zuiho

Hi, judging from my experience looking at such things and from your photos, I would guess that this is a sengoku period koto blade pressed into the service of a Japanese officer. the shape is too narrow for a showa blade or even shinto. the square butt of the nakago can be characteristic of koto blades if it is ubu. If it is 0-suriage it has lost its original mekugi-ana and must have been originally a very long sword, indeed, as it still has a nagasa of at least 26.5". in addition, the step from the nakago to the blade where the habaki would lie is quite small and is characteristic of blades that have had many polishes. It reminds me of a koto bizen wakizashi I once had. The suguha hamon seen on this blade is also common in the koto period copies of koto blades were, of course, made in the shinshinto era and even can be found as showa blades. If that were the case here I would expect a different shape nakago , prominent yasuri-mei, little rust , and likely, a signature. By the way , I am fairly new to this forum and have not posted much but this sword seemed to be right up my alley. Wouldn't mind owning it. I Like the in-and-out shakudo cloud dragon on the tsuba, too.

Hello, I am new to the forum but not new to Japanese swords. I think previous replies veer off the track since the issue is that of red rust on the nakago of a prospective purchase and why that should be a "red" flag, so to speak. Red rust can signal various possible issues in a blade you might see for sale, none of them good : 1. The blade has been shortened recently and given a slap-dash patination on the nakago. 2. It is a recent blade pretending to be shinto or koto with the aforementioned quick aging on the nakago. I have seen this on what was an obvious showa blade labeled as shinto. Showa blades generally have little or spotty rusting on the nakago. 3. A re-patination of the nakago can be done when someone ignorant of nihonto has cleaned original rust from an old blade. However, this can be done with the result looking like a nakago from the proper time period. A red rusted job shows that the blade was not worth the effort of a proper restoration. Also,not worth spending money to acquire it. Bill G.