I am heading to the US on Monday, December 9th, and will stay there until January 12th. I will let this blog rest for this time and hope that my readers remain loyal to me and look forward to a new year of interesting insights into the world of Japanese sword and swordfittings (and related subjects of course).

I use this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all my readers and buyers of my books! Now let´s do a bit statistics. The blog is now on since February and the average traffic per day is about 150 views. The five most read articles so far were in descending order: The Musashi-Masamune – One blade, four oshigata, Some thoughts on utsuri, From the life of Unno Shômin, The swords of the Tokugawa-shitennô, and The difficulties in classifying Kamakura blade shapes. The top twelve of views are from the following countries, although the rank of Austria might not count as it goes probably back to a large extent to my very own test clicks. So a big thank you to my US and German readers! And I am also kind of proud that Japan is amongst the first seven (or six if you don´t count Austria;).

As for the plans for next year, there will be a great standard work published towards the end of spring which is done in cooperation with two sword societies, but more details will be revealed when the time comes.

Another upcoming reference work is the A-Z of Japanese Swordsmiths Schools. This work goes back to a customer inquiry I got in early summer this year. I was asked to compile a kind of detailed encyclopedic list on all swordsmith schools as they are nowhere found in a comprehensive manner, i.e. not just the major schools we all know but all schools, from A-Z, (e.g. also such “exotic” schools like Tokujira, Yakuôji, Asago-Taima, Ganmaku and the like which are hardly addressed in the usual references). Well, the project was initially for private use and was about to fail because of the costs. So my customer (who prefers to remain anonymous) and I decided to make it a public project (with a little funding from the initiator). And for this, it will be much more detail as originally planned and will contain genealogies and examples of workmanship.

Another publication on my list is a third supplement to my Kantei volumes as I have gathered oshigata for about further 400 pages. Apart from that I would greatly welcome any suggestions!

Again thank you for following my blog and early happy holidays to all of you!

PS: Although this blog is on rest, you can reach me at any time via mail.