Listing a rare and important gendaito by Shibata Ka. He was a very special smith, being in a unique position of being able to study masterworks at leisure within his own collection and was subsequently able to reproduce the jigane of Kamakura jidai works to a remarkable degree. Shibata Ka has been my favorite gendai smith for a long time, and I would have put him (in my own opinion) as the overall best until I was able to study some very exceptional blades by Tsukamoto Okimasa. Darcy has a wonderful write-up on this smith on his website, so I will include a link here.
https://yuhindo.com/shibata-ka/
This sword is an exceptional piece done in So-den Bizen with a brilliant choji/gonome-midare hamon having kinsuji running in parallel strands throughout. There is much depth of activity, with ashi, yo, etc descending to the edge. The sword is 68cm in length with a 31mm moto-haba and 6.5mm kasane. Due to my interest in this smith, I have made a point to study his work whenever possible. This is now the 8th example I have been able to study, along with 3 other katana and 4 tanto. Sadly, this blade has two kizu which unfortunately seems to be common in his work. He was generally self taught and the presence of kizu in his work is discussed in Tamio Tsuchiko’s reference on gendai smiths. In the case of this blade, there is a kitae-ware w/ small fukure in the hamon (shown here) and a second small fukure under the nakago (I will upload an additional photo). The sword is an overall very good state of polish. It is in shirasaya with koppamaki and has a solid silver habaki. It has a patriotic dedication on the nakago along with the name of the individual who ordered this sword. It is dated a lucky day in the 8th month of 1942.
$8,800 (plus shipping and PayPal)
