While the
Five Schools were the largest providers of swords in
KOTO times, there were excellent smiths associated
with the smaller schools located throughout the
country. These schools, like the big five, hailed
from provincial townships that were in mutual
contact via old Japan's DO system.
A
DO is an area of land and peoples that share a
bond of long-term communications, competition and
common materials share. Mostly they share the
common traits and character underlying and imbued
throughout the area's philosophy and art. The DOI
or path of its people.
As
knowledge and communication were greatest
throughout the DO and its roadways, those towns
developed the greatest similarity of school style.
Of equal appraisal importance, one sees the
greatest similarity in the quality of steels
- the essence of sword
quality and character -
Placing KOTO that were not of the Five Schools,
therefore, is accomplished by associating style to
one of the town-schools linked within their region
by DO. Similarity to one of the Five Schools,
then, will point toward a defined number of
appraisal possibilities: one of the towns of that
given DO.
Upon seeing numbers of swords, an appraiser
realizes the striking similarity in steel and
sword style between pieces originating from towns
common by DO. This is true of all KOTO and
somewhat through the later periods as well.
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