Richard Stein
Bob McCoy This site is the home of the Oshigata Project with
graphics of 400+ oshigata. An extremely interesting site and must for
both research and translation practice.
Jim Gilbert
An excellent site providing lots of information for those interested in Japanese
sword fittings. THE site for tsuba
Stefan Sebregts A fine, useful site with an exhaustive study of fifty
tsukamaki (handle wrapping) styles drawn from JSSUS publications
Peter McCollum Home of the "ToShow" Japanese sword database
program currently with details of 10,000+ smiths. The software is available
for download on the site.
Jennifer Gates Durham
Concentrates on modern smiths. This is a good site with fine graphics of
the work of the important living masters of Japanese swordsmithing and sword
polishing, complete with much additional information on the world of modern
Nihontô
Jim Kurrasch
Many and varied articles containing excellent, reliable information about
Nihontô. Jim Kurrasch is the maker of "Jim's Kanji". These are
Windows Truetype fonts mapped onto the ascii matrix. They are awkward to identify
and use but very well designed and worth persevering with when you need small
numbers of characters in western software. The method is too labour intensive
if you wish to write many Japanese characters though. For further information
about using Japanese characters on computers see my Japanese
Language Page
Roger Robertshaw Much information here about Nihontô
made in Hizen Province
Japanese Sword Society of the United States (JSSUS)
Interesting articles from the JSSUS journal, sample sword descriptions and
instructions for joining the society
Peter Neuhaus
This is an HTML version of a pamphlet about Japanese swords produced by the
NBTHK
Kim Allen
Has a useful glossary of tsuba terms