Tachikanagushi

Another early soft metal tsuba with botan motif, with a comparatively subdued execution in kusarakashi .

This tsuba is published in several places, but most are not in color.

Traces of red lacquer are visible in several spots around the guard.

In b&w photos it looks like there could be a raised edge around this opening, but in a closer look it appears to be lacquer and maybe a bit of pitch rather than part of the plate. Perhaps it was plugged at some point.

Some of the original decoration of the rim is visible here.

And here.

The similar example from the Kurokawa institute collection below appears to have the rim decoration entirely intact:

This guard formerly in the Lundgren collection shows another variation.

This one also appears to have irregular raised borders around the hitsuana. A monochrome view of the same guard here from Dr. Torigoye’s Toso Soran:

Also a different name describing the motif.

Another variation, also with what may be raised borders around the ana.

The inner wall of the rim appears to have a bit of a bevel to it, but otherwise quite similar to all of the above. One ana is filled and the other enlarged a bit into the seppa dai.

Lastly the one we started off with in black and white, also from the Kenzan Taikan.

There are many other variations on mokko gata tachi tsuba with inome sukashi, quite a few of which still have o-seppa associated with them, others have lost them but the decoration of the plate follows an outline that makes it clear that they were originally present. I don’t see any wear pattern or design of the decoration that suggests that they were ever present on the above guards.

These were all the examples of this style of construction with very thick rim and “pipe collars” around the inome sukashi style that I found in my library. It’s interesting that if they are tachi guards that were later modified for uchigatana use they all received the same style of hitsuana.