Hi everyone, this is my post and I am glad to be here. Please correct me if I use a term wrong; I am still learning. I recently purchased my first sword and am having fun learning about it. To the best of my knowledge, which is slight, I bought a gunto sword with a surrender tag still attached to it. I will post better pictures of the blade in the military section and will only post the pictures of the tag itself and the mei here. I have NO experience with Japanese prior to this SO please correct me if I am wrong in something. First the smith's name was reported to be Ikami Sadahiro a seki smith. I compared the mei to what I could find online and pretty much agree with that translation but would like any second opinions on it. On the other side of the tang there are two kanji which I believe are the numbers 9 and 7. Which if they are a date would indicated 1937 right? Again correct me if I am way off base here. On the surrender tag I was able to make out the numbers 6 and 9 in the first column on the left, I have not been able to figure out the top kanjis. However, I was able to translate the name, Kura ta sho ta ro, so Taro Kuratasho. Please correct me if I am wrong here as I said I have no experience with Japanese outside of Medieval Japan course I took in college. Any help in translating these items is greatly appreciated, the knowledge base on this stuff is sorely lacking in my area of the US.
Thanks again,
Kevin F.