NTHK papered to Mainline Kaneyoshi School circa 1532.

Mei: "Kane..."

Nagasa: 21.5 inches

Construction: Shinogi Zukuri

Nakago: Suriage with partial signature remaining

Yasurimei:

Kitae: Masame

Hamon:

Horimono:

Kasane:

This particular sword has been attributed to the mainline School of Kaneyoshi. Zenjo Kaneyoshi was origianlly from the Tegai School in Yamato Province, he then moved to Mino to become the founder of the Zensho School in the early 1400's.

The hamon is a hoso suguha with subtle nioi and nie. The hada is "Zensho" hada which is mainly masame, shirake utsuri is seen along the entire blade. This was probably made by Yondai Kaneyoshi, the fourth generation Kaneyoshi.

As an interesting side note, when I was at the recent Chicago Shinsa I was returning to my room late at night with a couple of swords in my hand, I came across 2 Japanese gentlemen who were also returning to their room. The invited me into their room and wanted to look at my swords. After many trips back and forth to my room for armfulls of swords, they saw this particular Kaneyoshi. They one person who spoke english was translating for me, he said "This is a good sword, we both think this is a very good sword, we hope you are submitting for shinsa tomorrow.". I did submit it for shinsa and it received 75 points - a very good score. Both of the Japanese men were on the shinsa team.

$3000.00 with NTHK papers.