New piece - kantei anyone? : )

[Rich Thomas]

Hi guys just wanted to share my new baby, cos I'm v excited. Also thought it might be fun to put out as kantei opportunity : ) Details of the blade:

Nagasa: 68.6cm

Sori: 2.1cm

Motohaba: 3.1cm

Sakihaba: 2.5cm

Boshi: 5.1cm

Nakago length: 19.7cm

Mune: Iori

Kitae: Itame mixed mokume with fine thick ji-nie, chikei and midare utsuri

Hamon: Nioi deki, ashi, yo, sunagashi, deep nioi guchi

Nakago: Mumei, O-suriage (15 - 20cm)

 

 

cheers

Rich Thomas

I spent a bit of time taking these trying to improve my photography skills, hope you like

[Rich Thomas]

Couple more pics

[Jean]

Bizen Nambokucho, perhaps Ichimonji?

 

Your pictures are outstanding except for the Kissaki. What is your technique?

[takakage]

A nanbokucho bizen den sword .

 

Hamon and boshi looks like omiya morikage.

Some works of morikage looks like bizen osafune kanemitsu.

[nagamaki - Franco]

would someone please be kind enough to explain how it is that so many kantei requests are not accompanied by a full profile image of the sword? Sorry, but in my learning experience this makes no sense.

[Jean]

It is there Franco, in a link, just under the description of the blade

[nagamaki - Franco]

[Ted Tenold]

I'll offer my bid;

 

 

Osafune Kanenaga (Kencho)

 

[Rich Thomas]

Jean, Thanks so much, yes I dropped the ball on the kissaki looked fine on the cameras LCD, but after packing everything away and loading to the PC I realised the exposure was down a tad, there's lovely fine sunagashi within temper. To tell you the truth the technique was picking Darcy's brain, which he kindly shared, and then hours of trial and error on the right light source, exposure and positioning, but basically I set up (in a darkened room) as you would for viewing hamon and then getting the right distances etc.

 

So this blade has been attributed directly to smith not den and we are on track with Nambokucho, Bizen osafune, though a different school to Chogi or Kanemitsu.

I think the close ups may be some what misleading in that they are presenting things 2.5 times the actual size and focussing on relatively smaller sections of the hamon. Generally it is forming a seemingly straightish line within midare as per oshigata (trying not to give anything away :D ...). Patrick, like Omiya Morikage (though I have not researched his work) this smith can be compared to Kanemitsu (though hamon is generally mixed with more compact midare patterns according to research).

 

P.s. Yasurimei is sujikai

 

cheers

Rich

[takakage]

So, in spite the long kaeri, but sujikai and inner line of the hamon straight, could be a work of motoshige.

[Anthony]

From what I see, it looks gorgeous!

 

PLEASE post a full-length, high-res picture if at all possible.

 

I love looking at hamon like this because you can almost feel what the smith was feeling. It looks almost aggressive towards the nakago with a definite softening toward the middle and tip sections. Almost as if his thoughts were calmed as he went.

 

Or perhaps it was the other way around... Peaceful in the beginning with an aggressive inclination toward the end. Realizing the power of his creation, he went into a more aggressive mind-set.

 

Such is the artistic merit shown in many Japanese works... and why everyone appreciates them differently.

 

Also, in the oshigata, you can see the hamon in the kissaki/boshi... is this apparent when holding it in-hand, or proof of a re-polishing? Blades like yours keep me absolutely captivated... congratulations!

 

Anthony.

[Jean]

Congratulation once again for your pictures . I know perfectly well Darcy's technique, but one needs hours to reach this result. What I would like, if possible, is to see an overall picture of the blade with your technique.

[micha]

So, in spite the long kaeri, but sujikai and inner line of the hamon straight, could be a work of motoshige.

 

Boshi is not typical motoshige.

 

Micha

[Veli]

Rich,

 

Just like others, I admire your skill of photography (as well as the Bizen tachi you photographed).

 

I wonder if we should open a new thread in "General Nihonto Related Discussion" called e.g. "Ultimate Photography", where members who have taken such a great photographs (or even decent ones) could share the parameters they used (light source type, lighting angles, distances source-object-camera, camera type, objective specs, aperture used, pedestal use, triggering method, exposure selection etc. This would help us all on our way towards the Holy Grail of the nihonto photography:

 

What I would like, if possible, is to see an overall picture of the blade with your technique.

 

If a sufficient number of members think this is a good idea, I volunteer to open the thread and draft a list of questions.

 

Veli

[Rich Thomas]

Atari to Patrick, Motoshige it is........

 

Interesting on the boshi, it is different to most Motoshige oshigata I have seen, but I've only seen a few, most of the books I've read will describe his more common boshi as quiet or modest (notare) that are o-maru or ko-maru; or midare komi; midare komi with a hint of togari. I've also seen; gently waving asaki madare ba or notare to maru or togari head with nie hakikake, then in Connoisseur's (pg 192, Osafune Motoshige II) is says "and there is either a short or long kaeri" ... so I think this fits, and more importantly the shinsa team did as I'm the first to admit I have much to learn.

 

Jean, Anthony, Veli thanks so much for your comments on the photo's/blade. These did indeed take a long time Jean! I don't think my camera (or maybe it's me) will be able to cope with a full length shot, I've tried before but most unsatisfactory results are usually the outcome... my camera is not an SLR but a Cannon G9 which was a great point and shoot with flexible manual operation but not in the same league as SLR. I could probably break it up into consistent thirds both sides.... but not what you're after. The only other pic I have of the whole blade was one I grabbed from the results of the NBSK polishing competition 2009 where it won a silver award, (polished by Watanabe Kogou, student of Nagayama Kokan - Living National Treasure)

 

 

Veli I think it's a good idea, I've only started recently and don't have great technical knowledge with photography so not sure I can contribute much from that perspective. I find a lot of pleasure in trialling different methods of photographing (though with me it's still VERY hit and miss) I like to call it the organic approach :D Finding the time is the hard part.

 

Anthony I'm not quite sure what you mean by proof of re-polishing? but, yes you can see the boshi in the kissaki here's a little pic from a different source, hopefully this helps?

cheers

Rich

[takakage]

Thanks Rich,

 

A very nice sword by a famous swordsmith.

[Jean]

Rich,

 

Only thing I can say is that I am still baffled by your pictures which are of Darcy's standard

[micha]

Hi all,

 

Here some oshigata's from motoshige to compare.

 

Have fun.

 

Micha

[micha]

And some more.

 

Greetings Micha

[takakage]

You can add this one

 

http://www.japanszwaard.nl/Z-D3.html

 

regards.

[mdiddy]

Rich,

 

Thanks for the exercise. I enjoyed your pictures very much. Do you have any guidance on which generation Motoshige this is?

 

Matt

[Jean]

Nidai

[micha]

The question should be :

 

Is it an old (ko-motoshige) or a late Motoshige ?

 

Is there more than one generation ?

 

Greetings

Micha

 

Fujishiro:

 

MOTOSHIGE OSAFUNE [KENMU 1334 BIZEN] CHKOTO JOJOSAKU

He is the son of Osafune Morishige, he is considered to be the older brother of Shigezane, and has the G of kura no Suke. The two people, the older Rai Motoshige, and the Motoshige who was one of the three disciples of Sadamune, are made out to be separate persons, but the denial of the three disciples of Sadamune is for the same reason as that of the ten disciples of Masamune. The older Motoshige is seen as being of the early period, and is thought to have been rather a senpai. The reason the styles of the earlier Motoshige and the Motoshige after Kenmu are different are due to the changes of the times. His works can be seen covering a time span of over fifty years, from Kagen to Enbun and Jji, and the long life of Motoshige is the subject of legends. Accurate proof cannot be offered from the point of records for during the kot period, but during the shint period, there are many records of kaji with long working lives of fifty or sixty years. The works of this smith include many tachi, hamon is sugu saka-gokoro ashi iri, and there are some with nokogiri ha, gonome choji nado. Also, there are takenokozori (musori) tant, and when he reached his later years, he also made sakizori tant, and there are also nagamaki. (Saij wazamono)

[Darcy]

I wish I had more time to come and talk swords with you guys. Rich asked my opinion on the boshi and so I'll share my thoughts here.

 

1. the oshigata doesn't show the attribution, and it's made directly to Motoshige. No Den. This means that the entire work falls within the typical body of work of the smith. By definition, this is not an atypical boshi according to the NBTHK. I usually defer to these bodies when what I know challenges what they know, and usually those are opportunities to soak up knowledge. In this case I do agree with them in that the boshi falls within his range of work.

 

2. If you are going to reference works you cannot just randomly throw up any Motoshige attribution you find. This work is not modified by DEN. If you look at those oshigata the majority of them say DEN Motoshige. Den as a modifier in this case does not mean school, it means "almost." And not "almost" in terms of almost-the-smith, there is no uncertainty in a DEN attribution. When you have a straight attribution to the smith, it means it is representative of the work style of the smith. When you have DEN attribution, the almost means that contains features not typical or is missing a feature considered typical. This is why it is a logical error to take a series of mumei DEN attributions and use them to challenge a straight mumei attribution for typicality. Rather, one should be using signed works to establish what is typical, then use those to establish what is attributable, then decide what is DEN and what is not DEN. The nature of DEN is also not that it is a huge shift. Remove the last joint of your pinky finger and we can say you have "almost" 10 fingers. Remove 5 fingers and it's not fair to say you almost have 10 fingers again.

 

3. Typicality and frequency are not the same thing. I am typically eating every day. Frequently I am not eating during the day. The event of eating happens for one hour out of 12. It would not be a surprise to attempt to phone me and find out I cannot speak because I am eating. The hour of eating is entirely within my normal behavior for a day, however, you would most likely encounter me during a non-eating hour. The eating is infrequent (uncommon), but typical (expected to be found and not a surprise when it happens). There's a distinction there that is important. It's particularly important when you are dealing with a long lived smith.

 

4. There are arguments about 2 generations, or else one long lived smith, and that should flavor your thinking about Motoshige and other smiths that fall into this same kind of argument (Kunitoshi, Kanesada, Kanemitsu). If you accept one generation it means you need to accept a lot more work style changes than you would otherwise expect, both due to client needs, changing times, and the smith learning new techniques over the years. All of those are going to produce variations in the work style, which makes it particularly important to get a handle on what exactly the work style is. Focusing like a laser beam on one type of boshi for a smith who lived so long he may be two people is probably going to lead you astray.

 

5. Even when you are dealing with a smith like Go who does not live a long time, there is variation in work style as he goes from his teacher to possibly association with Norishige to association with Masamune. When you crack open the books, anyone who has read up on Go, will see "the boshi is Ichimai." This is another problem in what we read... we read that and assume that's the whole story, then you go and look at all these famous Go swords and it's hard to find an Ichimai boshi except on a couple that are in photos. Look through the Juyo oshigata, almost never will you see it. But it's this hallmark trait we thought? I think what the authors in this case intend to get across as a point is that when you see an Ichimai boshi there's a strong Go signal associated with it, even if he did not make it all the time or even frequently, when it's there it's very Go-esque. So one can't be blinded and start discarding things as not typical: Ichimai boshi is typical for Go, even though it is not frequent, it is so typical that the opposite happens, people will want to discard the frequent and more standard boshi production because of how this point is made in books they read. Vs. swords they've seen.

 

6. Another thing on the "not to do" list is to throw up tanto of any form (sunnobi, etc) to illustrate what the boshi of a suriage tachi/katana should look like. What's even worse is using a naginata naoshi. Those are not references for the design of a tachi.

 

7. About this particular boshi, the NBTHK describes it as midare komi with some turnback, and says that this is a straight attribution. The turnback is infrequent in his work as is midare komi. It is not atypical though. Flip open the Nihonto Koza and the author states about boshi: "Quiet ones that are o-maru or ko-maru are the most common and occasionally there is also one that is midarekomi with a hint of togari." These are frequency comments within a statement that defines typicality. Both are typical, with the quiet boshi being more common. When we read this statement in the Nihonto Koza then go up and look at this boshi of the Motoshige, it is certainly not quiet and it is midare komi with a hint of togari and the conclusion on reading this statement is that the boshi above is perfectly typical by the description in the Koza, and then we refer back to the NBTHK who says again that the entire sword is perfectly typical.

 

All of the above lead me to conclude that this is a perfectly typical Motoshige, and the fact that it is less common in boshi style makes it a good learning opportunity.

 

Lastly, someone on NMB always gets it right and someone will always complain that the right answer was not achievable . Kudos to Patrick and Ted was thinking the right thing and played the odds. Given the two, more likely to see activity like this out of Kanenaga than Motoshige so it makes it a good call. Bearing in mind what is said above, playing the odds doesn't have to do with typicality but has to do with frequency.

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts... I gotta get back to pressing matters.

[Darcy]

The question should be :

 

Is it an old (ko-motoshige) or a late Motoshige ?

 

Is there more than one generation ?

 

Fujishiro:

"No".

 

That's an invalid conclusion. There is the blind men describing an elephant problem here. Each one of these guys writes based on their experience. If you take any of them as a prophet and copy/paste their words as facts rather than as opinions, you are going to be wrong and furthermore you are going to teach other people to be wrong and you will teach them how to follow your pattern and be wrong often.

 

Open Fujishiro and read up on Bizen Yasumitsu and his typical form of work, and what they were "mainly." Now open Nagayama and look up the same smith and find out about his typical form of work.

 

That there is a lesson to the reader... whenever you are doing this kind of research you need to crack open everything you have, big or small, and suck in the opinions. They are opinions. You then need to work like a historian would, correlating the opinions and trying to stitch together a picture of the elephant based on the guy holding the tail, the guy holding the trunk, and the one with his hands on the side. Some of the information will support each other, and some will contradict, and resolving the contradictions can be done without invalidating them.

 

It is equally fair to ask if this is a first or second generation Motoshige. Fujishiro does not believe in two generations, he usually does not. Look up his opinion on Kunitoshi and his opinion on Kanemitsu. He always will fall on the side of one smith working for a long time with his work modified by the changing times. Look up in the Nihonto Koza and they give the other side of the argument on Motoshige: they say that the Ko-Motoshige works are quite old and comparatively few and look very much like Kagemitsu. I think their opinion is leading to being unsure if there is even a connection between the two as first and second generation but I'd have to go back and look.

 

So once again we have two experts, one of which is saying "an elephant is like a wall" and another saying "an elephant is like a rope." They are being given two windows into reality, and they do not have all of the facts, just what they see through their window and they make their judgment based on that. I can look out my window and say the day is cloudy and you can look out your window and say the day is sunny and someone else can look out their window and say you're both on crack it's dark and raining and we can all live within the same town. We just don't have the full picture so we have to embrace that these are opinions based on subjective viewpoints that may all be true, or some may not be true, but going out and pushing one theory over another as being true is certainly a way to be wrong for one simple reason.

 

We really do not have the facts.

 

That makes the theories stand based on their arguments. Fujishiro throws a good argument but so does the Nihonto Koza.

 

I resolve these arguments when I present swords by showing both sides, and giving my feelings about the relative merits of the arguments, and then my own personal reaction to them which may change over time as I see more swords.

 

In this matter it's not black and white if there is one or two generations. We say "Ko-Motoshige" in fact to keep the confusion alive, the same way we say "Niji Kunitoshi" and "Rai Kunitoshi." Similarly we say "O-Kanemitsu" and "Enbun Kanemitsu" and other things of this sort. That's not always the entire reason and in Motoshige's case we do say the Nidai without referring to a Shodai, but the point remains that the issue is made fuzzy due to lack of facts. Without the facts its not possible to award one argument to being right and another being wrong.

 

Time machine is required.

 

So, someone may absolutely ask if this is first or second generation.

 

What is correct here is to not tell them no, the question is invalid, but the answer is to say, "We actually cannot decide on the two generations thing. This work though belongs to the set associated with the Nidai or later generation Motoshige work, vs. the older and possibly Shodai work."

 

Now I'm getting sucked in... and definitely must go .

[Brian]

Darcy,

Always an absolute pleasure reading your thoughts and reasonings. I know you don't often get a chance to participate, but allow me to thank you for those excellent posts. I miss them

 

Brian

[cabowen]

Is it correct to assume that Darcy was the seller of the sword under discussion?

[Markus]

6. Another thing on the "not to do" list is to throw up tanto of any form (sunnobi, etc) to illustrate what the boshi of a suriage tachi/katana should look like. What's even worse is using a naginata naoshi. Those are not references for the design of a tachi.

 

Sorry to hijack this thread and I don´t wanna go to far off topic here but I totally agree on this one.

Do always compare blades of the same category. An important point often missed.

[b.hennick]

Hi Darcy:

Here is a note just to let you know I hope that you do get sucked in again! Thanks for the thoughtful posts.

[Rich Thomas]

Hi Guy's sorry been asleep, now at work so can't stay long. :D

 

Chris, no Darcy didn't sell this, I bought it from Ken-ichi san in Japan. Who I met when I was at the DTI in 2009 and spent a whole afternoon in his shop, some amazing peices.

 

Darcy and I have been discussing this blade for a while particularly around getting some good photo's out of it, which was the original intent of my post I guess, as I had finally taken some shots that I was proud of! I thought it would be fun to also present for a kantei opportunity as I find Motoshige an extremely interesting smith/s whose work draws from many influences.

 

I shared with Darcy my thoughts on the presented oshigata, (thanks Micha it has evoked some good discussion) in that I found it strange that this Juyo Motoshige was being compared to other Juyo Den Motoshige, tanto and naginata nayoshi to highlight that this Juyo didn't have a 'typical' boshi. I think in another post we established there were anywhere between 105 - 120 Juyo/Toku blades out there attributed to Motoshige, here we've presented 4 attributed to Motoshige to state that it is not typical. What is typical for Motoshige, a smith renowned for his flexibility and change in styles? IMHO as I said above I think (according to my research) this is one of the 'less common' boshi, (it must have fired Darcy up :lol: ). Here's another Juyo Motoshige oshigata done by Clive Sinclare possibly? - different again

 

 

Anyway, I respect all opinions as that is how I learn, and this one has led to more discussion and learning for me and is appreaciated. I took the advice that you guys gave me three years ago and spent money on books and time studying rather than buying any sword I could afford (a trap I was falling into). I was after a Bizen den Nambokucho piece and loved this blade, the fact that it was attributed to Motoshige was a bonus as I think he/they is/are :lol: a very interesting research proposition. I've also gone off and started reading up specifically on Osafune Kanenaga to get a better understanding of Teds bid !

 

Thanks again, now back to work!

Rich