An Absolutely Superb,& Signed, Samurai’s Large Sunobi-Tanto or Wakazashi Late Koto to Early Shinto Period. Mutsu no Kami Daido School

The blade, around 400 years old, is very wide and powerful, and has horimono carved to both sides, of ancient Buddhist ken swords, one with a varjira a Buddhist god's lightning creator and the swirling grain in the hada looks absolutely stunning, but it has to be viewed in the right light, with a typical narrow suguha hamon. Beautiful shakudo and pure gold Mino Goto school fuchigashira of takebori water dragon on a nanako ground, with an iron ground matching water dragon tsuba.

Nanako Ji: "fish roe ground" A surface decoration produced by forming very small raised bosses by a sharply struck punch or burin called 'nanako tagane'. Shakudo is the metal most often used, but copper and gold are quite often employed. The harder metals, shibuichi, silver and iron are rarely decorated in this way. The size of the dots vary from 0.04" to 0.008" (25 to 125 and inch) and the regularity of the work is marvelous as the dots must be spaced entirely by touch. The dots are usually arranged in straight lines or in lines parallel to the edge of the piece being decorated, but sometimes in more elaborate patterns. Used on guards since the Momoyama period although the technique existed since much earlier periods. Usually done by specialist 'nanako-shi', but sometimes done by the maker of the guard himself.

A pair of pure gold and shakudo flowering menuki under the tsukaito, and are of wonderful quality, and a stunning shakudo decorated kozuka utility knife with the Nabeshima clan mon of the Daki Myoga ginger plant, and the blade is also fully signed, is set within the saya pocket. The original Edo saya is fabulously decorated with kairagi polished giant rayskin. "Kairagi" means "Ume Blossom Skin".
When you polish the skin, Ume Blossom patterns will appear. Kairagi-same is very rare. The saya is polished samegawa. Polished giant ray skin, samegawa, was, at the time of the Samurai, some one of the most expensive and highly prized forms of decoration to be used on sword scabbards Saya. It was the same material as is used on sword hilts under the binding, but the large and small protruding nodules were hand polished, for hundreds of hours, to create a highly polished flat surface, that was then hand dyed and thus created a decorated scabbard with immense natural beauty, and huge expense for the time. The name Daido is most interesting, his early name is Kanemichi, and he changed to “O”Kanemichi when he received the “O” or “Dai” kanji from the Emperor Ogimachi. Later he called himself “Daido” and then received the title of “Mutsu No Kami” in Tensho 2. It is also believed that he was the personal swordsmith to Oda Nobunaga and the fact that he moved to Kyoto at the same time Nobunaga established his residence in Kyoto seems to support this idea. There are Juyo-Token by him, as well as joint effort works with Horikawa Kunihiro. The Horimono are double edged Buddhist ken straight sword, and a Bonji of 'Fudo' warrior deitie. Fudō-myōō (不動明王) is the full Japanese name for Acala-vidyaraja, or Fudō (o-Fudō-sama etc.) for short. It is the literal translation of the Sanskrit term "immovable wisdom king". The sword engraved on this sword is as a kongō-ken (金剛杵 "vajra sword"), which is descriptive of the fact that the pommel of the sword is in the shape of the talon-like kongō-sho (金剛杵 "vajra") of one type or another. It may also be referred to as "three-pronged vajra sword. The blade 17.5 inches long tsuba to tip, overall 25.5 inches long in saya

Code: 24449