Yoshindo Yoshihara

I would love to own a Yoshihara knife, but with a starting price of around $6000.00 they are out of my range. Maybe someday.
 
Incredible.

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TheBadGuy said:
Nope, just not seeing what you guys are
:eek: ;)

Hey, we can't all like the same stuff right?
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Absolutely right. I wish I didn't love it, believe me... :grumpy:
 
These blades are exceptional in every sense of the word. Thanks for putting up the pics.

Roger
 
That's amazing. It is so beautiful to see the craft and talent and brilliance of hundreds of years of culture so wonderfully preserved and continued.
 
Doug Timbs said:
...makes you wonder if some of the old swords you see around ever looked this alive.
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Have you been to an excellent museum (the Met springs to mind), the S.F. Token Kai, or Japan lately?

The Japanese system of becoming a licensed togishi (polisher) requires a greater amount of time (on average, it varies) than becoming a licensed swordsmith! This is because not only does the Japanese polisher have to have the skill and ability to shave off the absolute least amount of mass necessary to reveal the fresh steel underneath, and to shape and contour absolutely every plane and line and surface perfectly while leaving the grain (and visual metallurgical activities) completely open, WITHOUT using destructive etches - but he has to do all this with a comprehensive and expert knowledge of the entire history of Japanese blades, including all of the major and many of the minor schools and styles, so as to best complement the original aesthetic and intention of the work.

Extant antiques in fresh polish from as far back as the early Shinto era (~1600's) can look like they were made yesterday, if they have been properly maintained and carefully restored, and even some blades from the Koto period (~1100's or so is the time I'm particularly thinking of) can look superbly "alive" and fresh even though they are likely a slight degree slimmer than they originally were.

A good Japanese polish will last 150 years or so if the blade is not used and properly maintained. This figure comes from actual examples, the history of which are known, existing with polished that old and more that don't yet need a repolish. We are fortunate in that many fine nihonto have been expertly preserved and are essentially flawless and perfectly clean. Nowhere else has the same standard of preservation yielded such examples. It's sad, because fine western arms and armor are much rarer, and are *always* in a state of disrepair and patination. Many people have a mistaken impression regarding a perceived "crudity" of western swords, partially because they see corroded examples excavated from bogs and rivers and damp attics and who knows where else.

All this is just to say that not only do many fine antiques exist that look "alive," but many of them are at a level of polish that the polishers of Mr. Yoshihara's work aspire to. Which is to say that the very best national treasure polishers (i.e., the POLISHER is a national treasure - as are the blades he is working on ;)) of Japan are likely to be spending more time restoring and preserving priceless antiques than to be sprucing up beautiful new masterpieces - although many do both. And from a blade perspective, although many Gendai (modern) smiths have reached astounding levels of beauty and expression in steel, there are many people who don't believe that we will ever match the refinement of masterpieces from the Kamakura era. I personally believe that it is only a matter of time before such blades can be replicated by a particularly gifted individual, but it shouldn't even matter, because modern works are often extremely beautiful in their own way...

...Oh, and hi y'all, I'm new here. I post a lot of Sword Forum, myArmoury.com, and the Bugei forums.

-Gabriel L.
 
Megalobyte said:
It's easy, he obviously let something spill accidentally on the blade, maybe a Pepsi... :)
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Yeah, you'd think with a flaw like that he could lower the price a bit...sheesh ;)
 
How rude of me :D

Welcome Gabe, very interesting. Do you have any good photos of some of the old nihonto showing off their polish?
 
G'day Gabriel, Thanks for the interesting reply. I'm afraid the museums you mentioned are a bit far away from Australia for me to visit,one day I hope to get to Japan. I do however have access to a very fine private collection of Japanese arms and armour and I understand what youare saying about the beauty of some of the old swords. Some of them are truely magnificent. What I ment when I said old swords,where the ones you see at gun shows and swap meets that have been badly neglected, it just makes you wonder what they might have been like.
Cheers, Doug
 
Thanks people. Actually, I just bought that Lone Wolf "Paul Pocket Folder" with the beautiful axial locking system, and immediately logged on here to find out how intelligent a purchase I made - which turned out to be rather sad. The dealer told me that the blade was ATS-34 and one search here revealed that to be utterly false. I'm going to go return it today, which is disappointing because it really was a pretty little thing with a great action to it. Thank goodness a forum exists where people like me who've rarely study anything under 10" of blade length and never study anything but fixed blades can come and get some kind of grounding in the modern knife world.

It's funny, actually, because I literally spent over an hour inspecting every single knife the store had on hand. Apart from the customs, some of which were gorgeous, almost none of them appealed to my aesthetic - which veers towards the more subtle and understated. I did handle a spring assist Kershaw that screamed "cool," but I really had no actual hankering for some black evil looking thing - I wanted something with a bit more class and elegance to it. So now I'm without any utility knife at all (apart from my trusty swiss army, which has been chipped and dulled to near death).

Heh. Photos? More than I can keep track of. Unfortunately, I have absolutely zero time to spare on uploading and linking to them right now, but maybe later today or sometime this week.

Edit: personal pet peeve with the site that took those photos. They're a great site, and they've done a nice job making Mr. Yoshihara even more visible (if that were possible), but I can't stand the way they call shakudo "black copper." Shakudo is one of the most briliiantly beautiful and luscious precious alloys that I've ever seen, and to properly prepare and color it requires a lot of precision and attention to detail. When finished well, it appears deep and inky in color, purplish in sheen, and subtly oily and reflective in lustre. Offsets gold like nothing else. To call it "black copper" is almost as bad as when people refer to that hideous chisel point as a "tanto" style. Which btw is an even bigger pet peeve of mine. :)
 
I may have no time to post my own pics, but I have the time to link to other people's pics. This is a katana from the 1600's on sale at www.nihonto.com :
http://www.nihonto.com/6.14.01.html
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See what I mean? And this is at an amazingly low price for Tokubetsu Hozon NBTHK papers. You should see some of the stuff in the Tokubetsu Juyo range... got $200,000 to spare? ;)
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Or, check out this piece from www.ikkyudo.com :
http://www.ikkyudo.com/ikkyudo/site...ontent=galleries/token/ko-hoki-sadatsuna.html

The blade in the link above was made from 1185-1200. Yes, that's right - it's 800 years old. See what I mean?
 
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