This picture shows two stamps.
The top one, the red one, is the "official" stamp of a man named Nagayuki Asano (stop me if you've heard this before.) The second one says "Jun Mikawa Shironagura". It means "Pure Mikawa White Nagura."
These stamps, together, form a kind of authentication, proving that the stone actually is what it should be. The use of these stamps as a sign of true nagura was established decades ago, at the behest of Kousuke Iwasaki. He did this because a lot of the stones that were called nagura were cheap, coarse and full of bad stuff, and he felt like they were ruining his honing. He enlisted the help of Asano, a former geologist and lecturer at a trade school in Aichi to help him find and check the best stones for use in honing. The practice continues today, and the current tester of Mikawa nagura ore in Aichi prefecture, a man named Morio Sakamoto, tests and stamps every true Nagura stone. Sakamoto inherited the stamps from Asano-san and has been charged with making sure that the authentic Mikawa Nagura are recognized. He stamps them for seam, tests for purity and quality, and distributes them to the retailers who still sell Nagura in Japan...or rather, the true Nagura.
Because, just as in the days of Kousuke Iwasaki, there are fakes. There are stones that have a similar texture and appearance to the true nagura, and are often sold as just that. These stones, according to Iwasaki, are full of coarse, damaging inclusions. In addition, there are stones from the Mikawa mine that are also full of inclusions, and these are discarded.
These stones, the counterfeits and the discarded Mikawa stones, are not stamped--they aren't officially recognized as worthy of the Mikawa nagura name, but they are still out there and people sell them, sometimes for considerable amounts of money...Nagura are sold by weight here, with prices differing based on seam and on coloration. The most expensive, tokusen Koma, are 3,780JPY for 100g, or roughly US$12 an ounce. That's more, ounce per ounce, than your typical Nakayama Maruka. Unstamped stones may be slightly cheaper, but only SLIGHTLY.
So there is real money in counterfeiting these stones, and real savings in using cheap or free unstamped ones. But you're running a risk doing so...and you're most likely NOT getting whatever stone you think you are (if the ONE GUY who judges these stones for seam didn't stamp it, then how can some random knife-maker tell a Koma from a yabotan?).
Let me illustrate this from personal experience.
When I was in Kyoto, I bought some Honzan stones, some expensive, some not. Whenever I was buying, I asked if there were any Koma nagura to be had. Most said no, but one vendor said "I think I have some", and brought out a huge box of unstamped nagura. He rummaged through, and laid out 4 big stones. "I think there might be a koma here" he said, and gave them to me. Gave, as in free. Based on the size alone, these 4 stones would have cost 2,000-6,000 yen each, had they been stamped nagura; in fact, the total price of the Nagura, had they been stamped, would have been more than the honzan! However, they weren't stamped, and I wasn't about to use them without knowing what they were.
I sent them to Sakamoto-san for testing, because he very generously offers a service for people just like me-people who get nagura with no stamps, and need to know before I hurt my blades using bad stones. And he does it FOR FREE. All you pay is shipping.
He tested the four stones, and it turns out that they were all true Mikawa nagura--I had one yabotan, two Tenjou and one Koma. But they were all full of chunks of hard quartz and needles of rock that could seriously damage both my razors and my stones...meaning they were unusable for razors. They were discards. They were GARBAGE. Thus the price...or lack of one.
So I got free Nagura, which were unstamped, but they were dangerous to use. Some people pay money for unstamped nagura...which are dangerous to use.
I really wish it would stop.
I know some people who have been using unstamped nagura and had no complaints. That's great, and I hope they continue to have no problems. But I would like to recommend that people NOT BUY unstamped nagura. If someone is selling a stone that they call a Koma nagura, but it doesn't have the official stamp, they are either selling a rock that is NOT a mikawa stone, or a Mikawa stone that wasn't worth selling...at high Nagura prices. They are lying. And if you pay them for it, it won't stop.
Just my two cents.
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