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Thanks K. Morita. Looks like I need to work on my imagination and lose the tunnel vision. I saw the "dai" character a few times when I was looking for the relevance of the 8, but I was stuck on the "kusa", even though I thought the top radical(?) didn't look right. I never would have got the first character, either. What I've got from your info is, possibly... 勢 Sei or zei. Military force 第八 Dai-hachi. 8th 移動 Ido. Mobile I thought maybe 8th division, but I've only found that written as 第8師団 (Dai-hachi Shidan). It could be 8th Mobile Transport Regiment, but that would mean somebody cut the bottom off the tag(which might explain the lack of name) Or I could be reading it completely wrong:) Thanks for the translation. Matt

Gday Jairo, I'd be looking closely at the lines of the mei, and look at plenty of others in the translation area. Yours looks very smooth to me(may just be photo quality). If you look at others, you can see individual chisel marks within the lines, whereas yours look to be single flowing lines(very noticable in the character you can't identify) Hopefully somebody with more than 2 weeks experience at this will come along and tell me I'm a fool(but be nice about it:) but I would say yours was done with a dremel, which would make it a chinese knock off.... The koshirae looks good though. So maybe a chinese blade in gunto koshirae. Like I said, hopefully I'm way off target. Can't help you with the translation, sorry Matt B

Hello again. Just out of curiosity, I've been trying to decipher the surrender tag that's attached to this showato kyu-gunto. Through perseverence, dumb luck and the internet, I think I have it narrowed down. Some of the characters are a fair stretch, and I have some trouble working out where one word ends and the next begins. What I've come up with is ? 刀(orヶ) 華 (or 芋 or 苦) 八杉郭 ?nokusa(or any variation of the diferent characters. Maybe a name?) yasugi kurawa (a reference to the city? I'm pretty confident I'm way off track here. Maybe a base he was stationed at, although I cant find 郭 being used in reference to ww2 military.) 陸軍主計中尉 Rokugun shukei tyuui(not sure how these transfer to romaji). Army, Paymaster 1st Lt I'm pretty confident on this line as it's almost identical to one in a preview of Richard Fullers "Japanese Sword and Surrender Tags" I relied heavily on this site. http://jisho.org/Handy for transfering Kanji to romaji and vice versa and also finding words/names/sentences that goes with a particular kanji. Any limitations in translation are due to me and not this site:) Matt B

Out of needless curiosity, what would be the reason for the suriage(assuming it is. Kiri nakago-jiri and koshi(?)-hi running onto the nakago) on a modern mass produced blade? Personal preference? Cracked/chipped hamon near the habaki? Is this a common, or at least not rare thing? Matt

Took me that long to work that out, that somebody beat me by 30mins...and I'd started 30min before he posted it!! At least we were right :D

Gday Richard, Im VERY new here, and VERY new to nihonto and VERY new to kanji, so you should probably just ignore my answers. I'm doing it for me more than you:) I'm sure somebody who has YOUR interest in mid will be along before too long. For the date I got Showa, 2, 10, nen(year) (1945) then I'm not sure what he's got going on, is it a sichi(7) that's all over the shop(it was '45 after all) or a 2, although it's nothing like his previous 2. The last charachter should be gatsu(month). Pretty sure it is. I'm with you on 信Nobu光mitsu. Quite similiar to this Mei. found here http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/oshigata/index.htm(number 2) i If you're as new to this as I am, we should both give ourselves a pat on the back...at least until we find out what it REALLY says. A quick google search has come up with a few Nobumitsu showato/gendaito smiths. Some better than others. Unfortunatly I have to head to poker, so I can't troll through them all till later. Good luck with the search. Matt Edited 3 times for grammar:/

Brian, the help I was refering to you about was the editing of my post, but "Jas" has taken care of that...Thanks Jas!!...not that I don't want your help with the sword appraisal! I MIGHT have 2500 laying around, but I might look into it more before dropping the $$ down another black hole (motorbikes, 4x4s, boats, guns, tractors...now swords!?!? I suppose that's why we go to work everyday:) Looks like I'm studying up on uchiko. See if I cant find anything interesting under all that mess... Thanks for the info Grey.

Yeah, noticed that, Grey:/ Maybe Brian can help while he's here? I didn't believe you were saying it was definate. I want to know all possibilties, so keep the theories coming. I did look for all those things, but the condition and my lack of knowledge means that I doubt I''d see any if they WERE there. I doubt the blade would pass any sort balance test with the bend it currently has(hope that's repairable if it turns out to be worth the attention) Wondering if anybody would be able to confirm my assessment of the sori? Based on my measurements it seemed like the deepest part of the bend was close to the centre, maybe a little bit towards the nakago. At what point does it become koshi? A few further measurements shows slightly more curve from machi-centre than kissake-centre. Of course this all becomes moot if the blade is o-suriage. Just so you all know, I'm not looking for somebody to say "this blade was made by x" or "this blade was made in Y period". I WANT to figure this out myself, I'm just looking for ideas and theories, like what Grey is providing. Direction for my random, rambling searching:)

After standing in the sun for 20mins examaning the blade, I can't see any sign of mizukage or anything else mentioned as an indicator of saiha...however I can only get breif hints of hamon as well, so that isnt saying much. Guess I'll have to get it in the hands of somebody better at this than me. Something I did see, is when holding the blade vertical, there are faint, ~horizontal scratches of varying lengths and angles along the shonogi-ji. They are only surface scratches, but not regular enough to be cleaning/polishing attempts, so I'm wondering if maybe they are marks from another sword or just misshandling scars? Further reading(about 3 lines:) into Tenpo tsuba showed that they weren't known for making round tsuba, so I'm guessing I can rule them out again. Done, JAS

Thanks heaps Grey, you've given more avenues that I haven't yet investigated. Just a quick search for Heianjo Zogan comes up with so many simliar looking tsuba. I also found one on your website from the Tenpo school(?) which mentions "heavy hammerwork and stampings" http://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/tsuba-%26-kodogu/m151-iron-and-brass-tsuba#is this also a possibile match? wow, this is like the rabbithole, I'm just getting sucked deeper and deeper. Now to search retemper...

It appears that I've mislead you. On further inspection, the tassle appears to be multicoloured. Maybe green/orange? Also, it is possible that the leather on the saya is a cover. Where it's been opened, you can see 2 layers of leather and also the outer leather looks like it was meant to go over the sayajiri rather than leave it exposed. I know these don't affect the sword in any way, but anything can help. (edited for grammar and puctuation)

Saya, tuska and tsuba

more pictures as promise

Hello again guys, I've spent some time compiling what information I can for this blade. It's been quite an interesting journey for me. I now know a great deal more than what I did 3 days ago, and still know nothing. But I've had my eyes opened. I'd like to recognise the obvious awesomeness of Dr Richard Stein, whos website has provided me with a vast majority of the information I have, and also to you guys here. This is repeatedly the top website I come across when searching Nihonto related terms. My following attempted use of Japanese terms is by no means intending to appear knowledgable in the study of Nihonto, but rather to honour the tradition. Sorry for any and all mistakes. Nagasa:662mm. Sori: ~27mm Mihaba:31mm The following post will have pictures with Mihaba a kasane width. There appears to be hada but it is hard to make out through the scratches and what appears to be oil stains(my uncle was an old school farmer, no such thing as too much engine oil. I wiped off a layer about 1mm thick and it hadn't been out for years...anybody want a cheap plain leather saya:) but I'll leave judgement on that to a more discerning eye. I can't see any hamon, again it could(hopefully) be hidden. Mune is Ihori. Kasane starts at 7mm at the mune-machi, tapering to 4mm about 1/3 of the way along the blade. ~70mm from the yokote, it tapers to 3.5, then back out to 4mm ~15mm from the point then tapers out (photo following) Kissake: ~35 I can't make out an obvious yokote. Would this be considered a long or medium kissake? Nakago:213mm Shape:Hakago(?) no visible yusurime. The nakago has no visible marking on it and is quite rusted and pitted. The tsuba is round, iron(?) with brass(?) inlay of chrysanthenums. The workmanship appears poor to my eyes. It is very rough, even under the inlay. Almost like it's been hammered then inlaid. The punch marks where it was tightened to the blade are very basic and utalitarian. The koshirae is all plain leather. the leather is not just a protective cover over a fancier koshirae, as somebody has opened it at the bottom of the saya and there is no saya underneath. There is no fuchi and no koiguchi fitting. There is a tassle, plain brown, so I'm guessing this is a military sword of some sort. Possibly the nice furniture is still at home... The blade is bent(looking down the mune) with a deflection of ~4-5mm returning to ~2-3 at the kissake. There is what appears to be a ware(or possibly a scratch) on the mune 50mm long about 1/3 of the way along the blade. In my uneducated opinion this is an older(pre showa) nihonto....or a fake...I hope it's not a fake. I put a lot of time into this report:)

Thanks George. I didnt see your response before I posted mine. Can't believe I couldn't work that out. I was too focused on the standard dating system to see if there was any other. Thomas... "BUT nice same saya"? I'm happy with the whole thing....at least it might now be worth what my uncle paid for it 15 years ago:/ Klaus...I missed what was funny in the comment, but I'm sure I'll work it out...although with my apparent problem solving skills, maybe not:)