Nihonto Club

Hi Baz,

I looked through my books and I couldn't find anything except 2 records in Hawley's (KIY360 and KIY361). I presume looking at the tang, shape and features of the blade will be a good start in order to identify which generation Kiyonobu it may be.

Regards,
Stan

Thanks for comment Stan. I have found KIY367 and KIY368. I'll try and get on to the pics today.
Baz

Can't figure how to put images here, images in my album
Baz

Hi Baz,

Yes, there's more information about Kiyonobu from Mino. They are mentioned in Toko Taikan and Fujishiro, I'll have a look over weekend.

This is the link to the album you've created, in case if somebody else would like to have a look:

Regards,
Stan

Hi Baz,

Would it be possible to make a photo of the full tang (with signature)? I tried to put your photos together to get the image of the complete signature, but I couldn't figure out how to join them together. By the way, the photos seem to be upside down - the direction of the signature is from the blade downwards (towards the end of the tang), not the other way around. The top section (jap3) shows 'NIO', the next one (jap2) looks like 'KIYO'. I'm not sure how to attach the last photo.

Regards,
Stan

OK Stan, I'll try again. Pics I took of the complete tang were not very good.
I'll try right now.

Baz

Finally got some tang pics on my gallery Stan. Further info:

hamon is Suguha
blade is Shinogi-zukuri
activity Sunagashi
Boshi Yakizume
Kissaki Chu-kissaki
Nagako shape Futsu
Nagako -jiri Katayama
I'm not smart Stan, got this from a sheet I was given

Thanks for your interest and help

regards,

Baz

Hi Baz,

Thanks for the photos.

From what I can gather from them, the appearance of the blade and nakago (tang) matches the signature and the period. Nakago looks similar to other works of Sue-Nio school in Muromachi period. Kiyonobu (whether KIY360 or KIY361) would be a lesser known smith of Sue-Nio and there mightn't be an abundance of information about him. But if you look for other smiths of Nio school of that time (between 1394 and 1501), you'll have a good idea what they were like.

It's hard to judge if your sword is 1st or 2nd generation. Somebody proficient in Nihonto may be able to tell after seeing the blade in person, as photos (I don't mean yours in particular, but any photos) and textual descriptions aren't good enough for this task. Devil is in the details, as usual. Regardless of the attribution, 1st and 2nd generations would be on the same scale in terms of quality/value/importance etc.

I hope this helps. That's very much all I can do for you based on photos. If I see something about these smiths, I'll let you know.

Regards,
Stan

Thanks for all the trouble and time Stan, I feel a lot better about my sword now. One last thing if I could impose. Can you tell me what each character on the tang means?

regards,

Baz

Baz,

Here we go:

二王清信作

ni-o-kiyo-nobu-saku

Nio being the name of the school and Kiyonobu is the art name of the smith. Saku - 'made by'.

Regards,
Stan