Thread: Maruka Hatanaka Nakayama

Originally Posted by AljuwaiedAK

Hello everyone


This is kinda of showing off


I got this stone not long ago from a Japanese barbershop located in Sakai, the man sold it to me as Maruka Hatanaka Nakayama.....


It is magnificent finisher, absolutely top shelf stuff, it's hard and will not autoslurry, but not the hardest.

However the stone has a unique pattern like a gold splash, can anyone tell me what is Japanese name for that if there is any ?

Alijuwaied

I have several examples of that type of stone, and it is a form of Yaki, a brownish alternate mineral component that can sometimes look brightly golden but usually a dull brown and contrasts with the main stone body tone which is often gray or bluish (tinged blue). With my examples the stone feels slightly open grained, not necessarly rough or coarse but just open. I have seen yaki from several mines and Nakayama is one of them along with Okudo and Shobudani. These stones tend to be hard and I belive that they are from the Aisa layer because I have one that also has a karasu pattern on the ushiro backside.

About your stone being from the Nakayama mine. Hard to say and like the post from Stefan above, performance is everything on these forums. Without a patch of kawa skin on the back as an indicator I don't think you will ever find out for sure. Hatanaka stamped their stones on the top side so their stamps were worn off in first use, Kato-san usually stamped on the ends in black ink.

About 6 months ago the Japanese version of "The Antiques Roadshow", a TV show that does apprasials of antiques, guns, paintings and furniture, a guy brought in a few stones that came from his father to ask for appraisal. I guess that a lot of barbers in Japan saw that program because for the last few months a lot of barbers think that they own small fortunes in their used stones. Most barbers don't care from which mine their hones came from, but now some are curious.

I hope this helps in some way.

Alex