In a recent conversation I had with a collector, the topic of the “uneven playing field” of available blades to study between Japan and outside of Japan came up. Obviously, the chances to study more (fine) blades and the ability to dip into a much greater pool of makers is vastly “skewed” towards Japan.
With this discussion as a context, I thought about how to put together some concrete data regarding this issue, and I mean, with students of Nihontō as focal point. First of all, I thought that the emphasis should be on opportunities of hands-on study and not just about which museums you can visit to see blades behind glass. Also, sword rotations at museums are often not announced, so it is a bit tricky to tell what one can see at any given moment.
All that said, most obvious choice for looking for tangible data is the NBTHK, as they publish the blades that are presented for Kantei and study at their monthly Tōkyō Teirei Kanshō (定例鑑賞, “Regular Appreciation”) meetings in the Tōken-Bijutsu magazine. One can attend these meetings by becoming a member, and I attended some in the early 2000s at their old place in Yoyogi.
So, my “data experiment” was as follows: Assuming you were the bestest boy/girl and attended every single monthly meeting the last 25 years, I wanted to know what blades you would have “under your belt” by now. With this, I created a spreadsheet that lists all the makers/schools featured across basically 300 meetings, that contains the usual era differentiation (K for Kotō, S for Shintō, and SS for Shinshintō), and that lists how often blades by a certain maker/school were on display, plus the actual number of blades by said maker/school as more or less regularly, the same blades are shown over the years. That is, if a smith has 10 for “No. of display” and 5 for “No. of blades” in the spreadsheet linked later, for example, it means that 5 of his works were out in 10 meetings, meaning that some were shown multiple times.
Disclaimer before we continue: Sometimes, meetings are not reported in the Tōken-Bijutsu magazine, or only the blades are briefly mentioned via just the name of the smith, e.g., “last month, we had a Hizen Tadayoshi, a Rai Kunimitsu…” As these omissions usually only happen once a year, and as I also wanted to focus on the concrete number of individual blades, which is impossible by just a name drop and not at least also mentioning nagasa, etc., I left those out in the spreadsheet. And then there was Covid, so there were no meetings and mostly just three blades were introduced in the magazine every month just to keep the tradition alive, if you will.
So, if you had attended ALL those aforementioned meetings over a span of 25 years, you would have seen about 850 blades by roughly 300 makers/schools, with the age distribution being about 200 Kotō, 80 Shintō, and 20 Shinshintō. The files linked below are PDFs of said spreadsheet, one in alphabetical order that makes finding a maker/school easier, one in descending order of makers/schools having been presented over the years and one in descending order the number of featured blades by the latter.
As you can see in the preview below, there are some of the “usual suspects” among the most featured makers/schools, but also some interesting quantities. For example, I would not have thought that the Õsaka-Shintō smith Oya-Kunisada (親国貞) constitutes number three. And he is also number two behind Kotetsu in terms of featured blades, on the same place with Tsuda Sukehiro (助広) and Seki Kansada (兼定).
As a bonus, I also added all the Kantei, referred to as Shijō Kantei (誌上鑑定), that were presented in the magazine over the last 25 years. Over these 25 years, roughly 240 blades by ca. 130 makers/schools were presented, meaning again that some were featured several times. The agre distribution in case of the Kantei blades is about 70 Kotō, 40 Shintō, and 20 Shinshintō. Again, I am linking three PDFs, one in alphabetical order and two regarding the occasions and number of blades, respectively. Incidentally, I also added the Tōken-Bijutsu numbers in case you want to find a certain Kantei blade.
Interesting here is that the top two makers put out for Kantei are Hizen Tadahiro (忠広) and Osafune Motoshige (元重), and also that Hizen Yukihiro (行広) is so high up there being presented six times over the years.
That said, I hope you enjoy going through the lists, and maybe they confirm (or dismiss) a hunch one had about what blades were out for hands-on study at the NBTHK over the last 25 years.