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Swordsmith Signature?

TomBell

後輩
21 Oct 2021
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I have a sword with these two markings. I would be grateful if anyone can translates this. I have been told that the characters are calligraphy and the sword might be earlier than the 20th century.


character_1.png
character_2.png
 
Hello Tom, I'm on the NMB forum as well, and I can't help you any more than the gents there have already suggested.
 
Thanks Majestic. I seem to have hit a dead end on these characters. Time to focus more on the blade than the signature. I am still skeptical of the antiquity of this blade. The rust patina on the tang does suggest age but what little I can see of the hamon looks fairly regular rather than wavy. Unfortunately many have handled this blade over the decades without regard to the damage fingerprints can do. I will try to get someone at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to have a look at it. They have an extensive collection of Japanese swords and I am hopeful that one of the curators can accurately evaluate its quality. If it is a good blade, I will consider finding a competent person to polish it.

My father fought in the Pacific from very near the beginning all the way to the end. No matter what its quality, this sword is a meaningful addition to my artifacts from that time.
 
Hello Tom,
I just noticed that K.Morita on the other board pressed the "like" button for Matt's post where Matt guessed "守次" (Moritsugu). Morita-san is the resident expert on grass script on that board. When he gives an upvote to someone, it usually means he agrees with them. So I would look at Moritsugu 守次 as a very strong possibility. Think about a date sometime in the 1800s for the sword.

Our native-speaker here on this board (@Toritoribe) may also have an opinion on that reading.

For me, the more I looked at it, the more I convinced myself that the second character was 貞 (sada). And the more I looked at the first signature, the more I convinced myself that it wasn't 守. So I was leaning towards a signature of _貞, of which there are many.

Anyway, your strategy of looking beyond the signature to the sword itself is a good one. A great sword with an illegible signature is much, much more valuable than an average sword with a legible signature. In this respect, the sword world is slightly different from the world of paintings and other collectibles. It has its own dogmas and idiosyncracies, but it does tend to focus on the quality of the sword first, and the quality of the signature second.
 
Hi Majestic,

Hah, I missed the endorsement of K. Morita. Thanks for pointing that out.

MFA no longer has a resident expert as Mr Ogawa has returned to Japan. However, next week is my lucky week. The auction house Bonham's is holding an auction of Samurai artifacts including swords here in Boston on the 27th and one of their in-house experts from the New York office may be present. This may be a chance to have a knowledgeable person see the blade close up.

Best
Tom
 
I, too, think the first character wouldn't be 守.

I initially thought the second one was 次, but indeed the circle at the middle of it is closer to 貞. However, the dot at the upper left is odd and a vertical line is necessary above the long vertical line for 貞. Hmm...
 
@Toritoribe, as I understand your post, you do not favor either character that has been suggested for Moritsugu 守次 . There is some convergence on the second character which could be 次 or 貞 . It seems to me that the first character is crucial to making further progress. This investigation has taken some interesting twists and turns. From my perspective, I am fascinated by the stylized characters and wonder if the swordsmith was as creative at the forge as he was with his signature.

I have included this photo to show the oxidized patina of the tang which speaks to its age. You may see something in the original that my photoshop enhancement has not captured.

Many thanks for your help.

.
script.jpg
 
Sorry for being not helpful, but I can't identify the two characters even by seeing the photo.
 
You might want to try a Japanese calligraphy group to see if they can help. One that specializes in grass script (sōsho calligraphy - 草書).
 
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.


Possible-Sosho.jpg


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.


Hatakeda_Character_Reference.jpg
Mitsutada.jpg
 

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OK, there are some interesting samples in there. I think it points pretty strongly to 守次 (Moritsugu).
The thing is, you have to also take into account the naming conventions of the time (what characters are suitable as names, what the other smiths of the time were calling themselves). So, for example, you wouldn't be likely to find a name like 尹寅, because it doesn't work as a name (whereas Moritsugu is a very plausible name).
And in traditional nihontō kantei (authentication), the name on the tang should be the last thing you should look at. In other words, the sword's shape, hamon, and steel grain pattern should tell you who made the sword, and the name on the tang should just be the final confirmation. Of course this is only a very idealized way of thinking about kantei, but to the sword purists it is still the only valid way of judging swords. So the shape should tell you the age, the hamon should tell you the location, and the steel grain should reveal who the maker was. That is the ideal, anyway. You have to study swords at a very, very high level to achieve anything close to proficiency in that kind of kantei. Anyway, this is all the long way of telling you to look at the sword, and then decide if Moritsugu makes sense as the swordsmith.

Just for my own curiosity, in the dictionary of Sosho writings, did they give a sample for Sada (貞) ?
 
I agree completely that a signature without the context of the sword's properties is unlikely to prove much of anything. I will submit the sword for evaluation in August when the Northern California Japanese Sword Club hosts its annual Token Kai. That will be a turning point for being satisfied with an interesting artifact or pursuing the origin of an artwork.

I can't relate 守 or 次 to any of the examples above. I would need to be able to correlate the kanji with a kaisho character What do you think is the best match for each of the two characters above?

If you can provide me with the kaisho radical of 貞 I can search for it in the book. If you can recognize the kaisho radical in the table of radicals in the pdf, I can go directly to the relevant page.

Thanks
Tom
 
Sorry, I was slightly confused. I thought the "mori" in your jpg above (from Yuhindo) was the mori from your sword, but I see its different. I'll amend my comment above and reiterate what I said earlier, that the kanji on your sword doesn't look like "Mori". This is something both Toritoribe and I mentioned. I've placed your "Mori" next to the one from Yuhindo, and the black and white image (which I don't know the origin). Anyway, the point is that the kanji on your sword doesn't look to me like Mori because the central horizontal line, which should be prominent, is quite weak in the kanji on your sword. Furthermore, when the brush stroke finishes with the top, strong, horizontal stroke, it should then proceed to the center (also strong) horizontal stroke, and there should be no looping (as there is in the middle of the character on your sword). So this is why I think yours isn't 守 (mori).

For the second character, I think Tsugu (次) is a strong possibility. Tsugu looks very similar to the one marked "ketsu" in your jpg beause they contain the same root. For comparison, I wanted to see Sada (貞) as well, but I didn't see how the sosho dictionary was organized. The radical for Sada is Kai (貝), a radical of 7 strokes.
 

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Here is a video of someone writing Mori (守) in three different styles. Normal block style, slightly cursive style, and sosho style. None of which look like the character on your sword.

 
Sorry for not explaining the layout more precisely.

The tables in the book show the radical in kaisho and it's name in English. Then, three variations on the sosho equivalent of the kaisho are given from which I have chosen the one which most closely resembles the mei.

SoshoTable.jpg


Tsugu has consistently been a strong candidate for the second character though sada has been suggested.

The first character in the mei remains uncertain. To my untrained eye, the closest match is this one but can a phrase, dedication, school, geographic location, or name be created from this combination?

Char1-Sosho.jpg

Char2-Sosho.jpg


There seems to be another confounding aspect to this. I have done quite a few searches for meis that have been carved in sosho and they seem to be rare. There could be some information in the scarcity which implies a circumstance when a swordsmith uses sosho. I am impressed by the obvious care the swordsmith took in carving this. It seems much more refined than most of the meis I have examined.

There are 73 entries for the radical kai but none of them bear even a remote resemblance to the first character in the mei.
 
事次 (Kototsugu) doesn't make sense as a name, and there is no record of there ever having been a smith by that name/mei. In addition, the final resting place of the "brush" should end in a hard stroke in the center which 事 does not. So toss that one out for now.

Grass script signings are almost exclusively found in swords of the shintō period (swords made after 1600). I haven't done in depth research on it, but I would say the closer you get to the 1900s, the more inscriptions with grass script you will find. I don't think you'll find any regional bias for grass script. Writing in grass script carries the implication that both the writer and the reader have a high level of literacy and education in the arts. So, yes, it is a refined way of signing the sword. But it doesn't mean the sword itself is refined or even of a high quality. (It could be the case where an average swordsmith is adept at grass script, or that the swordsmith had someone else carve the mei into the tang).
 
Looks like a dead end for now but I have learned a little more. Thanks for your help.
 
The mei has been confirmed as Mortisugu by NTHK. Now I need help understanding what they have inscribed on the certification document. I have looked at several sites about how to read this and there seems to be some inconsistencies. This is about as much as i I could find about this artist.


Sesko.jpg


NTHK-Origami.jpg
 
I apologize for my failure to properly cite the source of the image of the entry from the book, Index of Japanese Swordsmiths A-M, Sesko, Markus, 2012. The entry is as copied so I am not sure that it is an error but simply shorthand in a very long list (>20,000) of swordsmiths.

I think you are asking for links to conflicting ways of reading an NTHK origami. Part of the problem I an having is due to changes of format over the years but others seem to be just misinformation. If you search on "how to read an NTHK origami" you will see what I mean about inconsistencies.

My problem is not being able to read a single character on my new document other than the swordsmith's name, 高田守次 Takada Moritsugu.
 
Good to have some validation on the sword and the reading. Moritsugu would have been active in the region of Takada in Bungo Province, which is present-day Saga Prefecture in Kyushu. So this is why the paper states "Takada Moritsugu". the other entries are:

Hada = Itame (wood grain pattern)
Hamon = suguha (straight)
Boshi = Straight returning with "hakikake"
Peg holes = 2
File marks = katte sagari (diagonal slanting)
Comments = Bungo, circa Daiei
 
Good to have some validation on the sword and the reading. Moritsugu would have been active in the region of Takada in Bungo Province, which is present-day Saga Prefecture in Kyushu. So this is why the paper states "Takada Moritsugu". the other entries are:

Hada = Itame (wood grain pattern)
Hamon = suguha (straight)
Boshi = Straight returning with "hakikake"
Peg holes = 2
File marks = katte sagari (diagonal slanting)
Comments = Bungo, circa Daiei
Thank you for the translation and putting the smith's name in context. That is what I needed to know. There is a classification or grade noted on the origami which I am unsure of. Is this a "genuine" or "important work"?
 
This column below just says "Shōshin" (genuine or true). Then it gives the length using the old units of measurement: shaku, sun, and bu.
Length is 2 shaku, 2 sun, and 8 bu (slightly over 69 cms, or 27.2 inches).
This authentication certificate is from NTHK (Nihon Token Hozon Kai). This is the slightly lesser prestigious of the two main authenticating organizations, and I don't think they rank their authentications like the other organization.

The other organization is the NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai), and they do have several classifications/ranks.
 

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Hello Tom, I see, and am following, the other discussion you are having on the Nihonto Message Board. I think you can safely ignore the guy who was telling you that the sword is mumei and is treated with "medicine rust". I am familiar with the concept of using chemicals to induce patination, but I have never heard the term medicine rust either in English or in Japanese. I think he was trying to use jargon to sound authoritative. Well, that and his claim that the blade was considered "mumei", which your blade is definitely not. Nobody would call your blade mumei when it clearly has an inscription on it. The inscription may be false (gimei) or may be added later (ato-mei or kiritsuke-mei), but it absolutely would not be considered mumei. Mumei is the term reserved for blades with nothing inscribed on them. It doesn't matter if the blade's signature was cut off, or was erased, or if it never had a name on it to begin with. Mumei literally means "without signature".

My one lingering question about the mei is the style. A two-character grass-script mei is very unusual for a blade from the early 1500s. I think this kind of mei is mostly associated with blades after say about 1620. So seeing a two-character grass script mei on a sword that is supposed to be from the early 1500s is a bit surprising, and is something of an outlier.

For polishers, you only have two or three options for properly trained Japanese sword polishers in the States. Robert Hall and Woody Benson, and maybe another guy...I'll look around. Woody used to work with Robert, but he may have branched out on his own. Don't be surprised if there is a 1+ year waiting period. These guys are good, and everyone in the States sends their swords to them.
 
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