Swordsmith Signature?

TomBell said:

Thanks for the link to Legacy Arts. I have tried Benson but he is busy. Hall seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I see references to him but I can't find any contact information. Jimmy Hibiachi in San Francisco also seems to have gone missing. I have a phone number for him but no one ever answers. I must have seen Tenold's website but forgot it. I will contact him.

I have searched far and wide for swords with a sosho mei and the oldest one, I could find was mid 17th century, consistent with your observation. "According to Yoshida, Shinkai Kunisada started daimei for his father in the second year of Shoho (1645) with a sosho mei ("grass" or running/cursive style mei) ( Fig.4, 5) . Yoshida said that the reason for starting with a sosho mei may be as follows: Since this daimei was still unofficial, Oya Kunisada did not want Shinkai Kunisada to put the same kaisho-mei (normal or "block letter" style mei), written by an obviously different hand, on the daimei products. Because sosho mei was new, nobody would immediately notice that this was daimei. This may be a reasonable guess".

More on sosho mei origins: https://www.touken.or.jp/Portals/0/pdf/english/tobi_translation/687_NBTHK_April_2014.pdf

Now look what you have done. One more rabbit hole to plunge down. It looks like the plot has taken an interesting turn.

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TomBell said:

I have been fortunate enough to have borrowed Otome Daniels Dictionary of Japanese (Sosho) Writing Forms published in 1944. The dictionary has an interesting history. I have attached what little documentation Ms Daniels included in her dictionary but have not copied all of the tables. I have searched it for the characters above and arrived at some possibilities for their translation though not to their English equivalent. I hope that this might help anyone who has followed this provide me with a translation.

The dictionary is a very rare book and the copy I have is very fragile due to the poor quality of the paper and binding. It took several months to track down a copy and borrow it through interlibrary loan from the MIT library. After reading UK copyright law, it appears to be out of copyright so I am comfortable including these images but respectfully cite their source.


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I have also found similar characters on very old swords but lack the language skills to fully understand their significance. My skills at pattern recognition are OK but that is as far as I can get. Here are some examples.


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ajc98 said:

Hello Tom. I was wondering if you could share the rest of this dictionary. I have been looking online and I cannot find any PDFs or links to buy or borrow it anywhere, other than your forum post. As you said yourself, it should be out of copyright by now.

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Majestic said:

I wonder if @TomBell ever found his togishi. I heard Woody is moving to Hawaii, and will continue polishing there. He is still polishing, but he's got a long waiting list. Last I heard it was about 1.5 years. Bob Benson is handing off work to his son Nick, who is also a polisher. No doubt they have a waiting list as well. Fred Lohman, who I mentioned above, actually passed away in 2021, and his son was carrying on the business, but I don't have any recent news on them. Ted Tenold is still around and does good work from what I hear.

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TomBell said:

I got a copy of this through University interlibrary loan. It took about 6 months to get a copy which I think came from an obscure place in Germany. I had to return it long ago. I scanned 20 pages. Follow this link to download a compressed folder with those 20 pages. Microsoft OneDrive
You can try a public library to see if they have the ability search and get it on loan or better yet if you know someone affiliated with a college or university, they can request a search and loan. I searched my email and can't find any further details to aid you in the search. I can say for sure it exists in a library somewhere. Best of luck.

Tom Bell

I will remove the link in 48 hrs

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