A guide for new collectors in field of Japanese Art
How to start a tosogu collection
Nobody starts at the beginning. Most collectors of Japanese sword fittings arrive from somewhere else: from a dojo, from a gallery, from a journey, or from a box in a family attic. Where you come from shapes what you see first, and what you are likely to miss.
Choose the way you came in. The advice that follows is written for that path. What all paths share comes after.
How did you come to tosogu?
Your way in
Through practice
What you bring
You know what a sword is for. You have felt weight and balance, and the distance between the hand and the blade. A tsuba is not an ornament to you. It is a guard, set exactly where the hand stops. That knowledge cannot be read into, and it shapes the questions you ask.
What to watch for
The fittings are a field of their own. Their study runs on schools, metals and subjects, not on function, and it asks for a different kind of attention than the blade. Many practitioners stay with the sword and treat the fittings as its accessories. The other risk is the market for mountings made to be used. They belong in the dojo, not in a collection.
Where to begin
Begin where you already are: with the mounted sword. Look at a complete koshirae and ask why each part looks as it does. Then take it apart in your mind and look at one guard on its own. Plain iron guards are often the natural bridge. They were made to be used, and they are still works of art.
A first year
- Visit one museum room with mounted swords and one with loose fittings. Note what you see in each.
- Go to a study meeting and ask to hold an iron tsuba, then one in soft metal. Compare the weight in your hand.
- Read one good introduction to the fittings, not to the blade.
- Buy nothing in the first months. Then perhaps one honest iron guard you can study for a long time.
To read on
- The blades in the collection, several in their mountings
- A mounting carved entirely from wood, read as one theme
- Iron, the metal of most early guards
Your way in
Through the eye
What you bring
A trained eye travels well. You recognise the quality of a surface, the balance of a composition, the difference between carved and cast. Those judgements hold here too, and they are rarer than knowledge of names.
What to watch for
The eye cannot read a signature, a school or a patina. Whether a mark is genuine, whether a surface is old, whether a subject is rendered correctly within its tradition: taste alone answers none of this. Collectors from the art market often buy one important piece early and at a high price, before they can judge it. The market does not always correct that.
A first year
- Learn the metals until you can name them across a table.
- Spend a day at a fair or a society meeting and handle pieces with people who disagree about them.
- If you have already bought, have a piece examined for papers, and ask for the reasoning behind the result.
- Choose one school or one subject and follow it for a year.
To read on
- Eight guards signed Tsuneshige, set side by side
- Kozuka, where the finest carving often sits
- Seeing without context, from the European Perspective series
- Where and when the schools worked, a geographical timeline at tsuba.info
Your way in
Through a journey
What you bring
Curiosity without habits. You have no school to defend and no fixed idea of what a good piece should look like. For a while, that is an advantage.
What to watch for
The field is wide, and the market for visitors is wider. Cast copies and pieces made for sale to travellers are common. Without a direction, a first collection easily becomes a heap of pleasant things that say little together.
Where to begin
Let one thing lead you: a subject you love, a dragon, a wave, a hare under the moon, or one metal. Follow it through museums and catalogues before you follow it into the market. A theme gives the eye a question to ask of every piece.
A first year
- Keep a notebook of pieces you have seen, with a line on why each stayed with you.
- Visit the Japanese rooms of one large museum twice, a season apart.
- Follow your subject through the collection here, by motif.
- Buy small and honest. An unsigned guard of good work teaches more than a signed piece of doubtful origin.
To read on
- Ode to the small that carries greatness, a gentle first reading
- All pieces, to filter by motif and metal
- Landscape, one subject followed across schools
- Where and when the schools worked, a geographical timeline at tsuba.info
Your way in
Through an inheritance
What you bring
An object with a history. Many tsuba and swords in European homes arrived generations ago, when Japanese art first reached Europe in quantity. Some come from known collections and still carry an old label or number. That history is part of the piece.
What to watch for
Do not clean or polish anything. The patina of a fitting and the polish of a blade are part of the object, and neither comes back once lost. Do not force a blade out of its mounting, and do not touch the steel with bare fingers. Be wary of quick valuations from anyone who has not held the piece. Check what the law of your country says about owning and carrying a sword.
Where to begin
Document first. Photograph each piece on both sides in daylight. Keep every box, label, paper and number, and write down what the family remembers. Then show the photographs to a society or an experienced collector who has nothing to sell you.
A first year
- Record everything as you found it, before anything is moved or cleaned.
- Look for old numbers and inscriptions, on the pieces and on their boxes.
- Take the pieces to a study meeting.
- Decide later whether to keep, to add or to let go. Many collections begin with a single piece that was already in the house.
To read on
- The early European collectors, where many such pieces began
- Hugo Halberstadt, a collection dispersed and traced again
- Societies and study groups that look at pieces without selling
What every path shares
Seven things that hold for everyone
- Look before you buy.Hundreds of pieces, in museums, at fairs, in catalogues. The eye learns by comparison.
- Hold before you buy.Photographs flatter and hide. Weight, edge and surface tell you what a picture cannot.
- Choose a focus.A school, a metal, a subject. A focused collection says something; a broad one mostly says that you bought.
- Read papers as an opinion.NBTHK papers are the common language of the field. They are the judgement of experts, not a guarantee of quality, and they say nothing about condition.
- Write it down.What you bought and why, and also what you left, and why. The notes train your judgement faster than looking alone.
- Find people who sell you nothing.Societies and study groups give what the market cannot: disagreement without interest. In Berlin, the Nihonto & Yoroi study group I founded meets at the Samurai Museum. Others are listed on the Network page.
- Buy what you understand.Not the most you can afford. The best piece in a collection should be one its owner can explain.
Before a first purchase
Seven questions to ask
Go through them for any piece you are about to buy. If you cannot answer most of them, wait.
None answered yet.
c. 1880Japanese fittings begin to reach European collections in quantity
Collecting in Europe
At a distance from the tradition
Much of what reaches the market here comes from old European collections, often without the boxes and papers that would accompany it in Japan. Collectors in Europe learn mostly from books, fairs and each other, far from the workshops where these objects were made. That distance is a difficulty, and it is also a way of seeing.
The European Perspective series follows it, from the first collectors to the way the field is studied today.
This guide describes how to begin. Where to go, whom to ask and what to read is on the Network page.