Yagoro
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Ikkyu in Kendo and Kenjutsu Practitioner
Posts: 1,578
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Post by Yagoro on May 22, 2022 15:44:29 GMT
As the title implies, I'm curious why Japanese sword makers don't base their designs off historical examples similarly to how euro sword makers like Albion do. This is especially puzzling to me considering there are so many more surviving examples of Japanese swords than there are of European swords.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on May 22, 2022 16:53:02 GMT
It shouldn’t be hard to there are literally millions of centuries old Japanese swords in pristine condition. So instead of guessing a reconstruction from damaged specimens you can just straight copy. And some have, bugei based their swords on shinshinto and upscaled them, upscaled them so much they were too big for me but the inspiration was there. Why many don’t is they think it too hard, they don’t care, or worse a few look down on their customers. Some guy on Reddit claims he was in touch with Paul Chen before he shut down, Chen Cheness(major brain freeze, I suck!) was pretty jaded and he and his distributors looked down on their buyers , called them “wannabe samurai”Now to be fair there are people now making swords closely based off nihonto and making them well. I’ve spoken to Zsey’s owner he collects and bases his swords on old ones. I shouldn’t say too much since I haven’t got my special order yet but it looks like a very nice gendai clone. Companies like that might become our Abilon.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on May 22, 2022 17:21:11 GMT
And in case if the Paul Chen Cheness cutlery(never type while distracted) vignette makes it seem like I’m saying this is a problem of Chinese suppliers, it’s not! Many Western makers, even tremendously expensive ones like Stefan Roth are making swords that have nothing to do with history or designs Japan wouldn’t have considered viable. Case in point this “o-kissaki” sword isn’t just a mess of Damascus, acid etch and “blood groove” to mask a poor shinogi, it’s point is bad too! He never learned how to make this style so Roth’s short cut is to make a bulbous little kissaki and then place the yokote inches behind where it should be. Now the Rothtana looks bad to anyone familiar with the old but does it handle bad 1EB69AE3-458C-4EDF-84F0-273FFF038E42.webp (445.89 KB) Yep, he tried to face save as lol all katanas are bad but his swords literally exploded into tinsel and tinsel has never happened in even in what Japan considered disgraceful test failures, edge on edge contact happened all the time and instead of exploding into shrapnel your swords bounce off and take a nick. I’m not saying this to bully but I’m holding it as an example of how a very costly katana maker couldn’t be bothered to care less about what he’s making or base his work on historic examples, claiming remarkably bad flaws are normal so he doesn’t have to work hard. The end result is you get something they looks nothing like a Japanese sword and also has the propensity to explode into shrapnel which is a very unique invention not seen till this century. Now that’s a 6-8K priced sword. But as I said, we can be optimistic. People who took the time to study this are making now. And wow oh wow does this 900$ O-kissaki sword look good. Hitatsura, fine hada, a properly made O-kissaki, shape looks almost like a nanbokucho tachi cut down to katana. I would have bought this but got distracted by a gunto and spent the cash.
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Yagoro
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Ikkyu in Kendo and Kenjutsu Practitioner
Posts: 1,578
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Post by Yagoro on May 22, 2022 18:20:57 GMT
And in case if the Paul Chen vignette makes it seem like I’m saying this is a problem of Chinese suppliers, it’s not! Many Western makers, even tremendously expensive ones like Stefan Roth are making swords that have nothing to do with history or designs Japan wouldn’t have considered viable. Case in point this “o-kissaki” sword isn’t just a mess of Damascus, acid etch and “blood groove” to mask a poor shinogi, it’s point is bad too! He never learned how to make this style so Roth’s short cut is to make a bulbous little kissaki and then place the yokote inches behind where it should be. Now the Rothtana looks bad to anyone familiar with the old but does it handle bad Yep, he tried to face save as lol all katanas are bad but his swords literally exploded into tinsel and tinsel has never happened in even in what Japan considered disgraceful test failures, edge on edge contact happened all the time and instead of exploding into shrapnel your swords bounce off and take a nick. I’m not saying this to bully but I’m holding it as an example of how a very costly katana maker couldn’t be bothered to care less about what he’s making or base his work on historic examples, claiming remarkably bad flaws are normal so he doesn’t have to work hard. The end result is you get something they looks nothing like a Japanese sword and also has the propensity to explode into shrapnel which is a very unique invention not seen till this century. Now that’s a 6-8K priced sword. But as I said, we can be optimistic. People who took the time to study this are making now. And wow oh wow does this 900$ O-kissaki sword look good. Hitatsura, fine hada, a properly made O-kissaki, shape looks almost like a nanbokucho tachi cut down to katana. I would have bought this but got distracted by a gunto and spent the cash. Holy semprini that o-kissaki looks terrible. To add to this, I feel most of it is laziness, and the result of most manufacturers being content selling the crap they have been selling for the past decade plus. Also wasn't aware Paul Chen said something like that. I'm rather disappointed as hanwei tends to be the trendsetters for the market, and if they started to do historical reproductions, then I bet most manufacturers would.
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on May 22, 2022 18:21:03 GMT
I think because there is really no market for them. Everyone just want the 200-300$ katana to whack things with. Very few people would be willing to put say something like 600-700$ for historical replica as you can get similarish sword of bit lower quality for less than 50%. Also I feel production katana market is oversaturated currently. Too much similar offerings on the market. Over the years some companies have tried to draw inspiration from history but have went under for various reasons. On behalf of Stefan Roth I must say he is not as bad as his site makes him to be... I visited him about 15 years ago and his Japanese swords were quite good. I got to see the ōdachi he had made. I must confess I was far more impressed by his euros, even though back then I was not so interested in those. Blacksmiths are often a weird bunch (half jokingly), he made that katana in 2007: messerforum.net/threads/katana-von-stefan-roth-seelenschmiede.47469/ I cannot understand why you would still have that on the site and not more recent better work. Now when it comes to website in general... He hasn't updated it in 11 years I am not sure how anyone could run a business like that in modern day. Well I guess he has added few euro swords over 10 year span...
I know Stefan has been in Japan and visited Japanese sword craftsmen as he was featured in Japanese tv show in 2016. Probably he has other times too.
But I would agree that there are better smiths in Europe for Japanese swords than him. We are lucky to have several great craftsmen in here.
I still think even 15+ years afterwards that DGuertin had one of the best ideas for lineup: web.archive.org/web/20050307165240/http://www.dguertin.com/ It would be easy to tweak with even more historical accuracy but the downside is that I don't think there would be enough customers. I still remember I was saving up for the Yukiyasu but the company was gone before I had the money for it...
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Yagoro
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Ikkyu in Kendo and Kenjutsu Practitioner
Posts: 1,578
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Post by Yagoro on May 22, 2022 18:29:51 GMT
I think because there is really no market for them. Everyone just want the 200-300$ katana to whack things with. Very few people would be willing to put say something like 600-700$ for historical replica as you can get similarish sword of bit lower quality for less than 50%. Also I feel production katana market is oversaturated currently. Too much similar offerings on the market. Over the years some companies have tried to draw inspiration from history but have went under for various reasons. On behalf of Stefan Roth I must say he is not as bad as his site makes him to be... I visited him about 15 years ago and his Japanese swords were quite good. I got to see the ōdachi he had made. I must confess I was far more impressed by his euros, even though back then I was not so interested in those. Blacksmiths are often a weird bunch (half jokingly), he made that katana in 2007: messerforum.net/threads/katana-von-stefan-roth-seelenschmiede.47469/ I cannot understand why you would still have that on the site and not more recent better work. Now when it comes to website in general... He hasn't updated it in 11 years I am not sure how anyone could run a business like that in modern day. Well I guess he has added few euro swords over 10 year span...
I know Stefan has been in Japan and visited Japanese sword craftsmen as he was featured in Japanese tv show in 2016. Probably he has other times too.
But I would agree that there are better smiths in Europe for Japanese swords than him. We are lucky to have several great craftsmen in here.
I still think even 15+ years afterwards that DGuertin had one of the best ideas for lineup: web.archive.org/web/20050307165240/http://www.dguertin.com/ It would be easy to tweak with even more historical accuracy but the downside is that I don't think there would be enough customers. I still remember I was saving up for the Yukiyasu but the company was gone before I had the money for it... You think martial arts practitioners in the west would be interested in historical replicas at that price range, but it seems most just either pay up for a motohara or nihonto or don't care at all about the qualities of the shinken they get as long as it feels ok. Based off my friends who are also practitioners, I'm leaning towards the latter being more true, and it seems I'm in the outlier as a person who both cares about the accuracy of the shinken and the feel of it.
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stormmaster
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I like viking/migration era swords
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Post by stormmaster on May 22, 2022 18:54:46 GMT
The katana market is very populated, the costs of a historical based sword would probably be too high, might as well buy a nihonto for the low thousands instead
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Post by Drunk Merchant on May 22, 2022 19:48:17 GMT
In Paul’s defense he started with good intentions and got jaded. And once he got jaded he quit rather than working on something he couldn’t care about so his ethics are good. I saw that The “O-kissaki” sword is the same showpiece he has on his front page. There are newer ones on Facebook but even those don’t look very good to me, odd proportions and acid etch, remind me of eBay counterfeits. There are much better production swords out there. I am glad that he’s finally corresponding with smiths and getting instruction on how to forge but that just reinforces what I said. He charged high thousands for swords like that, knowing that they had the habit of exploding into shrapnel, and instead of trying to fix that just went and proclaimed that all katana are like that and that’s how they’re supposed to preform. My understanding is his correspondence with Japanese smiths started after he went on German tv with one of his exploding swords and said Japanese swords were poor because they were like his. Some smiths contacted him and showed him how they’re supposed to preform and how to improve his. That just seems sloppy for a pricey sword. I have heard that his European swords are very good but again that shows how even pricy makers couldn’t care less about making historically accurate or even safe to use Japanese blades. For many they’re low effort sideshows and they might even look down on collectors. I think the best bet might be that some Chinese smiths who used to make Komonojo are now making legit very good historically based swords at low prices. I would argue there is a strong niche for historically based swords. Japan might be reckless enough to wear away desirable swords on tameshigiri but western collectors aren’t. If makers could make clones of historical swords, market them as say a kanbun or keicho special, then yeah, I can see a lot paying for good copies. Collectors, martial artists, all would like to cut with a samurai sword guilt free. Looking at the website Jussi posted btw web.archive.org/web/20050307220703fw_/http://www.dguertin.com/Keicho%20Shinto.htm this is pretty nice and at a very good price. Shame he isn’t active anymore.
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Post by RufusScorpius on May 25, 2022 13:35:25 GMT
They are available if you want them. But as others have mentioned, it's all about the market. The bulk of sword sales go to the mall ninja crowd who just want a tacticool sword like object that is good enough to hit things with and reasonably looks like what most people think a sword of a certain culture should be, for under $200. And you can't really blame the manufacturers for that: after all, they are in the business to make sales and make money, therefore it becomes a simple matter of making and selling what the customer wants to buy.
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on May 25, 2022 18:17:03 GMT
I think they were looking for a person from USA and a person from Europe in episode of TV Asahi series - スゴイデスネ視察団. I think the selected ones needed to be interested about swords but hadn't been in Japan before or something like that? I have watched a bit of Japanese tv series and some of their shows seem bit strange to my eyes. Especially the ones that feature western visitors etc.
I think most difficult part in establishing a historically inspired lineup would be keeping the quality control in check. Chinese forges can produce amazing items for the small amount of money invested and on the other hand they can steer far away from what was ordered. One of the reasons why I have never ordered directly from China is because I feel I am not trusting the forges enough to deliver what I would order.
Getting a basic historic lineup should be actually quite easy. I think most difficult thing would be getting historically plausible tachi koshirae or 2 to the lineup, and keeping their cost reasonable. And add in the fact that I believe pretty much nobody buys tachi, everyone wants katana.
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Post by JH Lee on May 25, 2022 21:04:27 GMT
In the world of Japanese swords, good quality and poor quality is sometimes a matter of millimeters, if not fractions of millimeters. There are simply too many variables to consider and execute properly. Let's assume that you could afford to spend the time and effort to measure and reproduce a well-preserved representation of a katana from a particular period. What about niku? And will the surface have been shaped/polished properly?
That's "just" the blade. We haven't even started on the habaki or the fit and finish of the rest. And all this is assuming that they would even be able to: 1) obtain a well-preserved blade (not just an expensive but worn-down blade), and 2) distinguish between a well-preserved but mediocre blade vs. a well-preserved AND well-made blade.
Doing a reasonably good job of reproducing a high quality historical example is simply too expensive and doesn't make economic sense for a company/forge that must produce profit and not just meet the operating overhead.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on May 25, 2022 22:59:12 GMT
There are already many talented counterfeiters that get it right or quite nearly right. If the best Komonojo people all go legit you can easily get an Abilon of Japanese swords.
The unfair thing is that Komonojo seems to sell for more than many of their honestly better polished stuff. His naked blades are meh and they go for more than some of the legit.
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Post by JH Lee on May 25, 2022 23:11:26 GMT
I've been out of the production market for a few years, but I never saw an example of a single production blade that had a correctly executed fumbari (where one would have been appropriate). Not much thoughtfulness in the width or angle of the shinogi-ji either. The sense I got was that they were making "educated" guesses based on 2D photos but not working off of actual swords they had held and studied.
Not knocking production blades. My main training blade is an old Bugei Dragonfly. I just don't think it's reasonable to expect high quality without paying custom prices. And at that point, I think we should support actual custom smiths.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on May 26, 2022 1:37:39 GMT
Well most nihonto either lost their fumbari or were never made with it so it’s not a huge loss. Yeah, shinogi seems to be one of the biggest points of failure with replica. You’ve got a point about photos, that’s probably why smiths should own a couple of old pieces so they know exactly what to do. The up and coming brands told me they use antiques and gendai as models and study so I guess I’ll soon see if they’ve cracked it down or not.
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