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Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds is hosting a seminar on Japanese arms & armour in September 2011. Japanese arms and armour is an ever popular theme for our History in Your Hands seminars – come along and handle genuine items of Japanese arms and armour from our collection. Learn about the production and use of katana and wakizashi as well as taking a close-up look at armoured sleeves, helmets and face masks. Hosted by our Curator Emeritus Ian Bottomley this is a unique opportunity to get up close and personal to some of the most beautifully made and fascinating items in our collection. * All of the seminars run from 10:30 to 16:30 and take place at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. Seminar Details Time: 10.30am-4.00pm For further information or to book please email educate.leeds@armouries.org.uk or call +44-113-220-1888. |
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A massive earthquake, the seventh largest recorded in history, struck the east coast of Japan on Friday 11 March. The earthquake, measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, triggered a tsunami which hit the east coast of Japan with 7-metre-high waves, leaving a trail of destruction. Reports say that more than 1,000 people have died in the disaster, with many more missing and many injured. The earthquake triggered fires and caused severe damage to buildings, leaving more than five million homes without electricity and a million without water. The Japanese Red Cross has been working on the ground since the disaster began, mobilising 86 teams, made up of around 600 doctors, nurses and support staff, to provide first aid and healthcare and assess the damage and needs of the communities affected. Nihonto Club has made a humble donation to British Red Cross. Please consider donating to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Appeal. Kind regards, |
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Publication of Japanese sword related materials in a systematic and coherent way is the main mission of Nihonto Club. Uploading images and other media and attaching them to the main content is one of its most important components. Over last 4 years a number of solutions for handling images were used in different parts of the website (boards, galleries, collections etc) trying to find one which is best fit for the purpose. Personally I had serious reservations about all of them and was simply waiting for 'the right one' before committing to posting any image-heavy content. Also I needed to know how you use it. Images seemed to be mostly used in Discussion Boards to ask questions about particular blades and fittings, as well as providing answers. In addition, Image Gallery and Private Collections areas were actively used to share images of the items you own. Ability to expose images in Sword Database was another important area to be addressed. The time has now come to roll out the new image handling system based on a very promising Node Gallery module for Nihonto Club software. The new solution is treating pages of certain types (forum topic, collection item, sword record) as galleries with the possibility of attaching a number of images. Once added, they are available at the bottom of the page. If you click any image, it brings you to the gallery view where you can browse through images, view their enlarged versions (if available) and leave your comments. It also allows maintaining information about ownership, copyright and licensing restrictions. It will help us to be fair to people who share their work, as well as open possibilities of using publically available image repositories such as Wikimedia Commons and Flickr without breaching their Terms & Conditions. This may not be a concern for a classic style message board, but Nihonto Club is (or hoping to be) more like a research tool and we need to think long term. Being currently exposed in the most basic form, it provides brilliant prospects for future development. I'm hoping that you'll find it more consistent, intuitive and convenient than the older solutions. read more » |
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I’m pleased to announce the rollout of a new feature which hopefully will become one of the most important components of this website. Sword Database (accessible from the Club Resources menu on the left hand side) is a collection of sword records, from the most prominent to the most humble ones. It starts from the list of Kokuho – Japanese National Treasures and it’s going to expand in the coming years. Information on more than 2000 swords is ready to be published in the future. The first version of the Sword Database contains only basic metrics of the blade, attribution and references to public sources, e.g. sword books, magazines and articles. It will be eventually enhanced with photos, thorough description and other information. It’s totally integrated with Swordsmith Index and allows searching both smiths and individual swords by signature. Swordsmith records display a list of extant works (if registered in the database). See Sukemitsu or Tōshirō Yoshimitsu as examples. read more » |
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Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds is hosting a seminar on Japanese swords in February 2011. See the description below. Our ever-popular Japanese swords seminar will give participants a unique chance to learn about making and care of important cultural objects. Delivered by Keeper of Armour & Oriental Collections Thom Richardson and Curator Emeritus Ian Bottomley the session gives the chance to handle genuine objects from our study collections which are not usually on public display, including a wakizashi by Tadahiro of Hizen of the mid 17th century with its complete set of mounts, bags, and sword box, and a tachi of about 1400 by Sadatsugu of Bitchu. Seminar Details Time: 10am-4.30pm For further information or to book please email educate.leeds@armouries.org.uk or alternatively call Jon Copley on +44-113-220-1888. If you wish to attend, hurry up as the number of seats is limited! I'm hoping to meet some of you there. |
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Nihonto Club is going offline at 20:30 GMT due to server memory upgrade. With the website becoming more popular we have outgrown the current server capacity! I hope the downtime will be short. Apologies for any inconvenience it may cause. |
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Having received a notification from www.thejapanesesword.com last week, I am now a proud owner of Nobuo Nakahara's 'Facts and Fundamentals of Japanese Swords. A Collector's Guide' (translated into English by Paul Martin). Actually, I have two copies now, already thinking of some kind of contest or raffle for Nihonto Club to give one away. I had a quick glance and couldn't stop myself reading few pages here and there. Now I'm looking forward to weekend to read it from the very start to the end. It's somehow different to other Nihontō books. Instead of typical indispensable but dry sequence of glossary terms, lists of schools and prominent smiths, it is shaped as an engaging narrative with Q&A sessions, bullet points, flashbacks and terms related to the context. It offers very practical, hands-on view to sword collecting and appreciation, and gives an impression of attending a high quality seminar with a master, rather than of reading a heavy-weight academic publication. It was especially appealing as I was always wondering if it will ever be a book or online resource which (while being professional and scholarly) provides a view at Nihontō tailored to a beginner's mind, temporarily stepping away from highly specialized mindset of a connoisseur. Now we have one. I think it's very important. A person who just started having an interest in authentic Japanese swords will hardly comprehend descriptions of hamon and hada of Kunimitsu, but will rather have simple questions like 'how to tell if the sword is good' and 'how old is it' and other practicalities. This is what this book seems to be about. Needless to say that the quality of publication and imagework is top-notch, being typical to Kodansha Intl. As seen in Questions & Answers, Nakahara-sensei offers a straight and refreshing view at the subject with less emphasis on the lore, but focusing more on the sword itself. Some of his opinions may be seen as unorthodox and strong, but as mentioned by Paul Martin in the introduction there are many different theories and viewpoints in Japan, and all of them should be considered in order to get a broad understanding of Japanese swords. It must be said, I would really really like to have this book available at the time when I started collecting and studying Nihontō. It wouldn't be a surprise if in a few years this book will become an absolute must-have for any collector (beginner and experienced). |
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As announced in NBTHK mailing list a new book by Markus Sesko is out (124 pages, published in June 2010). Author himself describes the book as: My aim with this publication is to make the major genealogies of Japanese swordsmiths and their schools from the kotō to the shintō and shinshintō periods easily accessible to the Western reader, namely in that they are complete and have been revised for the first time, in a single book. The publication begins with a brief introduction to the history of Japanese sword literature. read more »
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Due to essential web site maintenance Nihonto Club may intermittently go offline between Jun 11, 23:00 GMT and June 12 03:00 GMT. Apologies for any inconvenience it may cause. |
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Nihonto Club is happy to present a new book by Paul Martin, The Japanese Sword: Guide to Nyusatsu Kantei (Koto, Shinto Dozen List) (available in English, French, Italian and Russian).
It comes in a handy size (unlike most sword books) and is beneficial to sword enthusiasts of all levels. It has basic information for beginners, blade shape charts, explanation of the rules of kantei and most importantly a Koto, Shinto dozen list for easy navigation when practicing nyusatsu kantei. The book can be ordered at http://www.thejapanesesword.com in the Store section. |
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