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As some of you may have noticed, there have already been some changes in the Swordsmith Index in recent weeks. This announcement provides details on the ongoing and planned updates for the Index. Macrons for long vowels When the first version of the Index was released nearly 3 years ago, a decision was made to give the ability to search and maintain data the highest priority. In order to facilitate that, all the names and terms were transformed to plain ASCII format (given the overall state of the internet technology at the time). There was some research done recently by Google which shows that Unicode is now widely adapted and supported across the Internet. This gave me reassurance that it's time to revise this decision. Since we migrated to a new platform 6 months ago, it is technologically feasible now to take another step forward and review the way Japanese names and terms are presented in Swordsmith Index and throughout the site. The proposed changes are also based on feedback from visitors and members of Nihonto Club. Most importantly names of smiths, schools, provinces, eras as well as signatures will now be presented using macrons (ō and ū) for long o and u. Submission guidelines for Japan-related articles in Wikipedia are worth to be adapted: Manual of Style (Japan-related articles). This change won't affect searching as both internal search and Google search can process macrons correctly (e.g. if we search for 'Bishu Osafune' it will find both 'Bishu Osafune' and 'Bishū Osafune'). This should make it easier to reconcile Rōmaji with Kanji, and also help non-Japanese readers with pronunciation. As this is (mostly) manual process, it will take a while to migrate the whole site with tens of thousands records into the new format. Archaic pronunciations Rōmaji for iye and suye (家, 末 and alternatives) will be replaced by modern forms ie and sue. E.g. Masaiye and Iyetsugu will be displayed and Masaie and Ietsugu. read more » |
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We are about a week away from the release of our pocket guide to nyusatsu kantei. If you are interested in pre-ordering a copy, please order from the contact page at http://www.thejapanesesword.com. It is W 4.25" x H 6.87". 50 pages. $12 +pp. 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. Sorry for the bandwidth, but I felt that the western sword world needed this amazingly important tool in order to be able to practice and build their confidence in nyusatsu kantei. |
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Nihonto Club wishes you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for your participation and contribution to the Club this year. It's been a great success, the audience has grown by 60%. I hope you find it useful and I'm looking forward to seeing you around next year. |
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Swordsmith Index now allows filtering by Province and Era. Note: when filtering by Era, only traditional Nengō are available. It's currently not possible to filter by historical periods (e.g. Nanbokucho) or sword periods (Koto, Shinto etc). This is due to the fact that filtering works off the specified Start Era field in the smith record. Therefore filtering by Koto period will only show records with Start Era = Koto, and not any Koto smiths as one would expect. |
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Dear Members and Visitors, Major software upgrade is planned for the coming weekend. Nihonto Club web site will be available in read-only mode between Friday, 11 September 2009 19:00 GMT and Sunday, 13 September 2009 22:00 GMT. You won’t be able to post comments or add new content. Image Gallery will be unavailable. Smith search is not affected. This is a big step forward which took almost a year and a half to prepare. It opens up possibilities for adding new features and services. More detailed list of changes to follow. Apologies for any inconvenience it may have caused. Regards, |
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A ban on Samurai swords comes into effect from today. Those caught with the weapons could face up to seven years in prison. In a bid to cater for collectors, those made before 1954 or at another time by traditional hand-made methods will be exempt.
Talks about potential sword ban started in December 2007 after another high profile attack involving a 'samurai sword'. It is known that Department of Justice had been in contact with local martial arts organisations (Iaido Association of Ireland is particular) is order to avoid unnecessary restrictions for martial arts practitioneers and authentic sword collectors. In the light of recent global trends to regulate possession and transportation of 'samurai' swords (which sometimes comes in quite narrow-minded forms) the new Irish legislation appears to be reasonable, especially taking into account the (more than modest) size of the local sword scene. Mirroring the UK sword ban which was introduced in April 2008 as one of the questionable measures to fight 'knife crime', authentic hand-made Japanese swords (Nihonto) are exempt (however I couldn't yet find any reference to whether sports equipment such as iaito and shinken is to be banned or not). The real concern is the practical side of the legislation and the way it's going to be implemented. There's been numerous occasions in UK since introduction of the sword ban when law-abiding collectors had trouble importing antique swords. It's perfectly understandable due to the fact that in order for Customs to make sure that it's legal to import a sword, some sort of cerfificate required proving its age and provenance. And the most common cert of this kind (if any) is the NBTHK paper hand-written in Japanese. No wonder Customs officers, sorting office workers and law enforcement authorities would not be able to take it as a supportive documentation without difficult (and costly) translation.And this is the neigbouring UK which is much more accustomed to importing/exporting Japanese collectible weapons than Irish. How many Customs officers and An Post employees were instructed about differences between replica and authentic Japanese swords or even have seen ones? Will they be collector-friendly or take an eBay approach and stop any import of 'illegal samurai-like swords' unless (with immense trouble) proven otherwise? If temporarily or permanently seized, will real Nihonto be given a proper care? There is no doubt that curculation of cheap and dangerous replica had to be stopped, even with the level or crime involving samurai swords being ridiculously low in comparison to the usage of widely available home utensils.But will the fair treatment of martial arts practitioneers and sword collectors be guaranteed? Time will tell. |
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Ever wondered if one day you could just:
All this is possible with modern technologies. In fact, I have most of it up and running since Christmas on my home server. Have a quick look here: A web crawler is running at designated times through a set of well-known Nihonto related sites, and results are available through Multisite search within NihontoClub. It also covers Nihonto Club site itself, providing much higher quality searching facilities (let's be honest, NC built-in search isn't great - it doesn't even recognise word variations). You may see how many times the phrase was found on each of the targeted seb sites, filter by site, etc (see the screenshot). There's one downside: it needs more power. In order to make it usable just for one person, I'd need almost twice as powerful web hosting (which means higher running costs). I'm working on a fully automated version now, which will be available some time before the end of the year (sorry folks, too many real life committments) and it's going to be hosted on my home server with free access from the main website. It won't be fast, there may be downtime, but I hope you may find it useful. |
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Nihonto Club can now be found on Twitter (@NihontoClub). Follow us to get the most up-to-date information about the site. |
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There's been the following announcement on eBay site: From 10th March 2009, all knives and swords except cutlery will be banned from sale on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie. The definition of cutlery includes those implements which can be used for eating, including cutlery sets, individual pieces of cutlery and antique cutlery. All other items, including knives used in the preparation of food will be banned, including (but not limited to);
We will be able to determine if the buyer or bidder enters the details of a debit card, solo card or pre-paid card, the types of card most likely to be held by under-18s. If the details of any of these types of cards are entered, eBay will prevent the buyer or bidder from completing the transaction. If the bidder or buyer enters valid credit card details they will then be given the option to pay using any approved method of payment. We will be strict in the enforcement of these new policies and any seller who repeatedly attempts to break this policy will face strict sanctions, including possible suspension from the eBay site. http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200902231205572.html This means no more bargains for Irish and British collectors and researchers, thanks to Government's inability to fight crime. read more » |
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Dear Members and Guests, I'm delighted to inform you that NihontoClub.Com has moved to a new server which offers greater stability and performance (for just a little greater price). It's been tough few weeks for me as our former hosting company (BlueHost.com) was blocking the site without warning, claiming it was causing performance issues on the server. Due to their rude and inconsiderate approach I decided not to contest this claim but move all the sites to a different hosting provider. And I can tell you, it's been great so far. It's a VPS (virtual private server), not shared hosting. The site shows much faster response, there is no lag at peak times. Also, using an opportunity to spend some time with the test site I've made quite a few changes which were planned long time ago, but kept being delayed as I would have had to bring the live site down for a while to apply them. After running the site for almost 2 years by now I have a pretty good idea which resources are popular and which aren't. Some areas like Glossary and Weblink Directory remained too heavy and clunky to use, with few redundant or unnecessary features. This also affected the overall site performance. read more » |
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