Now it´s official, I started to write my next publication, working title Tameshigiri – The History of Japanese Sword Testing. This is going to be an extensive source of information on everything historic tameshigiri related, i.e. from the history of sword testing in general, on the sword testers, the criminal punishment during the Edo period, the use of executed felons as medium for sword tests, over the actual cutting tests themselves to the inlay of test results on sword tangs via a setsudan/saidan-mei. But the publication will be in size and price somewhere between my Legends and Stories around the Japanese Sword and the Nihon-shinto or Nihon-shinshinto-shi, so not as expensive as for example the recently published Natsuo and Kantei-zenshu volumes or the Signatures of Japanese Sword Fittings Artist. But as I have two other projects running at the moment (one of them private), I would be very grateful for a little support to finish the Tameshigiri project smoothly (please see donate link at the bottom of this blog). Well, I am not going to start any crowdfunding as there are other very worthy projects out there to support, see here for example, and as mine is IMHO to small for that anyway but as mentioned, any support will be received with sincere gratitude. Thanks a lot for your attention!