Gabriel L

Thanks Markus! Now it all makes sense. The top character 江 would have the left radical 氵(水) and right radical 工… I was misinterpreting them as two separate characters. And the bottom character 岳 does mean mountain (even has the 山 radical at the bottom). Oof, I clearly need some practice reading seal script!

Michael, I regret that I cannot fully transcribe (let alone translate or identify) this seal for you. However, with all due respect to whomever gave you the "red mountain" translation, I am not quite sure on what basis they made that determination. Mizu or sui 水 is the character for water, and kō or takumi 工 means worker or artisan. 工水 could be the basis of the beginning of a name (Kumi-). Without the final kanji it is all up in the air… but neither "red" nor "mountain" fits in with those two characters, and I am somewhat convinced they at least are correct. Perhaps they saw the top-left character as yama 山? If so I would have to disagree, the seal script for mizu vs. yama is quite different… note the flowing nature of the character. Now, if the bottom character is Aka 赤, that would explain "red…" That may well be the correct character for all I know (very little when it comes to seal script) but I wouldn't expect it to be at the bottom if it was meant to be read literally as an adjective. Could 工水赤 read as a name? Kumiako? Kumiama? I don't know. Best of luck pinning it down!

Seal script, oy vey… the top-right character is kō 工, I believe. Top-left character is driving me nuts because I know I have seen it before but I can't recall where. I should really get Sesko's book. EDIT: thanks to the work of Xu Shen in the year 100 and Meng Ying in the year 999, I found that the top-left is mizu/sui 水. What a way to look something up! :lol:

Plenty of WWII militaria collectors will pay for guntō depending on the condition and mounts. If the price is good, at the very least you might be able to flip it. But it depends on way too many factors that we can't see (polish? koshirae? workmanship? price? potential buyers?). There's also a Seki 関 stamp near the top if my eyes do not deceive me. Just to throw another variable in there.

Very chippy/sloppy WWII nakarishimei makes the omote difficult to be sure, looks a bit like Yoshimasa 吉正 perhaps (Yoshichika 吉近 ???). The ura is easier, Shōwa jūkyūnen gogatsu 昭和十九年五月 (May 1944).

Ah thank you Morita san! I am embarrassed now, if I had just gone back to the Japanese names article I linked earlier, I maybe could have solved it. It shows quite clearly that 藤 can be used to preface zokumyō like kurō 九郎 (which, in turn, should have been obvious as there are so many "number-rō" names). Live and learn… next time I'll catch it. :D

Kunitomo 国友 yes, Fuji 藤 would be the knee-jerk reaction, but unless 藤 can be used as shorthand for the full Fujiwara 藤原 (never seen that done before) then I don't know. Similarly kyū (9) is the reflexive reading for 九 but again I don't know how it fits into the context of the larger signature. Hopefully someone with real Japanese knowledge will be along soon to give some insight, I just read sword nakago (and that only sometimes).

Well, the kanji look like 國友藤九部久行作 to me, but I can't really get the middle character and I don't know how to parse this in the context of gun signatures.

The "hara/haru" flub was me. I looked it up as "haru" but wrote "hara" by mistake. Roger, I have since corrected it on SFI. My apologies! As to parsing 必勝 武三郎, I assumed that 必勝 hisshō was a patriotic slogan as it has been seen on other WWII stuff, and 武三郎 Take…saburō were obviously name kanji. John, are you sure hisshō is a name in this case? I am not arguing, just trying to ascertain if you are explicitly rejecting the interpretation of hisshō despite its strong contextual relevance (and wide separation on the nakago). I will bow to the more advanced knowledge of you and anyone else who wishes to weigh in; accuracy above all. I probably should have realized that 武三郎 would reads better as Takesaburō than two names (Take Saburō). Doesn't change much, but there it is. Cheers, —G.

We've all been there Grey… it's just our fallible human neurology when performing repetitive tasks. Thanks for all your work on the Index by the way, I use it often.

Hello Lisa, John's got it right, 國廣 Kunihiro. Lots of smiths with that name, would have to do a lot more research to try and pin it down… ultimately you'd need to inspect the workmanship of the restored blade as well as compare the signature to known examples. Nice looking shobu-zukuri wakizashi IMHO. Needs some TLC of course. I don't know how much you do or don't know, so I'm going to link to my Owner's FAQ. I encourage you to check it out if you intend to purchase this piece!

Hi Grey, Can we get a little more context? I mean, I see Bizen no kuni jū Osafune… and then nothing. Is the Taikan making some kind of reference to Osafune smiths in general perhaps? Is it a typo (missing gō)? Not sure. I feel pretty silly making this post as I can't imagine that you'd not notice 長船 Osafune… Now I'm worried I'm making some kind of "brain fart" mistake myself, or being insulting!

As long as we're posting Goto Ichijo examples, Ginza Choshuya had this one (#19). On a sidenote, I particularly love this Kano Natsuo example.

Ah, that site is indeed very good… includes separate fields for Julian & Gregorian, you can go west > east or east > west, etc. Thanks for posting it, it is easy to use even if you do not know much Japanese.

Hi everyone, If you are not already familiar with the conventions & derivations for old Japanese names, you may enjoy this article on the subject. I don't guarantee that everything in it is perfectly accurate; in particular, his note that "-nosuke/-zaemon" names became more common in the Edo period does not seem to jive with swordsmith records IMHO. But the general breakdown of name types and their raisons d'être is pretty good. Of course if anyone has an even better source bookmarked / in their library, please post it! Cheers, —G.

OMG that kojiri And the tsuba is delightful… sorry I can't help with your question (as usual)!

EDIT: ninja'd by Guido, but happy to see he confirms it. ----------- David, I am 90% sure that 伝 is just a simplification of 傳 with no meaningful difference, like 實 → 実, 寳 → 宝, 壽 → 寿 etc. However! I will hope for confirmation from the true nihongophones among us. Regards, —G.

Don't know, but snowflakes are one of my favorite themes, so thanks for posting it.

Hi tōsogu fans, Posting on behalf of a Reddit user. His great grandfather was a diplomat in China ca. 1905 and had a collection. This tsuba & two fuchi were passed down. No better photos for the moment, unfortunately. I am not a "fittings guy" but the tsuba especially looks like a very fine 19th c. kinko example to my eyes, and the fuchi look pretty good too. Just wondering about the signatures, any other comments you may have. I see a 柳川直政 Yanagawa Naomasa, ？山元(信) ___yama Moto(nobu?), etc.… haven't put much effort into translating them myself, as I lack the study/resources/experience to comment very insightfully even if I did. Cheers, —G.

Alex, Nope, Kanetoki. http://www.sword-auction.jp/english/auc ... 1213703271

Hoanh, Nice work and thanks for showing the setup. However, unless something is getting corrupted (which I doubt), Uwe is right; here is the metadata from one of your images: ISO 800 — 60mm — 0ev — f/29 — 1/50 Since you are on a tripod, there is no need for ISO 800 and 1/50th sec. shutter speed. You could use ISO 100 and 1/5th sec. shutter speed and get (close to) the same exposure, but without the noise. It is possible to get noise from loooonnnnng shutter speeds, e.g. 30+ seconds, but that's not the culprit here, the ISO is. On an XSi, ISO 100 or 200 will be good, 800+ will show visible noise. Also I am glad to see you stopping down a bit more to get more in focus front-back, but be aware that it becomes less necessary as you get farther from the subject. At macro distances a tiny aperture is required, but at mid-level distances like this you might (might!) get by with something closer to f/16, which ironically will give better sharpness in the zone of interest due to less diffraction softening. Just something to consider, I wasn't in the room with you so it's of course possible that f/29 was preferable at this angle to a bigger aperture. In general though I think these photos are pretty nice, you're definitely developing some good techniques. Keep it up! Cheers, —G.

Peter, Absolutely! I actually imaged those pages and turned them into a PDF for myself because they're so useful. I still go back to them once in a while when I'm having trouble on something. Japanese Art Signatures by Self & Hirose is good too (showing many variations), but ironically its thoroughness means I leave it on the shelf more often than not. It is not organized in a concise sword-specific way… Yumoto is much more convenient for the core set of characters.

Trying it without looking at the listing text, I see: Ura: 平成元年八月吉日 Heisei gannen hachigatsu kichijitsu (lucky day in month 8 of Heisei 1 = 1989) Omote: 肥後國住兼照作之 Higo kuni jū Kaneteru saku kore (Kaneteru, resident of Higo province, made this) Very clear shinsakutō meibun. Now I will look at the listing… he says "Akamatsu Taro Kanetero, a lucky day in August, first year of Heisei (1989)" Well, it's the right smith (赤松太郎兼照) and date, but a typo in Kaneteru, and not a direct translation or transcription (missing the "Higo kuni" etc.). And now that I look, he spells the gō correctly elsewhere in the listing. So… not super confidence-inducing, but at least it's not a mis-ID or something truly egregious. Beautiful huge sword, if the price is right and you want to trust the seller.

Hoanh, Nice work bringing out both the hada and hamon simultaneously!

Klaus, this is an easy one to mistake if you have not tried a lot of the "loose form" dates like it. For future reference, when you see this kind of flowing script, typically the kanji for year 年 will be very big & round and the kanji for month 月 will be very tall & droopy. Two examples from Fujishiro: Left: 延宝九年二月日 Enpō kyūnen nigatsu bi Right: 延宝五年八月日 Enpō gonen hachigatsu bi