/founder smith's name, while the blade next to it merely the school.  I think that would be very beneficial to beginning collectors, and probably very interesting to veterans as well.  

 

To your point Christian, I think both styles of photography are very valuable and have their place.  Digital photography is, by default, an interpretation.  You either shoot in jpeg and the internal software of the camera shows you what it thinks you're seeing, or you shoot in RAW and you have to edit it, which is again an interpretation.  Kirill's photography shows you everything that is there, past what you might be able to see with your naked eye.  Your style shows you what you can expect to see if you simply hold the blade in your hand under a light in a room.  I think both are helpful in evaluating a blade and I wish more dealers would showcase using both.  

 

I prefer the fine art simply because it looks cool and I'm a photography nerd.  

 

[Mark S.]

I would really like a book that has a bunch of examples translations of kanteisho papers from the different organizations.  Not so much translations of the smiths, but examples of less common kanji used, especially on the NTHK/NTHK-NPO papers (back of papers) that detail the different aspects of the blade.  Always seems the handwriting doesn’t match the standard kanji, and there are always a few kanji that totally throw me. And then, of course, there are those easy ones that I should know, but no matter how much I search, or study, or try my hardest, I just miss and feel the fool when I ask the experts for help. 

[DoTanuki yokai]

8 hours ago, Schneeds said:

Kirill's photography shows you everything that is there, past what you might be able to see with your naked eye. 

 

I don’t see any Jinie on this kind of pictures while my 1st pictures shows a little of it around the reflection of the light.  So what I can see is in Kirills picture is a folding pattern not the Hada. 
I think the Jinie is one of the most important kantei points, it is the difference between some regular koitame or konzis or nashiji. 
Also I would want a picture of a split nashi at the beginning of every book where it shows that nashiji Hada looks like the fresh cut inside of the nashi and not the Ji of the nashi, the Ji is from the blade