Rusty Samurai sword... sigh.

T

Tar

Joined
Mar 7, 2009
Messages
6
This is the story handed down with the sword from my father;
At the turn of last century, My great grandfather was Lord mayor of Plymouth; Sir Joseph Arthur Bellamy. Being a sailing man, he was Fluent in 5 Languages, Russian and Japanese being 2 of them.
As Mayor of Plymouth he had occasion to host a dinner for The King of England and the Admirals of the Russian and Japanese Fleets which were in Plymouth Ho. As he was able to fluently translate for the three other gentlemen there The King Knighted him. The Russian Admiral gave him a medal which is lost. The Japanese Admiral gave him this sword. I presume these were Impromptu Gestures at the occasion. Now He was definitely lord mayor of Plymouth and a knight around 1901, more I can not say, the rest of the story is as I was told.

 
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Wow, very nice! :thumbup::thumbup: It's still in really good shape, all things considered. I've seen blades that are in MUCH worse shape. The handle isn't falling apart, and the tsuba doesn't look damaged at all. Thanks for sharing!
 
Potentially a fine sword. I hope you know enough NOT to try to polish it yourself. The
best way I know to ruin a sword blade. If you can remove the handle (push out the
bamboo peg -it's tapered, so only goes one way) and see if the tang is signed.

Rich S

The Japanese Sword Guide
http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/nihonto.htm
 
I suggest you go over to the nihonto forum and see what they have to say about it....you might have something pretty important:)
 
Rich S said:
Tar -

A nice older blade, but the pics are upside down (makes it very hard to read or
translate). Go to the Nihonto Message Board and repost the tang pics (right side up :-)
and you'll get more info than you can imagine.The good news, it is signed and dated by the swordsmith.

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/index.php

Rich S
The Japanese Sword Guide
http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/nihonto.htm
Click to expand...

Okay Rich, clue me in here. I suspect that you are easily one of the better informed posters on this board in terms of the Japanese sword, but your comment about having a signed sword has me scratching my head. I was always under the impression that a signature meant little unless the rest of the sword was right. This would be for a variety of reasons:

1) Junk swords were signed
2) Good swords were unsigned
3) Conterfeits both old and new are very much in existence.

I'm not making any comment about this sword in particular I have no idea about it whatsoever, I was just wondering in general...
 
Your sword is signed "Bingo Fukuyama ju Yokoyama Sukenari" (made by Yokoyama Sukenari. a resident of Fukuyama in Bingo province) and dated August, 1853. It is signed "Bizen Tomonari 56 mago" (56 generation in the line of Tomonari of Bizen).

The Yokoyama line of smiths was a large group that worked in the Edo era (1600-1867). Many worked in the later part of that. Some were quite skilled and famous. Sukenari is not one of these, but still a good smith. The mounting on the blade are of average quality. All in all, a working man's sword of good serviceable quality, not a big dollar museum piece.
 
What Busselover said in the second paragraph answers your question. There's no money
in faking mid-range or lower end swords.

Rich S
 
Rich S said:
What Busselover said in the second paragraph answers your question. There's no money
in faking mid-range or lower end swords.

Rich S
Click to expand...

Sure, but one assumes that there is money in putting the signature of a famous smith on mid range or lower end swords and then passing them off as something they are not.

Like I said, I'm not talking to this sword in particular but rather a reliance upon signatures in general...
 
Signatures should always be taken with a grain of salt. Some are good and important;
some are fakes. Some excellent swords were unsigned (don't know why not - there's
been tons of speculation on that); some have been shortened and had the sigs cut off.
The blade is what tells the story; the sig or lack thereof should be the last thing one
looks at. It takes years of study (much more than I have) and seeing hundreds or
thousands of swords to tell the good from the bad and the ugly. Even the Japanese
experts at the NBTHK or NTHK make mistakes assigning whether a sword is genuine
by a specific smith (if signed) and not uncommonly you will get varying opinions from
shinsa (sword judging by Japanese experts) as to who, where, when an unsigned sword
was made. It is not a science.
Rich
 
Rich S said:
Signatures should always be taken with a grain of salt. Some are good and important;
some are fakes. Some excellent swords were unsigned (don't know why not - there's
been tons of speculation on that); some have been shortened and had the sigs cut off.
The blade is what tells the story; the sig or lack thereof should be the last thing one
looks at. It takes years of study (much more than I have) and seeing hundreds or
thousands of swords to tell the good from the bad and the ugly. Even the Japanese
experts at the NBTHK or NTHK make mistakes assigning whether a sword is genuine
by a specific smith (if signed) and not uncommonly you will get varying opinions from
shinsa (sword judging by Japanese experts) as to who, where, when an unsigned sword
was made. It is not a science.
Rich
Click to expand...

Cool, it's funny how much you sounded like Benard Levine right there. Different area of interest but the methodology is the same. Read the sword, not what it happens to say on it. :) He's always smacking folks around that want to tell what their genuine whatever pocket knife says on it.
 
Heaven forbid I should sound like BRL, but none the less, the methodology of studying
a sword is no different than that from studying a knife. The knife/sword tells the story,
not the signature.

Rich S
 
Triton said:
Okay Rich, clue me in here. I suspect that you are easily one of the better informed posters on this board in terms of the Japanese sword, but your comment about having a signed sword has me scratching my head. .
Click to expand...

Without a doubt THE MOST informed poster in this SubForum.:thumbup:

BTW, while there are those that are poo poo'ng the fittings, I see them as being well into the over $1,500 category by themselves, which is hardly pocket change.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Aside from actual monetary value, of which this sword would seem to have at least some, it's really cool that you have a Japanese sword which, if I have my dates correct, predates the Meiji Restoration and also has a really cool personal history.
 
Kohai999 said:
Without a doubt THE MOST informed poster in this SubForum.:thumbup:

BTW, while there are those that are poo poo'ng the fittings, I see them as being well into the over $1,500 category by themselves, which is hardly pocket change.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
Click to expand...

Come on guy, I was being tactful and trying not to make him blush.
 
thanks guys. It appears that this sword was given to my great great grandfather by Admiral Togo!... This alone gives it collectors value.The blade is in poor shape unfortunately but nothing that inst fixable I gather, phew! My Cousin worked in Tokyo for many years in the Foreign Office so I have contacted him as regards finding a good home for it. I know its a family heirloom but its been neglected and it needs lots of TLC. Id never even heard of Togo untill I posted this here and on Nihonto.
I am still trying to find a date and place for this historical meeting. Supposedly a Russian admiral was there. This makes sense as Sir Bellamy held for a long time the positions of Consul for the Netherlands and Russia, and Vice-Consul for France and Spain.
 
Tar said:
thanks guys. It appears that this sword was given to my great great grandfather by Admiral Togo!... This alone gives it collectors value.The blade is in poor shape unfortunately but nothing that inst fixable I gather, phew! My Cousin worked in Tokyo for many years in the Foreign Office so I have contacted him as regards finding a good home for it. I know its a family heirloom but its been neglected and it needs lots of TLC. Id never even heard of Togo untill I posted this here and on Nihonto.
I am still trying to find a date and place for this historical meeting. Supposedly a Russian admiral was there. This makes sense as Sir Bellamy held for a long time the positions of Consul for the Netherlands and Russia, and Vice-Consul for France and Spain.
Click to expand...

Hi, There Distant Cousin,
i have been tracing my distant relations. My father was actually named after his grandmothers - Ellen - family name "Bellamy". I have quite a few press cuttings from 1902 from Jospeh's personal belongings. Could you get in touch with me? vjmills88@gmail.com
 
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