What is considered a deep Sori?

[Emil]

This might be a very trival matter to discuss but I'm genuinely confused by the descriptions of sori for these blades from the same dealer

 

My blade is described as:

Sori: 1 cm - "deep sori"

 

Other blades on their website:

Sori: 1 cm - "small sori" - Kamakura

Sori: 1.1 cm - "moderate sori" - Meiji

Sori: 1.2 cm - "slightly deep curvature" - Kamakura

Sori: 1.4 cm - "deep sori" - Nanbokucho period

Sori: 1.7 cm - "deep curvature" - Edo

Sori: 1.76 cm - "somewhat deep curvature" - Edo

Sori: 1.9 cm - "little deep curvature" - Edo

Sori: 1.97 cm - "deep curvature" - Muromachi

Sori: 2.8 cm - "deep curvature" - Contemporary

 

Is it just random,or is in relationship to the era/ school or the sword?

 

 

While we are on the topic I also have my blade hada described as "Koitamehada is grained well, looks like plain" - how can it be plain (muji?) and well grained koitamehada at the same time?

 

Also the hamon is described as niedeki but looks like nioi to me 

[David Flynn]

A very tight Ko Itame hada, unless polished properly, can come across as Muji.    I remember when I first started collecting, I was told that most Shinshinto/Gendaito, were Muji.    This is of course was not right.  Most of the swords coming into the hands of collectors, post war, had a wartime polish.  These wartime polishes showed the Hamon, but, the Jihada wasn't paid enough attention.

[ROKUJURO]

Emilll,

the SORI is of course related to the length of a blade. A SORI of 10 mm on a short TANTO might be called 'deep' or 'pronounced' while 25 mm on a long KOTO TACHI could be seen as moderate.

[Emil]

36 minutes ago, David Flynn said:

I was told that most Shinshinto/Gendaito, were Muji

 

These wartime polishes showed the Hamon, but, the Jihada wasn't paid enough attention.

This is helpful, thank you for the input

[Emil]

14 minutes ago, ROKUJURO said:

the SORI is of course related to the length of a blade.

 

That's a good point that I actually didn't consider

 

However, it doesn't really explain the inconsistency in the labeling of these linked blades, as all of them (incl. mine) are almost exactly 70cm in lenght, with varying sori depth.

[ROKUJURO]

Emilll,

there are possibly other factors influencing the descriptions. A KANBUN era blade may be described as having a considerable SORI while looking rather shallow in comparison with other blades of another JIDAI.
 

[Bugyotsuji]

The owners of the website should be questioned about these differences. There does seem to be little consistency regarding how deep is 'deep'. Perhaps as you say, it means 'relatively deep for its time'. I saw a blade yesterday with deep sori.

 

It is of course possible that whatever Japanese they are feeding into the translation machinery, such as やや (yaya) (somewhat, slightly, to some degree) comes up with a variety of alternative English words each time.

[Gakusee]

1 hour ago, ROKUJURO said:

Emilll,

the SORI is of course related to the length of a blade. A SORI of 10 mm on a short TANTO might be called 'deep' or 'pronounced' while 25 mm on a long KOTO TACHI could be seen as moderate.

Sori of 2.5cm is always deep sori for “normal” blades (ie not excessively long odachi). 
 

There is little point dwelling about what Aoi meant. They are just using machine translations without checking those too thoroughly. Sometimes, they even copy and paste parts of descriptions from other swords onto another and create confusion and so on.

 

Rely on your eyes looking at the sugata in the full-size photos to evaluate sori.  

[Emil]

I agree, looking at the descriptions doesn't make me any wiser

[Bugyotsuji]

This Ōdachi has just come up for polishing. At the Goryo Jinja in Nara, they have a JPY 3-million yen cloud/crowdfunding event through October.

御霊神社クラウドファンディング | 御霊神社 (amebaownd.com)

 

[Emil]

10 minutes ago, Bugyotsuji said:

They have a JPY 3-million yen cloud/crowdfunding event through October.

 

 

 

That's a deep sori!

 

What are they funding? The polishing cost?

[Bugyotsuji]

Actually that $20,000 may include the cost of replacing some fabric on their shrine float.

[Bugyotsuji]

And some folks might say “I’m deeply sorry!”

…when they are not really sorry at all.

 

(Poor attempt at a joke. I’ll get my hat and coat.)

[Bazza]

EXCELLENT Piers - put that hat and coat back on.  My kind of wordplay joke, the kind I make all the time to groans around the table or wherever I happen to be...

BaZZa.

[Jussi Ekholm]

Thanks for posting this Piers, that was unknown ōdachi to me. Unfortunately it is of quite late make but really intresting none the less.

 

While numerical measurement of sori can give a good basic idea, there are factors that affect the feeling of sori despite numbers stating factual info. The placement of sori on the blade, nakago-sori etc. factors can affect the perceived curvature even though actual numbers would disagree on that. You can have two swords of identical length and measureable sori but when placed side by side they can seem very different due to other affecting factors.