No.2 Katana

The blade has wide mi-haba, thick kasane and little tapering sugata with o-kissaki so that it can be attributed to one of Keicho-shinto or shinshinto. Furthermore, it is very heavy and has scarce hira-niku. Therefore it is concluded that the blade is one of shinshinto.

The jihada is visible itame-hada with thick ji-nie and many chikei differing from ordinary jihada of shinshinto. The hamon consists of thick nie accompanied with rough and uneven nie then many ashi and long sunagashi are seen inside the hamon. The tip of the boshi is slightly pointed. At a glance, it looks like one of the Yamaura school like Kiyomaro, Nobuhide, Masao and Kiyondo. Though the Yamaura school makes sharper sugata with little hira-niku and fukura. Their jihada combines running hada and hamon mixes squarish midare. Also their nioi-guchi is brighter than this one.

Jiro Taro Naokatsu is a son of Tai Naotane and good at this kind of workmanship that kinsuji and sunagashi are emphasised and resembles to that of Kiyomaro. He is also familiar with Soshu-den and Bizen-den.

The blade does not show the characteristics of Naokatsu and is easily mistaken for Kiyomaro and his students. Thus there was no ‘Atari’ vote this time. There were some ‘dozen’ votes for Taikei Naotane and Suishinshi Masatsugu. They often demonstrate Soshu-den few hataraki are seen inside their hamon.

In addition, there were a considerable number of votes for Motohira and Masayoshi of Satsuma-shinshinto. Though their blades have plenty of hira-niku and rough and uneven nie are more emphasized also hamon mix continuous gunome and togari-ba then thick nie line called ‘Imozuru’ is seen in the hamon line.