[Jim Smith]

I'm new to swords, and I'm looking for a 80's style ninja sword. I found this one on ebay but I'm not sure if it's worth the money. Can someone tell me if this is a good quality sword, and worth the money. Thanks

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem...TQ:US:1123

[Adam S.]

Hello, Jim and welcome to the forum.

While Japanese swords are not shunned here on myArmoury, the focus is more on European blades.

If you want information on Japanese and Japanese inspired pieces, I'd recommend Sword Forum International or the Sword Buyers' Guide forum. Though SBG's site has been down for a few days, they specialize in the sub-$300 sword market.

If you want solid history, though, this is the place! It's a great group of folks here and they'll treat you well.

[Luka Borscak]

Well, the sword at least looks functional (1095 carbon steel) and has a real hamon.

[Chad Arnow]

[J. Hargis]

Chad:

[Edward Lee]

This sword is probably made by one of the workshop in Longquan China.

[Jim Smith]

What does that mean, is it crap?

[Jussi Ekholm]

I would go for Hanwei instead of these Longquan forges. While the sword itself might be decent, many (I dare to say most) Longquan forges churn out mediocre blades with quite bad fittings.

Living in Europe, I always calculate the prices for myself, and after shipping + 24% tax, that would most likely be roughly 300€ sword. For about the same price you could get much better quality from Hanwei. Although Hanwei quite recently raised prices of many of their products, so I'm not exactly sure for how much these sell now in the USA.

You can see the Hanwei Ninja-to lineup here at Oriental-weaponry (an UK company): http://www.oriental-weaponry.co.uk/acatalog/s...ninja.html

If I would buy a ninja-to, my pick would be either Hanwei Iga or Koga.

Kult of Athena doesn't have Koga & Iga anymore, but you can find the Hanwei Practical Ninja-to for good price: http://kultofathena.com/swords-ninja-to.asp

But everyone always has to make their own decisions, personally I wouldn't buy that sword, but people look for different things in swords. And I admit being extremely picky about what replicas of Japanese swords I would even consider.

[Jim Smith]

I did check out the hanwei ninjato, but I like how the blade on this sword is smaller, and the handle is bigger. The hanwei ninjato has a little bit larger blade, and a smaller handle.

[Edward Lee]

[Greg Ballantyne]

Hello Jim, welcome to the forum. I'd like to add to some of the statements others have made above. While my main interest and my collection to this point is squarely targeted to a rather small slice of the European historical era, I am also fascinated by the Japanese sword making history. I've got a couple of books dedicated to that subject, and find them very interesting. Of course, that is another small slice out of the rich tapestry of arms and armor history. I would also like to see more of that subject and others discussed here. I could benefit from broader exposure.
Of course I may be a little optimistic, hoping for the appearance of so many people with such broad knowledge.....
I have also heard that quality European reproductions are available at lower price points than comparable quality Japanese historical reproductions. That is hearsay on my part, not a result of experience. But being new to this interest you my find, as I did with European reproductions, that a variety of quality levels are represented in the offerings at lower price points. Not all $300 swords are equal, far from it......

[Jussi Ekholm]

I'm always up for sword chatter, and now since SBG has bit of downtime, there ain't that many places to chat about Japanese style production swords.

I think it's about 50-50, there are cheap & good Japanese style swords, and there are cheap & good European style swords. Here in Europe we probably have better options regarding European stuff, due to Eastern European smiths creating stuff at affordable prices. Where as in the USA Japanese style swords are cheaper in comparison due to their huge sale volumes.

The biggest difference is in variety of the stuff, and even basic historical accuracy. Both of these go hands down to European swords in my opinion. There is just so much sweet European stuff from varying periods floating around, so much that it's even hard to choose what to pick up.

In Japanese production swords there are katana, katana and did I mention katana... And 90% of these are pretty much just generic stuff without any historical research being put behind them. They just slap the various bits & pieces together for slightly different variations, and there, you have another new model...

Wow, such variety, many models, very awesome, so good. Sorry for using the doge meme, but I just couldn't resist it...

You have couple good budget wakizashis floating around and same for tanto, but after that it gets quiet.

I love tachi, and I try to focus my collecting towards tachi, authentic and replica. Well try to look for a decent replica of tachi, and you'll hear crickets chirping... Yep there are some replicas for small budget, but they more than often leave a lot to be desired.

The reason I like Hanwei offerings is the fact that they seem to me to put more effort into their models than many others. Unfortunately pretty much most of the Hanwei offerings that are among my favorites get discontinued, probably because people don't buy them. In my view Hanwei Odachi has been probably one of the biggest (even literally) things to hit Japanese style production sword market during my collecting years. I still keep wishing I could have bought a Dguertin Yukiyasu before the company went under c. 10 years ago... I'm glad I was able to find Bugei Little Crow tachi couple years ago, I think that was also discontinued c. 10years ago...

Why people dislike these good swords copied from originals and buy those generic swords that are slapped together? I can't tell... I would just wish more manufacturers would just take more time doing actual research.

Things like the "ko katana" craze have gotten bigger, while I would hope that they would not just be short blade & long tsuka. I wish the manufacturers would pay more intrest for example in the real Muromachi era swords for their inspiration.

I'm getting a custom katate-uchi from a Chinese forge, and I tried to pick koshirae options to resemble Higo koshirae from the options provided by forge. I'm getting my semi-custom long LL blade mounted to one specific style of tachi koshirae, partly with a help of professional craftsman. I've found myself often wondering why there aren't things like this commercially available? Probably the answer would be that maybe 1 or 2 people would buy it...

I guess it's time to end my long rant, I hope maybe someone might have had patience to read through it. I hope that didn't discourage anyone from jumping into Japanese production swords, they are quite fun. The problem is for me when I get more knowledge, the shortcomings in the market become clearer. I just don't feel historical accuracy is anywhere near as important in Japanese production sword collecting than in European production sword collecting. Guess I should have typed that one sentence instead of all this ranting.

[Phil D.]

Hey Jim,
Here is one with iron tsuba for half the price and free shipping...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RAZOR-SHARP-HANDMADE-...27dcbb5a6a

Here is one even less expensive with iron tsuba as well...and the seller has 100 % feedback after 1000+ sales...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-Tang-Blade-Hand-...3cd0dd7e65

It seems that there are quite a bit of reasonably priced 80s style ninjato. You just have to sort the iron fittings from the zinc alloy.

[Phil D.]

One last thing. If you want a good sword at a good price check out the Kris Cutlery scratch and dent sale. They have their Korean sword on sale that is very similar to a ninjato...

http://kriscutlery.com/85.html

[Anders Backlund]