定義

• Tsuba.  Japanese sword guard; the protective guard between the blade of a sword and the handle. Tsubas were often elaborately decorated and finished as high artistic metal objects, particularly more so for ceremonial swords. Thus tsubas resembled medallions but were pierced in the center for the blade handle to pass through and occasionally in other areas as part of the design. The manufacture of tsubas entailed every technique of medal manufacturing and were an oriental development that matched – and often surpassed! – western development of metalworking including blanking, piercing, trimming, relief design, engraving, chasing, plating, inlaying, but most important of all in the finishing and/or patinaing of the end product. It could be considered that tsubas were a utilization of art medal techniques in the orient for a useful purpose – protecting the swordsman's hand – but are of immense importance for the decoration and beauty they posses.
  Tsubas are noted for their creativity, their design, the workmanship of production,
  and the craftsmanship in their patina and finishing. Tsubas are the evidence of the level
  of skill of sword making and to the extent to which their creators embellished them. Needless to say, they are widely collected both in the orient and in western countries.
  Tsuba Characteristics
  Composition of tsubas.  Most tsuba were made of iron or steel, particularly for those swords intended for extensive use. Decorative tsubas were more often made of copper or bronze; tsubas for ceremonial swords were made of silver, even gold. However bronze and silver compositions – typically the most easy to plate, inlay, patina or otherwise decorative – were widely used and widely alloyed.
  One bronze composition (shakudo) contained four percent gold which produced a highly desirable blue black or dead black patina. Another composition (shibuichi) was a silver alloy of from ten to ninety percent silver, the remainder of which was equal portions of copper, tin, lead and zinc. The later was a very hard metal that took a high polish, but could also be patinated in many attractive colors.
  Hammer work.  The first sword guards were simple disks of metal with a round hold in the center. In an attempt to make the sword guard harder, and thus more protective, sheets of different metal were welded together. These were then hammered to temper them. This hammer work is the only step that makes tsuba different from western medallic art.
  It was found that hammering then twisting the sheets gave the surface a pattern like the grain of wood (see texture, below). Beating and tempering the sheets was so important that some tsuba are inscribed naniye kitae, beaten seven times.
  Tsuba Shapes.  While ranging in size from four to six inches, tsubas are round, or nearly so, but can be of many decorative shapes. These include square, diamond (more aptly called kite-shaped), oval, four-lobed (which has its own name, mokko, named after the shape of the tree melon), or be silhouetted. There is never an angular corner or point.
  All such corners are rounded or notched. The silhouette shape of the symbolic chrysanthemum even has rounded petal ends.
  Another shape that has a name is shitogi, described “like a squeezed handfull of rice cake.” Rounded at top and bottom, it has extensive concave sides (like a double clipped planchet). The sides often have a large ring connecting the top and bottom making it more circlelike.
  Edges.  While edge thickening is a typical metalworking procedure, tsuba makers early learned to give attention to the edge, not only thickening it, but also to turn the edge metal over, causing it to flow back into the body of the guard while still retaining a thickened, smoothed edge. While this time-consuming procedure was not used by all tsuba makers, most edges were thickened by some metalworking handwork.
  Piercing.  All tsuba have a center hole the shape of the tang, or end of the blade, to pass through; thus the opening was mostly a tall triangular pierced center hole. Often one or two elliptical pierced areas (riobitsu) flanked this center hole to accommodate a knife and head pin (which also held the tsuba in place). These openings have names: kozuka for the oval opening, kogai more often was a three-lobed shape.
  Infrequently one of these elliptical kozuka holes was plugged, and the plug was made of a different metal from that of the tsuba for contrast. While these three openings were utilitarian, all other piercing, therefore, were decorative, employing highly original openwork designs.
  Around the center hole was a raised rim, called the seppa dai. This area was important, not only as a function of the design, but also as the location of any inscription, and infrequently a signature.
  Decorative Beauty
  Tsuba designs.  Most tsuba designs were inspired by nature: foliage, animals, birds, often taking on symbolic meaning. Landscapes and people are rare but do exist, as do religious themes and war themes (after all, these were weapons, symbols of warfare and defense, but most tsuba designs are dominated by naturalistic motifs).
  Design was often created in low relief, which was stamped or carved into the metal. Incuse relief was widely employed, particularly for inlay work. Sunken relief, called shi-shi-ai-bori, was also used. A common design motif was the Japanese phoenix, the ho-o bird.
  Some designs had names: radiating lines were called amida tagane or amida yasurime. A design of contrasting metal wires, as if woven into the base metal – symbolic of a caterpillar – was called shingen. (Silver or copper wires were affixed to an iron base for contrast.)
  Textures.  Because of the hardness of the tsuba, most smooth textures was called ishime or "stone surface;" while these were treated for their hardness some areas were given a polished surface (jimigaki). The wood grained texture (mokume hada) was made by welding, twisting and hammering smooth contrasting metals.
  Pebbled surface was developed as an art form unsurpassed anywhere else in the world, this was called nanako, or "fish roe surface." Tiny bosses, some as small as 125 to the inch (0.008-inch diameter!) were made by cupped shaped incuse hemisphere puncheons. Pebbled designs were made by the placement of the punches grouping and spacing these to effect the design.
  One school of tsuba makers developed a style of three size bosses, each superimposed on another, visible only under magnification. Another highly regarded design, combined a low relief motif of flowers with fish roe bosses so attractive and detailed it becomes alive under magnification.
  Women were often employed to create these pebbled nanako textures because of
  their delicate sense of touch in placement and blow to the puncheon.
  Inlays of contrasting metals, most often gold, appear in numerous designs.
  The use of gold inlay creating a grainy or sandy ground surface was called kin-sunajo-ji. "dirt inlay," covering the surface with scraps of copper and brass wire brazed to the iron was called gomoku zogan. The later was said to symbolize pine needles and branches floating on a mountain lake surface.
  Tusba finishes.  So advanced were the craftsmen's knowledge of patinas and
  metal finishing, that this application to tsubas made these sword guards unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. Japanese metalworkers also learned to integrate metal alloys with finishing formulas. Not only did this lead to a variety of colors but quite subtle shades of permanent finishes.
  Also Japanese patina workers developed a metal coloring agent, rokusho, which is somewhat like a French cook's stock – by adding something to it, it changed into something different. Alum or plum vinegar was added to rokusho (as well as conventional chemicals as copper sulphate) to affect these patina solutions. For example, copper could be colored from orange to orange-brown with a rokusho solution.
  Careful surface preparation to clean the metal was also a Japanese innovation. They used a type of radish (the West Indian mooli or long white radish) which the Japanese called daikon to make a paste with water which broke down releasing chemicals forming surface activating agents that accomplished the metal cleaning task.
  Inscriptions and signatures on tsubas.   Lettering, Japanese symbols and signatures of artists – appear mostly in one place – on the seppa dai surrounding the center hole. These are arranged in vertical alignment with one or two rows on each side of the aperture. Not all tsuba are signed, only those of most exotic design or embellishment. Japanese scholars can date the creation of tsuba by these signatures (and other characteristics).
  Other sword attachments were mostly for decoration, as the tsuba was the only
  part both utilitarian and decorative. Other sword fittings were known as kanagu or kodugu, depending upon the type of sword to which they were attached.
  Collecting tsubas.
  Collectors of weapons are perhaps the strongest buyers of Japanese tsuba, irrespective of their collecting interests in the swords themselves. Large collections of tsubas exist in art museums and collections of weapons and armor. Individual collectors are always on the alert to acquire new specimens that come on the market and auction sales of tsuba are highly attended and the prices always reflect this constant demand.
  Japanese have established four criteria by which tsuba are judged: good design, good materials, good workmanship and good condition. Such criteria could be applied to many other collectables as well, certainly to the art medals, the nearest artifact in the western world comparable to the Japanese tsuba.
  References:                                                                                                                                        
  P6 {1986} Hughes and Rowe, pp 349-50.

  excerpted with permission from

  An Encyclopedia of Coin and Medal Technology

  For Artists, Makers, Collectors and Curators

  COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY D. WAYNE JOHNSON

  Roger W. Burdette, Editor

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