Dear Members and Friends,

Nihonto Club has reached a major milestone today. All records in Swordsmith Index have been verified against at least one swordsmith directory. All related databases and services have a solid foundation now, upon which Nihonto Club will grow. From now onwards you’ll never see the message ‘Warning! This record hasn't been verified yet’ again. It took more than 5 years to:

• validate 12306 smith records (new and existing) and transform to Nihonto Club format
• clean up, add missing characters to 2418 existing signatures
• add 4769 new signatures in Kanji and Romaji

What's next? With all the holes in the existing data addressed, I'll be able to spend more time expanding swordsmith records with more in-depth information and continue working on the Sword Database, starting with Juyō class swords. Eventually I'm also planning to add more data on somewhat under-represented modern smiths, subject to time and resource constraints.

Many thanks to all the contributors who supplied Swordsmith Index with additional information. Your participation is always valued and appreciated.

Regards,
Stan Nazarenko