Nihonto Club

After 8 months of sitting long evenings over books and typing Kanji, I have more than 6000 individual smith records manually verified and in good shape and more than 3100 new signatures in the database. Phew!

Each record in Swordsmith record has now Province and Era filled in. This is very important as smiths can be identified by a trio "art name-province-era" and if any part is missing, you can never be sure without going back to the books.

Next target is (see you in one year :-) ) verification of all remaining records (around 4700 of them).

Also you may already have noticed that record format had changed slightly.

• Province and Era are now displayed in Kanji on the right hand side to the smith's name.
• Generation is displayed in Kanji (if defined) under the smith's name
• Sword period symbol is displayed in the top right corner of the name area, similar to Nihonto Meikan. Circle corresponds to Koto, triangle - Shinto, square - Shin-Shinto, star - Gendaito. This gives the reader simple idea what smith he/she is looing at.
• The idea of start/end year is elaborated. Ambiguous 'started in' and 'retired in' references are now replaced by 'Active Period' field which shows the range of years the smith was known to be active on. If specific years weren't entered, it shows the year range based on era field. With the current use of this field being limited, it may become more important in the future, reflecting extant works of the smith with known production year or historical evidence.

P.S. Something good is coming in 2-3 weeks. Don't miss it!