Honami Family/Kinzogan Mei

[William Jennings]

Hello all, I have been doing some reading about the different types of mei, including differentiating tachi mei vs katana mei, kinpun mei, gin zogan mei, and kin zogan mei. I read an article which stated that the Honami family were a family of sword appraisers that applied kin zogan mei attribution to swords that were o-suriage. From my understanding, the Honami would apply the mei when the sword was being shortened or they would investigate the characteristics of a mumei blade/compare them to other blades to make sure their attribution was correct. I also have learned that it would have been very expensive to have this attribution process done, to have an attribution chiseled into the sword, and then inlaid with pure gold which also would have been expensive. Only wealthy samurai could have afforded such a process. I want to make sure that I am understanding everything correctly that I have read. I also have a few questions.

 

1) Was the Honami family most active in sword appraisals during the edo period? I assume there were several generations that appraised swords. 

 

2) How accurate was the Honami family or these kin zogan Mei? I'm sure that it would have been challenging for them in certain cases and I was curious how many kin     zogan mei are submitted for shinsa today and are found to be incorrect?

 

3) Would the Honami family ever intentionally apply a false attribution? For example If a wealthy samurai wanted their sword to be attributed to a famous swordsmith even though it obviously wasn't made by that swordsmith or was from a different era, would the Honami family apply a false attribution if the samurai was willing to pay enough? (no offense intended by this question, but I know money talks)

 

4) I know that the Honami family were the main family of appraisers that applied kin zogan mei. But after time, I am assuming there were others that started to copy the Honami family and started applying kin zogan mei attributions to swords. Is that correct?

 

 

Thank you all for your help and I looked through some old threads on this website but didn't find anything. But feel free to paste some links to threads or articles that might be helpful for me to learn a bit more! Thanks again! 

 

[Hoshi]

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Only wealthy samurai could have afforded such a process. I want to make sure that I am understanding everything correctly that I have read. I also have a few questions.

 

For old Honami, only the Shogun, the Kyoto Aristocracy, and some Daimyo families had access. A sword with a Kinzogan mei by one of the old Honami was, at some point in time, in the collection of the Tokugawa, Kyoto Aristocracy or one of the major clans. The Umetada family did the inlay work for the old Honami, and the costs involved were extremely high. 

 

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1) Was the Honami family most active in sword appraisals during the edo period? I assume there were several generations that appraised swords. 

 

I recommend this book from Markus Sesko. 

 

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2) How accurate was the Honami family or these kin zogan Mei? I'm sure that it would have been challenging for them in certain cases and I was curious how many kin     zogan mei are submitted for shinsa today and are found to be incorrect?

 

Old Honami attributions are considered highly reliable, and in fact form the basis of the NBHTK's attribution tradition when the corpus of a smith is largely mumei. The reason is that they had access to swords that do not exist anymore and oversaw many shortenings of previously zaimei blades. Kinzogan by Kotoku, Kojo, Kochu in particular are held in the highest regards. 

 

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3) Would the Honami family ever intentionally apply a false attribution? For example If a wealthy samurai wanted their sword to be attributed to a famous swordsmith even though it obviously wasn't made by that swordsmith or was from a different era, would the Honami family apply a false attribution if the samurai was willing to pay enough? (no offense intended by this question, but I know money talks)

 

You bet. After Kochu came Koyu. While he is still considered reliable, the NBHTK has overturned a small number of his attributions. After Koyu, the Honami family essentially started to "print money" in order to relieve the economic burden of the Shogunate and their own. The Honami family needed to find new business models, and the reliability of attributions came down substantially. In fact, some later Honami are so unreliable that the saying goes that the smith is 'anything but the Kinzogan' 

 

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4) I know that the Honami family were the main family of appraisers that applied kin zogan mei. But after time, I am assuming there were others that started to copy the Honami family and started applying kin zogan mei attributions to swords. Is that correct?

 

Yes, although little is known on the topic as these Kinzogan generally do not bear a Kao. The exception is Honma Junji who did a few Kinzogan mei, inlaid by Gassan. 

 

Today, the NBHTK is essentially the spiritual descendant of the Ko-Honami. 

 

[Rivkin]

The basic rule is if you see kinzogan to major name but no modern papers, unless the blade is clearly out of the woods - it means there is an issue. It might be a major issue or it might be that the modern attribution is similar, but two notches below, since if its just one notch below it quite often can still be papered.

The general accuracy is hard to estimate since anything grossly inaccurate will be considered fake, i.e. "the attribution is wrong so the kao must be fake". And unfortunately Honami Kochu's papers have been faked with extreme accuracy. Part of the reason he also did a lot of attributions. 

 

So the acknowledged cases are most limited to Juyo+ blades where a modern sayagaki for example says - yes, kinzogan to x, but its really y. You do see certain patterns where modern attributions clearly diverge from the best Honami standards. There are also Honami whose judgements per se were not up to the standards - Nishu, to the lesser extent Koson, many others.

 

Why there are so many kinzogan without kao, who made those, is not a well researched subject for obvious reasons, i.e. if its not signed, how do we know who did it. Reasonable guess its many side branches of Honami family, but its also of note that engraving kao was considerably (one might even say ridiculously) more expensive work compared to a signature without kao. Its possible that issuing "kinzogan without kao" was a lower cost appraisal option with some later generations.

[William Jennings]

Thank you all for your help! I will do more reading but this has been really helpful for clarification!

[Lewis B]

OK, this topic seems pertinent. Can anyone tell me who this kinzogan Mei relates to?

 

 

[Lewis B]

OK, I think it's Kunzan. How reliable are his attributions?

[Tsuku]

On 10/10/2024 at 9:00 PM, William Jennings said:

Hello all, I have been doing some reading about the different types of mei, including differentiating tachi mei vs katana mei, kinpun mei, gin zogan mei, and kin zogan mei. I read an article which stated that the Honami family were a family of sword appraisers that applied kin zogan mei attribution to swords that were o-suriage. From my understanding, the Honami would apply the mei when the sword was being shortened or they would investigate the characteristics of a mumei blade/compare them to other blades to make sure their attribution was correct. I also have learned that it would have been very expensive to have this attribution process done, to have an attribution chiseled into the sword, and then inlaid with pure gold which also would have been expensive. Only wealthy samurai could have afforded such a process. I want to make sure that I am understanding everything correctly that I have read. I also have a few questions.

 

Yes, kinzogan-mei were very expensive. If a blade had a Hon'ami kinzogan-mei, especially from an old judge, it was almost certainly the collection of a daimyō (though which family specifically is often lost).

 

And in general you are correct, that kinzogan-mei were only applied to mumei nakago. But there are examples where the Hon'ami applied kinzogan-mei to ubu blades. It is exceptionally rare and all the examples I can think of are from Kōtoku (more on him in a moment).

 

On 10/10/2024 at 9:00 PM, William Jennings said:

1) Was the Honami family most active in sword appraisals during the edo period? I assume there were several generations that appraised swords. 

2) How accurate was the Honami family or these kin zogan Mei? I'm sure that it would have been challenging for them in certain cases and I was curious how many kinzogan mei are submitted for shinsa today and are found to be incorrect?

 

Hon'ami Kōsatsu was in charge of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sword maintenance. But the appraisal process really seems to have started started with Hon'ami Kōtoku around 1600, which the shōgun granted the Hon'ami family a copper seal to authenticate their origami. This continued through a long and convoluted family structure until the modern day.

 

Old Hon'ami records — kinzogan-mei, origami, etc. — are very, very rarely overturned by the NBTHK. Part of the reason is respect for the old judgements, and part of it is that the old judges had access to original signatures that have long since been lost to us through suriage. Anyways the first five judges are the most important. (The Hon'ami family was around for a long time before this, but this is the important part of the lineage for our discussion here.)

1. 光徳 Kōtoku (1554-1619) has about 10 jūyō, but a mind-blowing 13 jūyō bunkazai

2. 光室 Kōshitsu (1583-1625) and 光温 Kōon (1603-1667) have about 10 jūyō and 2 jūyō bunkazai apiece

3. 光常 Kōjō (1643-1710) has 120 jūyō and 2 jūyō bunkazai

4. 光忠 Kōchū (Hon’ami head 1697-1725) has 200 jūyō and 3 jūyō bunkazai

5. 光勇 Kōyū (1704-1770) has 35 jūyō

Kōtoku's judgements are absolutely ironclad. You will almost never see any of his kinzogan-mei on the market, they are priceless. Kōchū and Kōjō are probably #1 and #2 that you will see commercially available, and they are both extremely reputable and legitimate appraisals are almost never overturned. After Kōyū the appraisals start to get weaker...

 

On 10/10/2024 at 9:00 PM, William Jennings said:

3) Would the Honami family ever intentionally apply a false attribution? For example If a wealthy samurai wanted their sword to be attributed to a famous swordsmith even though it obviously wasn't made by that swordsmith or was from a different era, would the Honami family apply a false attribution if the samurai was willing to pay enough? (no offense intended by this question, but I know money talks)

 

The short version is yes, attributions by later Hon'ami judges are much less reliable than earlier judges. Outright forgery was fairly rare, but inflation of appraisals happened — if you need a Masamune for a gift for the shōgun, but you don't have one or don't want to give yours up, maybe you can pay the Hon'ami fee in advance and get a Shizu re-appraised as a Masamune after "very careful appraisal." Or turn a Naoe Shizu into a Shizu Kaneuji, etc.

 

You do also need to be aware of fake origami. There are quite a few floating around and some of them are very good forgeries. The best ways to tell are a malformed seal stamp on the back, a misshapen kao, or the paper not feeling right. The paper was very tightly controlled and quite consistent, and it has a particular feel to it.

 

The gold (ha) standard reference book on this is Markus Sesko's history of the Hon'ami family, and I would encourage you to buy a copy — it's a great reference.

[Tsuku]

On 10/11/2024 at 10:35 AM, Lewis B said:

OK, I think it's Kunzan. How reliable are his attributions?

 

"Kunzan" is not a Hon'ami, he was Honma Junji-sensei, one of the founders of the NBTHK. He used 薫山, read as Kunzan, as his gō ("artistic name"), which literally means "fragrant mountain." This is a bit of an inside joke — Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeia, and クンクン kunkun means "to sniff." Honma-sensei supposedly had the habit of sniffing loudly when he was inspecting blades, and one day one of his staff jokingly called him kun-san ("Mister Sniff"), and this was his inspiration for the gō.

 

His successor, Kan'ichi Sato-sensei, used "Kanzan." (I forget the kanji off the top of my head.)

 

Tanobe-sensei, the former head of research at the NBTHK and their student, uses 探⼭, read as Tanzan, which literally means "research mountain."

 

Modern attributions are not really comparable to the old Hon'ami judges. There are strengths and weaknesses of both, a bit like apples and oranges. Honma-sensei's opinions, however, are generally well-regarded. He didn't do very many kinzogan-mei though, I think about ten at jūyō.