This time I want to talk about a special custom, and that is the traditional sword gift that the Tanzan-jinja (談山神社) made to each new shôgun. Before we start, the Tanzan-jinja was mostly referred to by its mountain name, Tônomine (多武峯), in feudal times, just to point that out if you come across conflicting data when doing research or reading about that custom in another context. Anyway, the Tanzan-jinja, or Tônomine respectively, is located close to present-day Sakurai (桜井), Nara Prefecture. It is about 15 miles (25 km) to the south of Nara station (linear distance), or 38 miles (62 km) to the south of Kyôto (again, linear distance).

There exists a seven-volume record titled Kyôto Oyakusho-muki Taigai Oboegaki (京都御役所向大概覚書), a collection of official memoranda and reports fro the office of the Kyôto magistrate, the Kyôto machi-bugyô (京都町奉行), which was compiled in Kyôhô two (享保, 1717). Therein we read that from the 18th year of Keichô (慶長, 1613) onwards, the Tanzan-jinja (Tônomine) presented at every shogunal succession one sword from its possessions to the new shôgun. Practice was this that the Kyôto magistrate office required the Tanzan-jinja to bring in advance a few dozen swords so that they in turn can call the head of the Hon’ami family to come in and pick the one that is most suitable for the present.

Picture 1, from left to right: Ietsuna, Tsunayoshi, Ienobu

In order to not just provide dry text here, I want to introduce a sword that was presented by the shrine on one such occasion, namely a Nobukuni (信国) tantô (see picture 2) that was given to the 5th Tokugawa shôgun Tsunayoshi (徳川綱吉, 1646-1709) when he took over from Ietsuna (徳川家綱, 1641-1680) in the fifth month of Enpô eight (延宝, 1680). By the way, Kôjô (本阿弥光常, 1643-1710) was the head of the Hon’ami family at that time but we don’t know who exactly was in charge of picking the sword.

Picture 1: jûyô, tantô, mei: “Nobukuni” (信国), nagasa 26.1 cm, uchizori, hira-zukuri, mitsu-mune

The second shrine gift that I want to introduce here is from the sixth year of Hôei (宝永, 1709) and concerns the succession of Tokugawa Ienobu (徳川家宣, 1662-1712) taking over from Tsunayoshi and becoming the 6th Tokugawa shôgun. In preparation to his 1709 succession, the astonishing amount of 58 swords were brought from the Tanzan-jinja to the place of the Kyôto magistrate and for this time, we know who from the Hon’ami family was chosen to pick the gift sword, Hon’ami Kôzan (本阿弥光山, 1634-1714). That is, it was maybe not the head of the family who was proceeding to Kyoto to meet with the official.

Incidentally, we also know that Kôzan was in charge for picking the Tanzan-jinja sword gift for the very next succession, which took place in Shôtoku three (正徳, 1713), the year before he died. So from the Kyôto Oyakusho-muki Taigai Oboegaki record we know that Kôzan had to judge the condition of the polish and had to arrange a polish (togi-age, 研上ケ), the making of a new shirasaya, a wooden habaki (yes, wooden, that’s what the record says), and a new sword bag (katana-bukuro, 刀袋) if necessary. What he picked was an unsigned wakizashi attributed to Bizen Osafune Sadamitsu (備前長船貞光), measuring ~ 42 cm in nagasa…

That kind of speaks volumes for the then, i.e. mid-Edo “treasure” swords of the shrine, i.e. a signed Nobukuni is pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but an unsigned and therefore probably ô-suriage blade of a minor Bizen smith? For the auguration of the new shôgun? I want to do more research in the future to see if also other shrines were making similar gifts, what seems likely, at least for ther larger shrines, and maybe these shrine presents were more seen as nice gestures, unlike gifts from daimyô where all the context of family bond and alliances comes into play. But be that as it may, it tells us how many swords these shrines were storing at any time throughout the Edo period, i.e. if they picked 58 for “a closer consideration”.

In this sense, there is hope that there are still treasure swords going to be discovered  in some shrines in the future, as for example pointed out here. Also, I just finished translating an article for the Western members of the NKBKHK which deals with an armor that was probably worn by the famous warlord Katô Kiyomasa (加藤清正, 1562-1611) and that had been stored away more or less unnoticedly in a simple bucket in a shrine in deep Nagano Prefecture for about 400 years!

In view of the shortly published second part of the Hasebe chapter of my Kantei series, I just wanted to share a certain difficulty that I face on a regular basis when doing research for this series. I will skip the greater context and details of workmanship here because they will be addressed in the upcoming chapter.

So the difficulty I am talking about is significantly differing oshigata and/or blade descriptions. The blade in question is a hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi by Hasebe Kunishige (長谷部国重) which was also introduced by Tanobe sensei in his Me no Me article series. Therein he uses it to point out that certain rare interpretations by Kunishige bear a resemblance to contemporary Nobukuni (信国) works, in concrete terms through a typically wide Enbun-Jôji-sugata and a hardening in suguha. Tanobe also explains that the standing-out ô-itame with nagare-masame towards the ha and mune and the large, roundish, and long running-back kaeri (which connects with muneyaki that continue to about the mid-blade section) eventually identify the blade as a Hasebe work. So that’s all fine, case almost closed, but I wanted to find out more on that blade, in particular to see if there are more of this kind in order to work out similarities/differences between the Hasebe and Nokubuni schools.

As Tanobe mentioned that the blade in question is jûyô, I was able to find it in the records (it passed in 1967) and what do I see, a significantly different oshigata (see picture 1). No more a relatively pure suguha as seen on the oshigata used by Tanobe sensei. Also no strikingly roundish bôshi and neither a drawing nor a mention of the long muneyaki. In the jûyô oshigata we see a hamon in shallow notare (or with good faith a suguha-chô that is mixed with notare at best) that even shows a hint of ko-chôji or ko-midare in places. Also, the bôshi features a relatively pointed kaeri, or at least that is what the “artistic rendering” of hataraki within the bôshi suggests. Apart from that, check out the significant difference in thickness of the ha along the monouchi and fukura. There is the same notare protrusion on the omote side, close to the tip of the suken shown on both oshigata, but then Tanobe’s version shows quite a thin suguha whereas the jûyô version shows a wide ko-notare/sugha-chô that features ups and downs. And on the ura side, the ha protrusion of the mid-blade section comes at the end of the gomabashi in the Tanobe version whereas on the jûyô oshigata, that protrusion starts after the gomabashi horimono. And also please notice how much wider the ha on this side is along the fukura…

Picture 1: Tanobe oshigata left, jûyô oshigata right.

It is very interesting to see how two experts can “read” a blade differently. Anyway, I just wanted to give you a quick look “behind the scenes” of my Kantei series and stress that picking references can be a sensitive task. So on one hand, I don’t want to work through the same old blades over and over again that are found in every book but on the other hand, I also don’t want to introduce one oddity after the other. Aim is to provide a good balance between very typical works and a few more rare interpretations which help to understand the variety of workmanships of certain smiths or schools in some cases. That should do it for today and I will be back with part 2 of the Hasebe chapter shortly.

Similar reads:

The Musashi-Masamune – One blade, four oshigata
Another different oshigata
Kiyomaro oshigata comparison

From the very end of the kotô era onwards, we start to get more reliable information on the biographical data of swordsmiths, for example the dates of birth and death and what year honorary titles were received etc. This “tendency” does not only go back to the obvious fact that more data is extant the later, i.e. younger we find ourselves in history but also to the relatively massive bureaucratic apparatus the Tokugawa bakufu brought along. In addition, shintô and shinshintô smiths, or at least the renowned masters, signed in greater detail than their kotô colleagues, generally speaking. In this article, I want to introduce such an example.

So when we look into the meikan, we often read things like: “Smith X died in the fifth year of D and we know dated blades from B to C,” at least when it comes to the more well-known shintô and shinshintô masters as mentioned. Or we read for example: “There exists a blade dated C that is signed with the supplement ‘made at the age of Y’ what calculates his year of birth as A.” This all gives us a pretty decent idea of when the smith worked but also tells us about what were his early years, when did he have his zenith, and which blades can be regarded as late works. The blade that I want to introduce goes “a step further” in what it states about when it was made and under which circumstances so to speak. But first of all, let me introduce the very smith we are dealing with.

Picture 1: Portrait of Hôki no Kami Masayoshi

It is Hôki no Kami Masayoshi (伯耆守正幸, see picture above), the 3rd generation of Satsuma’s Masayoshi (正良) lineage. Masayoshi was born in Kyôhô 18 (享保, 1733) as son of the 2nd generation Masayoshi, whom he succeeded under that name, but when he received his honorary title “Hôki no Kami” in Kansei one (寛政, 1789), he changed the yoshi character of the hereditary name from (良) to (幸). Masayoshi was in his mid 50s when he received that title and reaching the age of 70, he started to add his age to his mei. Apart from that, he signed with the supplement “Satsuma-kankō” (薩摩官工, about “official smith of the Satsuma fief”), which is already found on blades from his earlier Masayoshi (正良)-phase.

Picture 2: katana, nagasa 70.1 cm, sori 1.8 cm, shinogi-zukuri, iori-mune

Now the blade shown above is very special because it is signed the following way:

omote:

“Hôki no Kami Taira Ason Masayoshi” (伯耆守平朝臣正幸)
“Hachijûroku-sai botsuzen shinren no saku” (八十六歳没前真錬之作, “carefully made before his death at the age of 86”)

ura:

“Bunka jûgonen tora nigatsu” (文化十五年寅二月, “second month of Bunka 15 [1818], year of the tiger”)
Taira Masazane kore o shirusu” (平正真記之, “recorded by Taira Masazane”)

In short, Masazane, one of Masayoshi’s students, recorded on the tang that Masayoshi carefully made that blade before his death and when the master was already 86 years old. We know that Masayoshi died on the 22nd day of the fourth month of that year. At first glance, this would mean that the blade was made two months before his death but here we have to weigh in a custom of swordsmiths to date blades by default with the second or the eighth month of a year unless it is a special date signature where the exact day and month the blade was made is recorded. Masayoshi followed this custom as the vast majority of his dated blades either show the second or the eighth month in the mei, in particular the second month. That said, the blade in question could have been theoretically made anytime between the first day of the first month and the 22nd day of the fourth month of Bunka 15 (= Bunsei 1), the day that Masayoshi died. Well, Masazane’s supplement is quite a rarity and therefore I tend to think that this was maybe the very last, or one of the last few blades, that Masayoshi made. In other words, it was something special that compelled Masazane to add that info to the mei.

When it comes to Masayoshi’s latest works for comparison, we know a kogatana signed with the supplement “made at the age of 82,” a katana dated Bunka twelve (1815) and signed with the supplement “made at the age of 83,” a katana dated Bunka 13 (1816), and a katana dated Bunka 14 (1817), all of them papered. So far I was unable to find another example that was made in the same year as the one introduced here, in Bunka 15 (= Bunsei 1), the year of his death.

Now when author and expert Fukanobu Yasumasa (深江泰正) introduced this blade back in Token Bijutsu #240 (January 1977), he interpreted the mei in the literal way, i.e. that Masayoshi pesonally made this blade before his death and that Masazane recorded that fact after the master had passed away. However, he also notes that the yasurime are katte-sagari, the tyical file marks of his students, whereas Masayoshi himself finished his tangs in katte-agari yasurime with kiri at the beginning (or just with kiri-yasurime). Thus Fukanobu sensei forwards the possibility that the tang was indeed finished and signed by Masazane but that the blade was probably completely made by master Masayoshi, maybe even down to the horimono.

Well, I think I respectfully disagree with this theory. To understand why, I recommend you watch the excellent recent BBC documentary Handmade in Japan linked above that shows kind of a similar case. It portrays the Komiya (小宮) family of swordsmiths and shows how nearly eighty-eight years old grandfather Komiya is overseeing his two sons and his grandson making swords. Grandfather Komiya says himself in the documentary: “I’m unable to do it anymore because of my age,” what is understandable when you take into consideration the physically hard work it requires to forge-fold the steel bundle and to forge out the blade. Even if Masayoshi was super fit at the age of 86, I have my doubts that he did the whole forging work. Maybe he did the yakiire himself, that’s quite possible. Also taking into consideration the fact that master Masayoshi trained more than 40 students, that several of them were allowed to do daimei for him (and the best of them also to do full daisaku-daimei), and that the finish of the tang speaks for a student’s work, I am thinking of the following “cause of events,” although of course this is all nothing more than pure speculation:

The local forge in Satsuma must have been quite a bustling place and as master Masayoshi was famous throughout the country, the order situation was surely pretty good. When Masayoshi got really old, let’s say 80+, he was basically doing the same thing as grandfather Komiya does in the BBC documentary, and that is talking to customers, to the administration of his fief, and walking around in the forge giving orders and tips. As the sword production was probably still in full swing in early 1818, some students were busy making daisaku-daimei works for the master, Masazane being one of them. Then Masayoshi passed away towards the end of the fourth month and I think that the sword introduced here was the very daisaku-daimei blade that Masazane was working on at that time. So after the funeral and everything, Masazane maybe feld obliged to commemorate that context on the blade, implying that it was the last sword Masayoshi “made” before he died. However, it is absolutely possible that a few other blades that were just finished or in production at the time of Masayoshi’s death were signed this way by the students who were making them as daisaku-daimei and that maybe this is the only one that is extant today (or has been discovered yet).

Anyway, it is a very interesting and rare inscription and I literally came across that blade the day before I watched the BBC documentary for the first time. So I thought I have to share this with you.

About three years ago, I wrote a humble article here on sword-related “things” happening on the eve of on of Japan’s most famous historical events. Well, this time, we find ourselves a little earlier than the 47 rônin but the incident is of similar historic significance. But before we continue, let me introduce the sword that was the catalyst for this article.

The above picture shows a katana by Osafune Yoshimitsu (賀光) which was made in Kanshô five (寛正, 1464) for a certain “Monk Kenju”. The full signature is “Bishû Osafune Yoshimitsu – Kenju-bô – Kanshô gonen nigatsu hi” (備州長船賀光・けん志ゆ坊・寛正五年二月日, “on a day in the second month of Kanshô five”). Please note that the name of the monk (bô, 坊) is noted in an “archaic” manner, i.e. as “Ke-n-shi-yu” but which reads Kenju. Now who was this Kenju? None other than the famous Buddhist priest Rennyo (蓮如, 1415-1499) (see picture below). So let me explain in the following the context of Rennyo’s Kenju name, the things happening before and around this sword was made, and why it is therefore an important historic piece.

Now Rennyo was born in Ôei 22 (応永, 1415) as eldest son of the later 7th abbot of the Hongan-ji, Zonnyo (存如, 1396-1457), and this is kind of where Rennyo’s later problems already started: His mother namely wasn’t Zennyo’s wife, she was his grandmother’s  maid. Five years later, in Ôei 27 (1420), Zennyo eventually married, not the maid but Nyo’en (如円, ?-1460) from the Ebina (海老名) family. With this marriage, Rennyo’s biological mother had to leave the Hongan-ji and he never saw her again. It is said that most of his later “motivation” goes back to the trauma Rennyo had suffered being separated from his mother at the age of six (counting in Japanese years).

When Rennyo was 17 years old, that is in Eikyô three (永享, 1431), he became a yûshi (猶子) of Provisional Middle Councillor (gonchûnagon, 権中納言) Hirohashi Kanenobu (広橋兼郷, 1401-1446). Yûshi means literally “another child considered as one’s own”. It is similar to an adopted child (yôshi, 養子) but does not come with the legal obligations a yôshi does. The yûshi approach was mostly used for giving one’s child in the care of an influental person to develop good connections for its later career, and not to aim at a possible succession as head of that family. After becoming Kanenobu’s yûshi, Rennyo, then still bearing his youth name Hoteimaru (布袋丸), became a monk at the Shôren’in (青蓮院) in Kyôto whereupon he took the name Kenju (兼寿), the very name that is noted on the sword.

In Eikyô eight (1436), Rennyo’s grandfather Gyônyo (巧如, 1376-1440), the 6th abbot of the Hongan-ji, abdicated and his father Zonnyo became the 7th abbot. When Zonnyo died in Chôroku one (長禄, 1457), Rennyo’s step mother tried get her own son that she had with Zonnyo, Ôgen (応玄, 1433-1503), to become the 8th abbot but it was decided in favor of Rennyo. Well, probably because Rennyo was still the first born son of Zonnyo and already well-versed in all Buddhist things, being 42 years old whereas his step brother Ôgen was only 24 (or 25 if you count in the Japanese way). As abbot, Rennyo immediately started to expand the influence of the Hongan-ji in the Kinai provinces around Kyôto what was much to the displeasure of the Enryaku-ji, the head temple of the Tendai School located on Mt. Hiei. Funds and protection were mostly provided by artisan-class followers of Rennyo from congregations in Ômi province but Rennyo was refusing to pay obligatory funds to the Enryaku-ji which he was supposed to pay on behalf of the Shôren’in as the Enryaku-ji was then the head temple of Kyôto’s Shôren’in.

So issues began to build up and Rennyo must have known that some of them were probably ending in physical violence. Therefore he approached the Osafune master smith Yoshimitsu to forge him a sword for self-defense. And he turned out to be right: In the first month of Kanshô six (1465), i.e. the year after the sword was made, the Enryaku-ji declared Rennyo a butteki (仏敵), an “Enemy of Buddha,” and sent out warrior monks who destroyed Rennyo’s then base, the Ôtani-Hongan-ji (大谷本願寺) in Kyôto. Warrior monks were sent out again three months later and others followed and these “activities” of the Enryaku-ji went down in history as “Kanshô Presecutions” (Kanshô no hônan, 寛正の法難). Sometimes Rennyo was able to bribe the monk warriors due to the wealth of the congregations he had convered in the area, other times he was only able to flee at the last minute and due to timely assistance from a cooper who saw the attackers coming, leadinf Rennyo out through the back of the temple. In short, Rennyo was very well in need of a sword! This context and the notation of Rennyo’s Kenju name makes the very blade an important historical piece as mentioned and it is today designated as an Important Cultural Property of Ôsaka Prefecture (the blade is preserved in the Ôsaka City Museum).

After the attacks of 1465, Rennyo tried to gain more support from local followers but the Enryaku-ji with its ties to the court and the bakufu was too strong and a kind of a peace deal with the temple was made in the third month of Ônin one (応仁, 1467) that required Rennyo to retire from the post of abbot of the Hongan-ji. Also, the Ônin War broke out that month, significantly weakening the bakufu, and so Rennyo was realizing that he will not have any government support or outside forces to protect his congregations from the Enryaku-ji. So he left Kyôto and lived a nomadic life, eventually rebuilding the Hongan-ji in northern Echizen province, gaining many many followers, and returning to Kyôto in Bunmei seven (文明, 1475) with such a following that Mt. Hiei could no longer prose a credible threat to him and his Jôdo Shinshû School (quoting from Wikipedia).

I hope this was another interesting short excursion into Japanese history with a concrete sword as a starting point and I will continue to do so whenever I come across similar historically important objects that are related to the sword world.

At the end of last year, members of the JSS/US, NBTHK/AB, and NBTHK/EB were able to buy the first volume of our joint 5 volume Tosogu Classroom project at the actual cost of producing the books. The translation was paid by the three above mentioned parties as a benefit to their members.

The first volume is now also available for non-members for the price of $60.00 (+ shipping, ~$4 US, ~$6 EU). For the time being, the book can only be ordered from me directly and public sales on Lulu and Amazon will not be released until the end of the year.

The first four volumes of the Tosogu Classroom set are hardbound with a dust jacket (US only), 8.5″x11″, will cost $60.00 each, and contain more than 500 pages of text with hundreds of black and white pictures. The fifth (complementary) volume is hardbound too, has the same format, will be approximately 350 pages but with illustrations being in color, it will cost $120.00. Volume 1 includes an introduction into fittings, materials, design, surface treatment, carving, inlay, coloring, early tsuba (both iron and kinkô), and the beginning discussion of artists and schools who worked in iron, going into great detail on the artists and work they produced (please find the table of contents of volume 1 below). Volume 2 will be the second volume on iron and volumes 3 and 4 will cover the kinkô artists. Considering the number of pages and pictures each volume will contain, either individual volumes or the complete set of five will be a valuable addition to your library.

Please get in touch with me via “markus.sesko@gmail.com” if you want to order the first volume, or if you have any question.

Volume 1 Contents

In this article I am going to tell a little bit from my everyday challenges as “sword translator.” To start with, I have to say that when it comes to kanji or grammatical puzzles that I can’t solve (or that I am not really 100% happy with with my attempt at explanation), these things stick and are saved in that certain part of my brain that is still working pretty well. When it comes to swords, tsuba, or sword fittings, there is chance that I totally forget everything within some months or so because it is just too much, so you can pretty much embarrass me if you show me or ask me about a certain blade some time down the road and I totally forgot that I have ever laid my eyes on that piece.

Anyway, let’s get back to topic. A little over a month ago I was approached about a cutting test inscription that contained a wording, or rather a certain character, that is relatively uncommon in tameshi-mei but which I had seen before. The mei in question can be seen in picture 1 and is found on a blade signed niji-mei “Masashige” (正重), either Sengo Masashige or Shitahara Masashige, with the style of the signature rather pointing towards the latter. The tameshi-mei in question reads (於千手銚之貮ッ胴拂・壽尊) and everything but the one character is clear, i.e. “cut by [a certain] Toshitaka (壽尊) + kaô through (拂) two bodies (貮ッ胴) at (於) Senju (千住),” Senju being the place in Edo where most of the cutting tests took place. So only “problem” here is the character (銚).

Picture 1

From the syntax of the tameshi-mei, i.e. the position where the character in question (銚) is found, it is obvious that it either means that Toshitaka “tested” this blade cutting at Senju through two bodies, or that Toshitaka “cut” with this blade at Senju through two bodies. So either kore o tamesu or kore o kiru respetively. As mentioned in my book on Tameshigiri, the term “tested” has been noted in earlier times with different characters,  e.g. with (様), (試), (験), or (驗). In short, there is a chance that the character in question should just read tameshi/tamesu, that is: “Senju ni oite kore o tamesu futatsu-dô harai – Toshitaka + kaô.”

Well, I could have just left it as it was, end of story, but I don’t like the “should” part in my last sentence and so I kept going, trying to see if I can find more, and this article is so to speak a chronology of the investigation into that conundrum. First of all, I instantly remembered that I have dealt with this character once before, and that was translating a hozon paper for a katana by the Dewa shinshintô smith Nagai Kunihide (永居国秀), and that was back in 2013. This blade too bears a tameshi-mei but as I was only working with the paper (see picture 2), I was not aware about the subtleties in syntax and thought that I was facing here a name, Nabeyuki (銚之) (more on the readings of this character in a little), because it was mentioned in one go with the name of the guy who performed the cutting test, a certain Saitô Shin’emon (斎藤新右衛門) by the way.

Picture 2

So having the same kanji and phrase (銚之) on a blade that bears a cutting test inscription too raised some red flags and I immediately had the hunch that it was not a name that I was facing translating the hozon paper four years ago. No sooner said than done, I started to dig into my references. Where else does this kanji or rather phrase appear? As I have a pretty decently organized archive, I made some finds right away, three to be precise, which I will introduce in the following.

Lo and behold, they are all related to cutting tests. So in hindsight, we are obviously not talking about a name as I had interpreted the mei just on the basis of the hozon paper. First example, shown in picture 3, is a Norishige (則重) blade that was shortened by Yokoyama Bizen Sukehira (横山祐平) and tested by Yamada Asa’emon (山田浅右衛門) in Bunsei eight (文政, 1825). The syntax of the mei (二ッ胴銚之) suggests that in this case the kanji is used in the way of “cut,” i.e. “cut through two bodies.” Now “problem” with this blade is that when I saved it, from the winners-auction.jp website, the detailed pictures already did not load anymore so just the quotation of the mei has to be taken with a grain of salt, also because I am generally very cautious when it comes to auctions like that.

Picture 3

The same applies to the auctioned blade shown in picture 4. Here we have another famous smith, Chôgi (長義), whose blade was again shortened in Bunsei eight by the same Yokoyama Sukenaga, and again Yamada Asa’emon cut with it through two bodies, what a coincidence (same seller BTW, *cough, cough*). In this case however, the character in question was wrongly interpreted in the listing as being the character for “forged” (鍛), and the (clumsily written) sayagaki did so too.

Picture 4

But I also have a watertight reference, and that is a Ko-Mihara blade that passed jûyô with which Yamada Asa’emon Yoshihiro (山田浅右衛門吉寛, 1738-1770), the 4th generation Yamada, cut through a body with the chiwari cut (see picture 5). The syntax of the cutting test inscription of this blade, (江戸於石町銚之), suggests that the character in question is read in this case as tamesu,. “Tested,” namely “tested in Kokumachi in Edo.” But before I continue with going into etymological considerations and my thoughts on this matter, I want to point out that the 1981 jûyô paper quotes the character in question as (䤵).  I think it is actually still (銚) (see picture 6) because of the two lateral horizontal strokes on the nakago, instead of three, and the upward sweep of the right vertical “hook” of the radical (儿). In short, I think that the right part of this character is (兆) and not (非).

Picture 5

Picture 6

So what is it now, “cut” or “tested”? First I tended 70:30 towards “tested,” tamesu/tameshi, because of the syntax of the blade introduced in picture 1 and the two wathertight, i.e. papered blades introduced in pictures 2 and 5. The character (銚) itself reads chô/jô/yô in its Sino-Japanese reading or nabe in its Japanese reading. It is the kanji for a certain small pot or sake bottle with handles. But it can also read suki and in this context, the character stands for “spade/plow.” Now no kanji dictionary lists this character as meaning “cut” or “test” (although some also say it can mean hoko, “spear” though) but I think that here we have to go to the etymological origins of this characters, which is “using a metal, metal tool/implement (金) to bisect (兆) something,” for example soil in the aforementiond meaning of “spade/plow.” Does that ring some bells, “metal used to bisect something”? Sounds pretty much like the definition of a sword to me.

That said, I have seen other instances where characters were used in the sense of their pictographic meaning and not necessarily for what they usually mean. So the cutting tests introduced above surely don’t mean “sake bottled through two bodies” and for the time being, and to conclude this article, I am now leaning 70:30 towards interpreting the character as “cut” rather than as “tested.” So I hope that brief tour into things like that, some of my daily tasks, was kind of interesting and if any of my native Japanese readers has further insight into this matter, please don’t hesitate to comment below. It would be very much appreciated. Of course, also please feel free to comment if you are not a native Japanese reader 🙂

Due to an overwhelming amount of inquiries that I now receive on a daily basis, I have to change a certain service/assistance that I offer.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am – honestly – very grateful to be approached by so many sword lovers every day now, asking about a specific translation of a mei, sayagaki, hakogaki etc. or about my opinion on the one or other piece. This is all fine and my basic translation fees can be found in the TRANSLATION SERVICE/PRICES menu at the very top of my page, or will be discussed along in your inquiry.

But now we have to talk about signature assessments, i.e. in the sense of signatures being possibly shôshin (authentic) or gimei (forgeries). I receive inquiries about this matter probably once or twice every single day and there is a lot of responsibility in answering such inquiries. People in touch with me can reassure you that I always try my best to answer, as good and as detailed as I can, any question about signatures, or in other words, I usually don’t blunty reply “its gimei” or “I don’t know”, i.e. I always try to explain why I think, for example along the execution of certain parts of a character etc., that a mei might be shôshin or gimei. And so far, I did not even charge for that service

But this has to change, not because I am greedy or mean, but because I just can’t take away time from my other (paid) projects to do such sensitive stuff any more for free. That said, I will charge from now on $150 for any inquiry about the authenticity of a a signature. Not for the reading per se, that will be free forever (unless it is a very long and very complex mei), but for the inquiry about if a signature might be shôshin or gimei.

Now there is of course some “lead time” before I charge that amount. That is, when you approach me about possible authentication of a mei, I will tell you in advance about how many shôshin references I am able to compare your mei with and we can take it from there. For example, maybe I only have a single or just a couple of reference mei for a certain smith, or none at all, and in this case I would not charge anything of course and would just give you my personal opinion as I did so far. But in case you approach me and I am able to tell you that I can compare your mei with let’s say 20, 50, or even 100 shôshin-mei, e.g. from NBTHK/NTHK papers or from publications, that will be the point when I have to charge $150 because as mentioned, comparing a mei to a considerable number of references is not only a very time consuming but also a very sensitive task (just think about people planning to submit papers on that basis). So for this fee, I will not only tell you the actual number of authenticated mei I am be able to compare your signature with but also provide you with a detailed sheet on the points where the mei in question matches, or does not match with the references. Naturally, I do not provide any guaranee for authenticity, also of course because I don’t have the blade in hand to compare workmanship and/or quality with the mei in questiion, but if I can tell you in advance that I am able to compare your signature with for example 20, 50, or even 100 authentic mei as mentioned, that should be a pretty decent factor for you to make up your mind on where to go from there (i.e. papers). Of course you will receive a pictorial reference where I point out the aspects of where the mei in question differs, or not.

So that’s gonna be about the new fee for signature comparisons and if you have a signed blade you want to know more about, just let me know and as mentioned and we can take it from there. Thank you very much for your attention.