Katakana?

[Bruce Pennington]

Help! This is the serial number on the nakago mune of a Mantetsu blade. The first kanji SHOULD be a katakana, but I don't see this one on my chart at all? Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

[george trotter]

Hi Bruce,

katakana for "to".

Regards.

[Peter Bleed]

This is a HIRAGANA not a katakana "TO" . Notice that the last cipher is a ZERO. Nice mixing of writing systems.

Peter

[DRDave]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_(kana)

[Bruce Pennington]

This is a HIRAGANA not a katakana "TO" . Notice that the last cipher is a ZERO. Nice mixing of writing systems.

Peter

Please forgive my ignorance, but is hiragana equivalent to our script writing where katakana is like our print?

[Peter Bleed]

Bruce,

Hiragana is the writing style used for "Japanese." You can write anything you need to is Hiragana. Katakana is the style used for foreign sounds/words. These are all purely Japanese sounds as well, but the fact that something is rendered in katakana may suggest that pronunciation may be a bit "foreign". We all know that katakana was used for the large series of Arisaka rifles so mebbe they would also be used on Mantetsu blades, but I bet they weren't. I am not sure how many Mantetsu blades were produced, but I can't believe that the numbers involved were at all like the volume managed by the rifle arsenals.

Can you show us a Mantetsu blade with another kana? In any case, do we know what kinds of units were marked by the kana? They could be series definitors - like A1, A2, A3 etc. OR they could be abbreviations.  This sword could be the 450th one made at the Toriyama shop (I'm making that up), or something like that.

In any case, I think we can easily overthink these sorts of things. How's the sword?

Peter

[Bruce Pennington]

Peter,

 

It may be surprising, but the massive majority of the Mantetsu blades are marked using katakana. Only a few have, what I'm learning, is hiragana. I even have record of 3 very early Mantetsu with English alph-numeric numbering.

 

I'm posting some examples, along with my dad's Koa isshin with some before and after pics.