SteveM

兼武　Kanetake

We can't see the bottom part of the mei, so for now the swordsmith remains a small mystery. For what it's worth, the bit after "Mutō" looks to me, too, like 宗右, so it's kind of easy to imagine this is the first part of a given name (or zokumei/zokumyo) of Sōemon (宗右衛門), which is a common enough name. Mutō Sōemon doesn't ring any bells as far as swordsmiths go. Could be part of a dedication or the name of the person who ordered the blade. Hard to parse exactly without knowing what the full inscription was. There was a Mutō Sōemon who was a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, but you wouldn't want to make any claim of connection without some solid provenance. For now, its just a partial name that is intriguing, but that's about all we can say. And yes, Joe and Uwe are right about the other bit, 以地鉄. (motte jigane*). This is just like the sword that was posted to NMB a month or so ago by @Mark S., which if I'm not mistake was a Terukado sword, which had something like 関以地金下 inscribed on it, meaning "Made from oroshigane", implying the smith used steel that was smelted by his own hand, perhaps using some unique iron items in the process. *My guess is that it originally said 以地鉄下, or possibly 以地鉄降 (the meaning would be the same). The blade posted earlier used 地金, whereas this one here uses 地鉄 - a minor variation, but the meaning/intent is the same. I'm not 100% if the reading should be "motte jigane wo orosu" or if it should be "motte oroshigane". I tend to think the latter, but I'm unsure. Ignoring the actual blade and what that might tell us, the inscription uses the same construction/language as Terukado, so could be a Terukado blade, or someone in his close orbit, or someone trying to fake a Terukado signature.

Reinhard, no one is arguing that text wasn't read right to left, or even that it wasn't the main form of writing horizontally. I am merely pushing back on your statement that kanji HAD to be written right to left. This is false, and there are examples of where it was written left to right. Here is a copy of a mathematic textbook from 1939 written left to right Here is a copy of an advertisement from 1919, again, left to right.

Is there anything on the kozuka to indicate it being attributed to "Tokujo"?

Actually there was no law that determined the direction that Japanese had to be written. Writing from left to right was not forbidden, or unheard of, and there were official publications as well as commercial publications that wrote left to write. The Ministry of Education and the Army promoted a left-to-right writing standard in the middle of the war, in 1942, but ultra-nationalist elements of the military, as well as the newspapers, never got on board. But the army as an entity was not hostile to the idea. And, just to throw this out there, Tamachi (田町) is also an acceptable Japanese family name, though Machida is much more common.

Hello Thomas, what I am saying is; I am not convinced the mei on yours is Hidenobu (英宣). Rather, I think yours could well be Hideyoshi, or Teruyoshi. OR, yours could be an attempt at trying to be one of those (in other words, an attempt at forging Hideyoshi or Teruyoshi). The 英 character in Mauro's post is quite different from the one engraved on your item, and the 宣/宜 one on yours is different also. It's a bit hard to make a judgment, since the photo from Mauro's reference book is such a low resolution. Mind you, it could also be an attempt at Hidenobu (英宣) as well... there just is no great reference available to compare. Now the work itself looks like Gotō, or possibly a Gotō mannerist. So that is something that pushes it close to the Hidenobu camp (the differences in the mei notwithstanding). But shishi on a nanako background is generic enough to be Ōmori (or Ōmori mannerist/plagiarist) as well - so I can't say with confidence one way or the other. Just saying to leave the door open for other possibilities, as that page from Mauro's post doesn't feel like its enough to close the door on the Hideyoshi or Teruyoshi possibilities.

貞継之鍛 Sadatsugu kore wo kitau It means, "Sadatsugu forged this". Sadatsugu is the smith's name. As you probably can imagine, he was a WW2 smith. Same smith as in the post below.

I don't think there is a specific name for that. Most shirasaya don't have any tags or stickers on them. This looks like an address, so maybe the address of the owner, or of the person who ordered the shirasaya, etc... Edit: In case you were wondering, it's an address in Tokyo that no longer exists. Akasaka-ward, Fukuyoshi-chō. Corresponds to present-day Minato-ward, Akasaka-2, 6 chome. The city wards and neighborhoods have changed since the time this tag was written.

Is the signature in the original piece 英宜 (Teruyoshi, of the Ōmori school? Or is it 英宣 (Hidenobu aka Okamoto, unrelated to the Ōmori school - the one that Mauro posted)? The kanji looks deceptively similar to 宜. Or could it be 英宜 (Hideyoshi), a smith unrelated to the Ōmori school, but using the same characters as Teruyoshi, with different pronunciation of the first character)? To me it looks like 英宜, but I don't know which one it is trying to be, the Ōmori school Teruyoshi, or the unrelated Hideyoshi. (I have no reference pictures of either Teruyoshi or Hideyoshi, so I can't make a comparison).

I think its this one

My opinion: ignore that internet sales blurb. There is nothing to indicate that sword was handed down from any illustrious person or clan. It has a name on it, as many WW2 swords do. The name is reasonably common. The location of the engraving is unusual. Often the family name or crest will be pressed onto a small steel or alloy cartouche (something about the size of a small button), which is then affixed to the pommel. A name engraved on the handle (tip of the pommel) is slightly unusual to me, but as I said, it indicates some level of customization, which is a good thing to have in WW2 memorabilia. Forget about any presumed samurai clan affiliation. Its just the seller trying to add some romantic allure to the item.

For completeness, the kanji on the end of the handle do indeed read "Machida" (町田) indicating this was the name of the owner, at least during the war when the fittings were made. Machida, however, is a very common family name, and there is nothing that explicitly ties it to any famous family bearing that name. Having said that, to me it indicates the family who possessed it during the war had enough money to spend on this small customization, which is something. And it ties the sword to an actual person, even though we may not know that person's full name. So its a nice thing to have on a bit of militaria. Well, this is one of those swords that straddles the gap between militaria and antique "samurai" sword. Or, militaria and "nihonto", if you like. In regard to Hoshi's comments above, I agree with just about everything he has written, except for this one bit which I think is highly unlikely, Pretty hard to imagine this was a spelling error. I think the second part of that sentence is much more likely; i.e. some kind of disfiguration intended to deceive, or maybe someone started to erase the signature and either gave up, or abandoned it for some other reason. And I think the person to whom he is referring towards the end of his post is @Andrew Ickeringill, NMB member, Australia-based polisher, and occasional poster here.

天地正恒　Amachi Masatsune Here's another one by the same smith edit: fixed a typo. Merci, Jean.

Not Ōmori Teruhide, but another signature from the Ōmori school. Maybe Ōmori Terufusa (大森英房). But even the name of a lesser-known smith from a big (popular) school ought to be looked at with some suspicion.

Yes, that's right. A day in February, Kaei 2 (1849).

I also think they are just an abstract design - and the tosogu world has, through custom and convenience, applied the name "namako" or "namako sukashi". The main reason I doubt they are artistic representations of sea slugs is that we don't find sea slugs in any other related item. No sea slugs on menuki, fuchi/kashira, kozuka, armor, family crests, etc... And you don't find any positive relief images, or inlaid images of sea slugs. It's just not a thing, and if tsuba artisans were so impressed with the sea slug as an image, one would expect to find sea slugs elsewhere in Japanese crafts.

I think even more recent than Showa. Possibly a Chinese-made, modern day iaitō. Another one similar to this one here at the thread below. There is also a similar sword on Reddit. Note the 謙 character isn't usually read as "kane". That kanji is usually seen as a stand-alone character and pronounced "Ken" (The actor Watanabe Ken uses this kanji in his name). I don't think I've ever seen it used as 謙之 (Kaneyuki).

Hello Yves, yes its 本. I don't know if it's a "mei", or if is the stamp/seal of some shop or wholeseller. Presumably the reading is either Moto, or Hon. Both exist as family names in Japan, but they are rather unusual, so I'm guessing its the stamp of some workshop.

出羽大掾藤原國　　Dewa Daijō Fujiwara Kuni- (the rest is cut off after "kuni"). Presumably it would have said Kunimichi, but the last character is gone.

武州住兼植 Bushū-jū Kanetane Fujishiro (leading encyclopedia of swordsmiths) says this smith was originally from Echizen, but he gives no sample signatures of Bushū-jū Kanetane. There are some signatures of Echizen-kuni-jū Kanetane, and the "Kanetane" part is similar-ish to the one on your sword, but there are also some differences. So its tough to say whether or not the signature on your sword is legit. I also found some signatures of "Bushū-jū Kanetane" on the internet, but nothing was authenticated and so I think its not very useful to try to compare your sword against other, unauthenticated swords. You probably know that "Bushū" is another name for Musashi province, which is basically the Tokyo area, so presumably the smith would have moved from Echizen province to Musashi province, and spent the latter part of his career making swords in Musashi. It is natural that his signature may have changed over time. Just for completeness, and at the risk of causing confusion, there is another smith who also used the name "Echizen Kanetane" who did not move to Bushu, so one has to be very careful when looking for comparison signatures. The writing on the leather cover does indeed say 1944. Not much more to say about this. Its very nice to have a set of WW2 fittings with matching numbers, as it implies the ensemble has kept its integrity since the 1940s. But the domain of "militaria collecting" is quite different to the domain of "nihonto", even though there is a tiny bit where the two overlap. Personally I would keep the sword in a shirasaya (plain, wooden, "resting" scabbard), and keep it separate from the fittings. I do think the fittings are nice, but there is probably a lot of rust and other nasty things inside that wartime scabbard, that you wouldn't want to get transferred to your sword. Setting aside the question of the signature for now, I would say that your sword is definitely from the early Edo period, and that it was repurposed for the war. As to the value of the sword itself and whether or not its worth submitting to NBTHK, its a difficult and personal decision. Your sword is from an age where sword manufacture was on the wane in Japan, and aside from some big names, there isn't a huge demand for, say, an average wakizashi from the 1600s. The shape is regarded as being a bit inelegant, and the grain and activities in the steel tend to be not super interesting to collectors. So sending it to Japan for evaluation, and having it come back with a certificate that authenticates the signature, probably wouldn't be worth the effort in terms of the value added to the sword. Of course it is an important item worthy of preservation, and if you were already in Japan and money was no object, I might recommend you polish it and submit it to the NBTHK. But the reality is that the cost of polishing and submitting the sword (say, two or three thousand dollars), wouldn't result in the sword/ensemble being worth the extra money you put into it. (And, of course, there is the chance it could get rejected as "gimei" (false signature)).

For the kozuka, I think the signature is probably 信光 (Nobumitsu). 佶 is a slightly unusual kanji, seldom used in Japanese. It's not completely unknown, but it is rare. And, there are no artists with this name listed in Wakayama's encyclopedia of metalsmiths. By contrast, Nobumitsu is a pretty common name, and there are at least 7 smiths using this name listed in Wakayama's encyclopedia. The theme is maybe the monk Fenggan (Bukan, in Japanese). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenggan

Yukimune 行宗 There was another sword by a similarly-named smith posted very recently. I don't know if it is the same smith. Often these WW2 blades were produced in assembly-line like conditions, so the signature may have been inscribed by several people working under Yukimune's supervision, which may account for discrepancies in the way of signing.

In this case, I would just translate as "Made at Kuwana using "oroshigane". For a detailed explanation of oroshigane, I think Markus's article here is super helpful. While Markus doesn't mention Terukado specifically, or the exact construction of "地金下", I think its clear from Terukado's habit of mentioning "namban tetsu", etc.. in his mei, that Terukado is claiming here that he made the sword using his own self-made brand of steel (possibly incorporating old iron implements in the steel). It's a kind of marketing phrase. https://markussesko.com/2018/09/30/oroshigane-mentioned-in-signatures/

Two characters on the front: 振武 (Shinbu. Kind of a brand name) Nine characters on the reverse: 東洋刃物株式会社作 (Tōyō Hamono Kabushikikaisha-saku. "Made by Tōyō Blade Ltd. Inc.") This is a sword made with special cold-resistant steel, particularly for use in Manchuria and North China. I think it is a bit rare. You can read about it here (English at the bottom of the page). Mr. Ohmura, the author of that site, used some old English translation software to translate his text into English, and the end result isn't as great as what you can get from Google translate or AI nowadays, so you might want to run the whole body of text through an online translator to get a better translation. http://ohmura-study.net/207.html

Access has been very sketchy for me since the beginning of June. I was travelling mid-June and could only connect once or twice (I was traveling within California). The other days I couldn't connect at all. It has been better this past week, but I'm still having issues. Just now I tried connecting to the "recent threads" page, which is my usual bookmark for NMB, and the page wouldn't load. Just an endlessly looping tab as it tries to load the page from the server. Then I tried logging in through "militaria.co.za" front page and was successful, but only after a long while. It still seems sketchy. So some days its just impossible to access NMB. I'm using Chrome btw.