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Would anyone be able to give me some information about the attached seal please? I am sightly familiar with Mandarin but seal script is still a mystery. The seal is on the base of a meiji bronze koro.

Seal reads,
秀保　-　Shuho
Yoneda Shuho 米田秀保　metalwork artist from Takaoka,
Toyama Prefecture - active in Keiō　and Meiji eras.

With regards,
I.Nagy

Thank you so much I.Nagy. That all makes perfect sense :-) Another person I contacted re the seal said it read "Hideyasu" - but I did not think that was correct.

Stranger and stranger! I looked up 秀 保 (reading right to left) in hanzi and the pinyin is xiu4 bao3. When I looked up the same characters in kanji they read shu1 ho1. Another reply further down said it could be hideyasu as well but, for the life of me, I cannot see where that comes from?

Here are a couple os simple seal script characters for you to start on.

Reading from right to left (as is the proper way with seals) you have 秀 and 保. In Japanese these may be pronounced ShuHo, but I can't be sure.

Where is the information on Shuho found? I did a google search on his name and location but didn't come up with anything. Is there a reference book or something similar with the historical information listed?

The standard characters appear to be 保秀, possibly read from left-to-right as given name Yasuhide, or Hideyasu in the opposite direction. Hideho is a feminine version of the latter. I'll defer to Japanese experts for further comments/corrections.

Bill H.

Dear David,

If you can input Japanese characters into your PC, just typoe in 米田秀保人物 　(Yoneda Shuho jinbutsu; Yoneda Shuho person) and you will find 4-5 pages with 20-30
entries with images of his other works too. If you do not understand Japanese the Google translator helps、but it reads the name incorrectly "Hidenobu",
despite maybe the 5th entry gives the correct reading form Shuho in "kana" script.
As a basic principle the Japanese artist read their given (art)-names in "on"
or Chinese style reading, (of course there are a lot of exceptions) while common persons read their names in "kun" or Japanese style reading. The
Google translator can`t make the distinction - therefore brings it up the "Hidenobu" form.

With regards,
I.Nagy

Thanks again I.Nagy. Japanese is truly inscrutable - lol. I have a better understanding of Japanese seals now.

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