Why Mumei?

[Clive Sinclaire]

Gentlemen

I have just put a shinto wakizashi onto http://www.To-ken.com under Sword Register no. 116. This blade (oshigata shown) has a pronounced sudare-ba and kikisui-ba that are usually associated with Tanba (no) Kami Yoshimichi to whom the mumei blade is attributed on an old NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho paper.

Also there is interesting tama-ba in the kissaki and I have made an interesting (I think) observation regarding this and the general shape of the hamon. This I would like your comments on as it is a purely personal observation that may be considered unrealistic or worse.

 

However, generally the sword's workmanship is OK but the blade is mumei. After reading Nakawara and Martin's "Facts and Fundamentals about Japanese Swords", in which the subject of unsigned blades is extensively discussed, I am moved to ask if members can come up with any good reason why this sword - an ubu shinto wakizashi, should be unsigned?

 

Your comments on the above, would be most welcome.

Regards

Clive Sinclaire

[Marius]

Typical answers would be:

 

1. the smith was not entirely satisfied with the work (doubtful)

2. It was the work of a deshi

3. It was presented to a shrine as offering

4. It was presented to a Samurai VIP

 

I think I have run out of the common answers....

[Kronos]

5. The smith considered his work to speak for itself and "it to be known who made it"?

[Clive Sinclaire]

Gentlemen

Thanks for indulging me with you answers, but please consider this:-

1) It may be true that the workmanship speaks for itself, but so does all the many thousands that are signed and this never stopped independent swordsmiths from signing their work.

 

2) If the smith was unsatisfied with his work, I think he would have scrapped it and started again rathe than completed it, right down to the yasurime and leave it unsigned.

 

3)Usually, if it were the work of a deshi it would have been dai-mei rather than left mumei.

 

4) I have never heard of a votive sword being left unsigned and I know of many that are signed. I am sure that a shrine would rather have a valuable sword signed by a current master swordsmith than be presented with a less valuable mumei piece.

 

5) If it were a special order of a samurai of rank, I think the same as 4) applies and indeed mnay swords are inscribed as specially made for so and so.

 

None of the above really convinces me and, as Nakahara says, I can think of no good reason why a sword, especially one that is Ubu and shinto, should be mumei.

 

What about my idea that the hamon may be a dragon in an abstarct form, chasing the tama in the same way that a semi-abstract kiku is certainly depicted ? or should I simply take more water with my medication?

 

Clive Sinclaire

[drbvac]

Nakahara Nobuo and Martin's translation of the book Katana Kantei - Facts and Fundamental, maintain that some blades that were gimei and yet very close to the work of the smith whose name was forged would often have the mei removed - to hopefully be attributed through kantei to the same smith. The mei would not have to be a perfect forgery if the work were "close" enough.

 

In terms of the dragon abstract your interpretation is certainly plausible and of more credibility than mine - in fact a fairly astute observation that once stated tend to keep drawing your eyes. Like someone saying " I can see the water and mountains in that Picasso' as i nod my head and can not see anything.

[gtstcactus]

Perhaps the smith was doing a little extra work on the side for an "enemy samurai or daimyo" and didn't want it discovered that he had collaborated with the enemy...

 

A long shot but you never know

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello, if the smith had made 3 swords in order to fill a commissioned order, typically the buyer would choose one of those swords which was thought or recommended to be the best of the three, which would then be signed. The other two generally were then relegated to the shop for sale as unsigned pieces. In the case of an accomplished smith like a Tanba No Kami Yoshimichi, what were or may have been considered the two lesser pieces of the 3 swords produced, could still be pretty darn nice swords, after all they were made by a well rated swordsmith. The exact year slips my mind, but Bruce Kowalski addressed this issue in a talk on wakizashi in a lecture at one of the NY shows in the late 1990's.

[cabowen]

Sometimes these unsigned blades have had a spurious signature removed.....

 

Watching smiths work, I have seen many unsigned blades sitting around a workshop. Many times a smith is experimenting or has several extra blades left from an order that are left unsigned and sit in a drawer or where ever. I know that sometimes these get sold under the table, so to speak, and go out the door unsigned, often at a discount to people who didn't care about the signature...Sometimes too orders get cancelled and a smith will finish out a blade without signing it, putting it in stock in case someone wants something similar at some point. When a smith dies, often there are many unsigned blades in various states of completion. These usually end up somewhere, often in the forges of students or friend smiths. I wouldn't be surprised if they were finished and sold unsigned....

 

I would not be surprised to find that smiths in the past did the same thing and sold blades in an unsigned condition for the same reasons...

[Muki]

Cabowen, in your estimation... what is your best guess on how productive a smith would be as far as production numbers during a "normal" smithing career?

[Chinook]

The reason a ubu Shinto wakizashi is left unsigned is becouse it was meant to be unsigned. Unless a person was there at the time it was left unsigned to testify otherwise the blade should be reguarded with some uncertainty and that should reflect in the kantai-sho and the value. This is reasonable, unsigned blades should not be reguarded quite as high as signed blades.

Thank You, Mark P.

[Kronos]

Is a mumei blade of higher quality than a blade signed Masamune still not the better piece?

 

Now that would be a rare occurence in this example as I doubt there's many mumei swords of higher quality than any one of the signed works of Masamune but it's largely an illogical psychology of the human condition and if one were able to think completely impartially the unsigned blade would be regarded higher. Unfortunately this is not the case as shown by all branded items whether they be a designer handbag or a painting.

 

There's also the possibility of it being signed originally and then the mei being removed later for any mnumber of political or personal regions, the story of Muramasa swords and Tokugawa Ieyasu being a prime example.

[Marius]

Clive,

 

 

Excellent thread Thank you for bringing out this highly interesting issue. Nakahara is thought-provoking. It is good to discuss his opinions. Controversy is good, it makes us challenge the "estabished truth".

 

[Jimmy R]

This is a very interesting subject. I have several unsigned ubu Nakago Nihonto but one in particular has always made me crazy. It has NBTHK kanteisho from the 70s papering it to simply "Masahiro". I bought it in Sasebo Japan several years ago and it has all the characteristics of the first generation Hizen smith of said name. I have never heard of an unsigned blade by him. It is very similar as far as photographable aspects are concerned to the sword listed as stolen by the Pepin brothers (it is not that sword). I would love to know for sure which smith made this. If anyone wants to help I can send a file of pictures.

Jim

[Clive Sinclaire]

Gentlemen

I am not entirely convinced by the various posts, but I guess it is an unprovable thing anyway and can only ever be a speculative subject.

 

But what about the abstract dragon hidden in the sudare-ba? Maybw I am the only one who can see it - Nurse, more medication immediately!!!

Regards

Clive Sinclaire

[IanB]

Clive, I have always been doubtful of the 'signature was removed' theory for the very simple reason that to do so would entail the removal of quite a bit of metal from the face of the tang. When first chased (and signatures were chased not engraved), the indentations are quite deep and cutting off metal to remove all traces of a previous signature would leave the tang asymmetric when viewed from the mune. You could argue that the other side could also be filed or scraped down to even things up, but that would leave a very thin tang indeed. There is also the fact that many, many blades are either known to be gimei or are gimei but haven't been doubted. If such a signature was added by the maker then there is no problem, but how many of these have had the false signature added at a later date? If that were the case it would have to be added to a mumei blade. In other words, how often in reality did smiths in the past actually sign their work? Perhaps not as often as we now think.

Ian Bottomley

[Jimmy R]

I have a sword that papered to sue mihara with an obvious signature removal. There would be no way to overlook the way such actions would alter a tang.

Jim

[Guido]

I have a sword that papered to sue mihara with an obvious signature removal. There would be no way to overlook the way such actions would alter a tang.

I used to own a sword that had a Sayagaki by Mr. Tanobe stating "Ubu Mumei" - however, I had a signature removed a few years earlier. I guess it all depends on who does the removal; Yoshihara Yoshindo, for example, is known to do an excellent job in this regard.

[cabowen]

I have watched smiths remove signatures and even participated at their urging. When properly done, not much metal is removed in most cases.....They simply deform the surface around the signature with a punch then refile a bit.

 

As to the frequency of signing, it is well known that koto period smiths signed much less frequently and that these older blades often lost signatures due to shortening. Mumei in a koto blade is not considered a fault. In Shinto and afterward, signing a blade became the established norm, thus unsigned Shinto blades are not regarded very highly by many collectors. I do not think one will get Tokubetsu Hozon, for example, on an unsigned Shinto blade...and unsigned shinshinto and kindaito. I wouldn't ever consider collecting an unsigned kindai/gendai blade.

 

How many blades does a smith make in his working career? That depends on the era and the smith, his patrons, etc. We know that some smiths working during the 1930's and 40's made upwards of 1800 blades. Modern smiths may only sell 2 long swords a month, or a max of 24 a year. Working 40 years at that rate means an output of roughly 1000 swords. Remember smiths did not always have power hammers and grinders to speed things along....I would think 1000 blades in a career a reasonable number for prior periods. There may some data from Shinshinto smiths one could hunt down for a more accurate number....

[Lance]

Interesting about smiths having many blades lying around their workshop, I remember seeing a small number of swords a few years back for sale online made by a WW2 Gendai smith (Nobufusa or Shigemitsu?) that were supposed to have been found by a family member.

I always assumed Koto and Shinto smiths weren't working on as small or personal a scale as they do today? At least during the Koto period, due to the higher demand for weapons, would they have had what could be considered mini-factories? The better or more talented students assisted him personally, forged swords that their teacher would sign with his own name if the work was good enough, and supervised others in the style of the head sword smith?

Would the output be increased if there were more apprentices/workers doing a lot of the prep and finishing work back then?

Regards,

Lance

[Kronos]

I always assumed Koto and Shinto smiths weren't working on as small or personal a scale as they do today? At least during the Koto period, due to the higher demand for weapons, would they have had what could be considered mini-factories? The better or more talented students assisted him personally, forged swords that their teacher would sign with his own name if the work was good enough, and supervised others in the style of the head sword smith?

Would the output be increased if there were more apprentices/workers doing a lot of the prep and finishing work back then?

Regards,

Lance

 

From what I understand of it (which isn't much admittedly) this wouldn't be the case. From my understanding swords were a very expensive item that a low level samurai would only buy once in a lifetime, have passed down or maybe have replaced because of fire/breakage now and again. Daiymo and other higher ranking samurai would likely have multiple swords simply because they could but this was an extremely small proportion of the population and would not of affected the overall demand too greatly. In 1200-1300 the population of Japan was in the 6-8 million range after just recovering from a plague (possibly bubonic) in 808 and having doubled since around 1000CE.

 

Between then and 1600 the population doubled or trebled to the 12-18million region, but even taking the lower initial number of 6 million and the higher number of 18 million the samurai only made up 10% of the population so between 1300 and 1600 only 4000 swords needed to be produced each year to keep up with the population. You could double that again so each samurai had 2 blades and double it again for fire damage/kizu/breakage in battle and the 1500 or so swordsmiths active at any one time during this period would only need to produce 10 each year to keep up with demand.

 

So given these numbers I think they may of been only making one long sword a month to keep the quality levels high and they would still have time left to make Yari etc

Personally I think it varied a bit the best smiths working exclusively for higher level Samurai and Daiymo would be more picky with what they presented to their masters apart from a few who could consistently churn out exceptional blades and some of the lesser known smiths may of mass produced somewhat to make ends meet producing upto 40 blades a year.

[O koumori]

It might be that a smith had one (or more) blades in progress, and became ill or died before inscribing it. Conceivably it might have been sold in "as-is" condition.

Dan

[sanjuro]

off the wall - out of nowhere theories aside, I have a parallel question that bears on the original post.

If it was considered common practice to sign your work for shinto smiths, Why are there so many gimei examples from this period? for a sword to be gimei it would need to have been mumei to begin with so that someone could add a spurious signature or, it would have required an existing signature to be removed so that a spurious one could be substituted. The process if not difficult would be time consuming on a sword of lower quality to have a more illustrious signature added and pointless if the sword were high quality to have a lesser signature added.

[cabowen]

off the wall - out of nowhere theories aside, I have a parallel question that bears on the original post.

If it was considered common practice to sign your work for shinto smiths, Why are there so many gimei examples from this period? for a sword to be gimei it would need to have been mumei to begin with so that someone could add a spurious signature or, it would have required an existing signature to be removed so that a spurious one could be substituted. The process if not difficult would be time consuming on a sword of lower quality to have a more illustrious signature added and pointless if the sword were high quality to have a lesser signature added.

 

It would take an hour, maybe two, to remove a signature and place a new one...Turning a low ranked or mumei blade into a Kotetsu would increase the value exponentially and certainly worth the effort of an hour or two....

 

There were most certainly smiths making blades and selling them mumei for this purpose as well....

[kusunokimasahige]

Could it also have something to do with the period the sword was made ?

 

I mean that in wartime sometimes many swords were needed, therefore were left unsigned.

 

It would of course also be regional, depending on domain or province or even fief.

 

Or, but that is far fetched, a smith did not want a particular blade to be traced back to him, especially when used in

assassination, highway robberies and what have you.

 

KM

[Mark Andrews]

Dear colleagues, Great thread Clive,

 

Of my little knowalage of this topic, I can add this.In the New sword era.There were strict polices in place by the powers that be regarding making and selling Nihonto.This was also the time of the art of sword fencing. So again strict style and length of blade was enforced.A smith would need to apply through the operate channels ( a middle man ) to approach on his behalf the governing bodies of that time.If the application was granted, this would then give the smith permission to have his blades signed or upgraded to use for example a title on his blade, which means he can give prestige to his family and his profit margin.Mumei, blades are normally found in "this period" to be of revival types of earlier styles,which come under a new art of reminiscing the Samurai of the waring period pre 1600. There was a supply and demand for these revival art swords but many ended up having been signed "after the fact" and sold for profit.I personally would have a Mumei blade of this period as long as it is made well and not tampered with.Of course there were standard blades which were left unsigned also and not revival art.Maybe the cost of application would out way his production cost of making such blade's.

 

 

Regards,

Mark.

[Guido]

Some pretty wild theories floating around in this thread ...

 

In the Muromachi period alone, about 100,000 swords were exported to China and Korea, and during the Sengoku Jidai of civil war there must have been a pretty high demand for blades, too. Not only samurai wore swords during that age.

Or, but that is far fetched, a smith did not want a particular blade to be traced back to him, especially when used in assassination, highway robberies and what have you.

"Far fetched" is quite the understatement ...

[Jacques D.]

Hi,

 

What about Shiiremei and gimeishi ?

[Rich Thomas]

Hi all,

Interestingly at the last Sydney shinsa, a mumei wakizashi was bought in. Gordon R identified it as a joint work by Tanba no kami Yoshimichi and another smith (that I can't for the life of me remember). He was very excited about it because he realised a signed, virtually identical, special order blade was documented in one of their reference books, (partail oshigata and nakago).

 

His explanation was that Yoshimichi and other well ranked smith probably made 3 joint work blades, presented them to the client who selected one, this they signed and it's in the book. The other two sold as mumei. One ended up in Aus.

cheers

Rich T

[runagmc]

The other smith was Kawachi kami Kunisuke. There's a post on the forum about this somewhere...

[sanjuro]

On the subject of theories concerning this specific subject, Guido makes the comment.

[some pretty wild theories floating around in this thread ... /quote]

 

And in reality we do not and cannot know what was the reasoning of the times some 3 to 4 hundred years ago.

To quote a friend of mine on the subject, to whom I apologise for quoting him without permission.

"We don't know. We really don't know. Amazing how acutely uncomfortable many are with that being the state of things. Apparently, collectors/nihontophiles abhor a vaccum, at least when it comes to gaps in knowledge. And so, if necessary, "histories" (or theories) will be conjured to smooth the fissures of ignorance."

 

No real answers, just more questions. :D