Legal notice and privacy

Provisional notice. This site is being tested and the buyer’s agent service is not yet open. The identity of the service provider, the terms of service and the tax treatment will be published in full before it opens.

What this site is

A catalogue of antique Japanese swords on sale at dealers in Japan, and an intermediation service — a buyer’s agent — that buys them in the client’s name and imports them into the European Union. It also acts as intermediary with swordsmiths in Japan for anyone who wants a new sword: it puts the commission to the smith and, if the client goes ahead, places it in the client’s name. Kantei does not sell and holds no stock: each piece belongs to its seller until it is bought on the buyer’s behalf. Those dealers do not accept returns, so the service cannot offer them either; if a piece is not the one described, a claim is made against the seller.

Availability and prices

“Available” means on sale at origin at the last check. Prices are calculated from the price at origin plus shipping and import taxes, and they change when that price or the reference exchange rate changes. No enquiry becomes a commitment until availability has been confirmed.

Photographs

The photographs of each piece come from its seller at origin and are shown here to describe the piece on sale. Anyone holding rights over one of them may write and it will be taken down.

Data and cookies

The public site collects aggregate visit statistics with Umami, a program that runs on our own server. For each visit it stores the page viewed and its title (without what follows the “?” in the address, such as the text of a search), the referring page, the browser, the operating system, the device type, the screen size, the browser language, and the country, region and city inferred from the IP address; and these actions: changing a filter (only which one), changing language, pressing “Write about this piece” on a piece’s page (with its reference) and sending an enquiry (only its type). It uses no cookies and does not identify anyone, does not store the IP address and respects the browser’s “Do Not Track” signal. Nothing is sent to third parties, except as explained under “Enquiries”. If you write to us, your message and your address are used only to answer you. The only cookie on the domain is the administrator’s session cookie, which visitors never receive.

Enquiries

If you send us an enquiry from “Custom sword”, we keep your name, your email, your country, your message, the swordsmith you choose and the calculator’s measurements with their results. We do not keep your IP address. They are used only to deal with your enquiry and answer you by email, and they are not sent to third parties: the internal alert that an enquiry has arrived carries only its reference, the smith’s name and the sword’s measurements and intended use, none of your details.

The swordsmith receives only what the commission needs — the measurements, what you ask for in the sword and, when we commission it in your name, your name — and only once you decide to go ahead. The data are kept for as long as your enquiry needs them and deleted whenever you ask: just write to us.

If you write to us from a piece’s page or from “How to buy”, we keep your name, your email, your country, your message and, if you ask about a piece, the piece’s reference. Here too we do not keep your IP address. They are used only to deal with your enquiry and answer you by email, and they are not sent to third parties: the internal alert that one has arrived carries only the enquiry’s reference and, if you ask about a piece, its reference, its name, its status, its price and its photo, none of your details. They are kept and deleted in the same way as those of “Custom sword”.

Register of stolen pieces

If you register a piece in the register of stolen, lost-in-transit or missing pieces, we keep what you write about the piece and its photos (from which we remove the date, the place and any other data they carry), and also your name, your email address, your telephone number if you give it, the exact place and date of what happened, the number of the police report or claim with its police force or company and country, the declared value and the invoice or proof of ownership if you upload them, and the date of your declaration and of your consent.

We use them only for the register: to review the registration, to publish the listing, to notify you of messages and of possible matches with pieces for sale, and to let you manage it. Publicly, only the details of the piece, its photos, the month and year and the country are shown; never your name, your email address, your telephone number, the exact place or date, the police report, the proof of ownership or the value. The first review of each registration and of each message is carried out by an automated assistant on our own server, and anything doubtful is decided by a person.

If you write from a listing (“I have seen it for sale”, “I have information”) or report a suspicious piece, we keep your message, the address you give and, if you give it, your email address, in order to pass the message on to the owner and, if they reply, to answer you; your email address is not published or shown to the owner. If you report a listing, your report, your name and your email address are seen only by us, to decide about the listing and answer you. We do not keep anybody’s IP address, and we use no cookies or third-party services in these forms.

Time limits: a registration that is not confirmed is deleted entirely after 48 hours; every year we ask you to confirm it and, if you do not reply within 30 days, it is withdrawn; when you withdraw it, mark it as recovered or it is not published, your data are kept for 6 months and then everything is deleted; messages are deleted after 90 days.

You can view, correct or withdraw your registration at any time from “Access my registration”, with your email address, the reference and the key, and recover access with your email address if you lose the key. When you withdraw it, it stops being published at once and its data are deleted within the time stated. You also have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and portability, which you can exercise by writing to us with the button below, and the right to complain to the data protection authority.

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