Guido

Well, he's a collector who makes a guess, not a well known authority on swords wo makes a statement ... Meitô 名刀 are famous swords (i.e. the sword itself is named), a signed sword is called being yûmei 有銘 ("there is a signature") (not to be confused with yûmei 有名, "famous").

備前國住長船新拾郎祐定作　天正十一年二月吉日 The personal name you're looking for is Shinjûrô 新拾郎.

katana length 61.0 cm sori 0.9 cm mumei That's all she wrote ...

Ed, this type of nata on your website – with the little protrusion at the hasaki - is called ebi-nata 海老鉈, i.e. “shrimp hatchet”. This was done to protect the edge/tip if things are cut that are lying on a (more or less) flat surface. Either that, or to clean out the brain after chopping off a head, I forgot which one …

Sorry, couldn't resist : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A

According to the papers it's a hair under 2 shaku (60.6 cm) at 60.2 cm, so it's a wakizashi. Btw, if a mistake is made while writing a kanteisho, a new one will be issued - there a no sloppy corrections by crossing out kanji and adding others.

Well, since this book isn't sold on Amazon (or anywhere else for that matter), there's no need to "protect" the museum shop. It also would have been only fair to state that the discount doesn't apply to books. And btw, the shipping fees are rather expensive, too. In any case, it's not your fault, I just thought that I should mention it, so pontential buyers aren't as surprised as I was.

Thanks for the pics, Jean! "Get 15% discount on your first order if you subscribe to our newsletter" - great deal, done. And when I typed in the coupon code during check-out, I got the message "this order does not qualify for a discount" . Ordered the catalog anyhow ...

As Grey said, Kunitsugu: 国継 (國継)

Only temporarily, and not in the field of Edo period clothing. Your guess is as good - probably even better - than mine

I think it reads Sukenao 助直.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samurai-Swords-Comprehensive-Introduction-Preservation/dp/4805314575/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520080782&sr=1-1

Good luck with that - and I have to admit that I mean this a little sarcastic . Kamon are one of my pet peeves, I wrote in the past about the problem of finding the family it was used by already a couple of times, so I don't want to repeat myself (although I occasionally do suffer from the broken-record-syndrom ). Without supporting evidence, it's virtually impossible. There are only a handful of kamon that no other families dared to use, but even that changed after the Meiji restauration. The one in my avatar was used for many generations by my wife's family, when they were retainers of the Ikeda-han in Okayama. However, I've also found it on items that definately didn't come from them. Anyhow, it's too late to get confirmation from good old Shuzaburō ...

以下不明 - ika fumei - below not readable / unclear

The database I have on my HD covers almost 5.000 kamon: if it‘s not in there, it doesn‘t exist . The description I gave of the kamon in question is the standard one found in most (Japanese) books, I didn‘t just make it up .

　

二つ追い掛け藤 futatsuoikakefuji

The seller does something like that, calling it 鞘飾り sayakazari, i.e. saya decoration. However, using the correct terminology enhances our understanding and knowledge of the subject of our studies - for those who care, that is.

Look for Schreger lines.

As we all know, commoners in Edo period Japan were not allowed to carry and use swords, so many of them threw water bottles to fight samurai. This was so widely practiced, that many martial art schools included suitōgiri 水筒斬り (i.e. water bottle cutting) in their curriculum as a means of defense. However, when Tokugawa Ienari 徳川家斉 made bottle deposits mandatory in Kansei 寛政 6 (1794), the resulting financial constraints put a stop to it for throwers and throwees alike.

http://www.finesword.co.jp/sale/kodougu/htm/2001_3000/2101_2150/2104/k2104.htm

Maybe it comes from one of those replica coin displays that are often sold on Yahoo Japan? https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closedsearch/closedsearch/%E5%A4%A7%E5%88%A4+%E5%B0%8F%E5%88%A4+%E9%A1%8D/20000/

Burning "ghost money" is common in Chinese ancestral worship, but not in Japan. However, I don't have any alternative explanation for those "coins".

Maybe I'm missing something, but where does he claim to be certified by the NBTHK? He doesn't say so in the listing, and neither does he on his homepage (http://www.nihonto.eu/de/infos-nihonto/ueber-uns). He only states that he's a member. I don't know this gentleman, and think that the sword is grotesquely overpriced. Judging from the pictures, I don't see any hada at all, it looks like a typical oil quenched, machine made shōwatō. The "papers" are worth as much as any other random opinion, and are quite pretentious.