SteveM

後藤仙乗　Gotō Senjo

Hello Bob, the Japanese is already translated. The tag indicates the item belonged to a Captain Toshio Tanda, of Masuga town, Nara prefecture, located near Unebi Station on the Sakurai train line.

From one Steve M to another This is a Chinese sword. 中国大連陣朝波戌寅年 China, Dalian, Chen ?? (a personal name, I don't know the pronunciation in Chinese) zodiac year of dog + tiger, 1938 or 1998 or 1878, etc.

Take a look at this, Carlo https://www.kamon18.com/cart/shop/08035.html

I think the second one you are looking at is 竪 (たて). Deceptively similar to 堅 (かた・い）

Hello, The right side is a dedication 應需囗東氏　Ōjū ?tō shi Made for Mr. -tō (could be Gotō, or Itō, with the tō part commonly written as 藤, but it isn't unheard of for tō to be written with 東) The left side is the artist 貞壽囗作之　Sadatoshi-? kore wo tsukuru

1st one is a name 亀山澄 = Kameyama Sumiyoshi(?) . Unsure of the first name 六一四八七 = 61487 (as Dave above said). The last one is a mystery. Something like 八戸 (Hachinohe, the name of a town in northern Japan), but the last one is unknown. Almost looks like an old, now unused katakana symbol ヰ (wi), but I have no confidence in either of these guesses.

瑞峯造之　 Zuihō kore wo tsukuru = Made by Zuiho (name of a ww2 smith) Leaving the date as a spoiler if anyone wants to have a go

If you go back to the Markus Sesko page that Malcom linked to, you will find most of the answers you are looking for, even if the meaning is slightly fuzzy for beginning students of Japanese. Most sword signatures, even the modern ones, are intended to be in kanbun (classical Chinese) style. The writing is classical Chinese (or a Japanese variation of such), but the voicing, that is to say, the pronunciation of them when read out loud, should be in syntactically and grammatically correct Japanese. 満鉄鍛造之 = kanbun. The modern Japanese equivalent would be as below 満鉄を鍛えて之を造る = normal Japanese grammar and syntax. The blue bits are needed in contemporary Japanese. Without them, the reader becomes lost and has to guess at the subject and object and verb. These things might be inferred from the context, but modern Japanese removes the ambiguity by including the verb endings and particles. Note that the kanji for kore (之) is seldom seen in modern Japanese. "Kore" is generally written in hiragana, and most Japanese probably only encounter the kanji 之 as part of a name, where it is read as yuki. However, not everyone (including most Japanese nowadays) can recognize kanbun. And, even if they can recognize kanbun, it becomes tedious to explain to beginners why the word order, or the kanji order is reversed, and why the grammatical bits of modern Japanese are left out of the sword inscription. It becomes easier to say "Mantetsu tanzō kore", which satisfyingly matches word-for-word what is seen on the sword, and this mental shorthand is understood by experts and amateurs alike without vandalizing the meaning of the original inscription. So if I'm not mistaken, all of Bruce's examples above are kanbun, but it becomes cumbersome to write them out in grammatically correct Japanese, and its much easier to use the generally accepted abbreviated versions 興亜一心満鉄作之 Koaisshin Mantetsu de kore wo tsukuru > Koaisshin Mantetsu saku kore 興亜一心満鉄謹作 Tsutsushinde Koaisshin Mantetsu de tsukuru > Koaisshin Mantetsu Kinsaku 興亜一心満鉄作 Koaisshin Mantetsu de tsukuru > Koaisshin Mantetsu saku 満鉄鍛造之 Mantetsu de kitaete kore wo tsukuru > Mantetsu Tanzō kore

正之　Masayuki is correct

The left side almost looks like 摂鍛冶, but that doesn't ring any bells. 摂 fits with 泉, but after that, I got nothing. (I do agree the final two are 鍛冶)

Era + Zodiac + season Kanzan is correct, but he wouldn't write his personal or family name after this. He just says, "Noted/registered/recorded by Kanzan"

From right, top to bottom 秋野の図　金　(can't quite make out the 2nd one, and the 金 looks oddly out of place, so I hedge my bets on this one too.) Autumn field design, gold. 無銘　Mumei. After this, John has it, including the 木瓜形. For the fourth and fifth line, if I throw this back to John, who got a lot of the difficult stuff, and I remind him that the final lines are almost always dates and names, I'm wondering if he might not want to take another crack since he got this far.

I struggled with the two after 孟冬 until I found a similar inscription on another blade, and was satisfied that it was indeed "21". https://kougetsudo.info/nagasoneokimasa-kotetsu/ (about the second one down. Inscribed with the date of "February 25th" using this same kanji) Actually, what I should have done was look for alternative kanji for 廿, which would have saved me time, but I was stuck going down several dead ends before realizing it was "21". https://glyphwiki.org/wiki/u5eff-itaiji-001 Which brings me to the last one 鳥 (tori) or possibly 烏 (karasu), and here I throw my towel in the ring as well because I have no clue as to the usage of this. I presume it is another way of writing 日 (day), because the number 21 by itself would be strange. It needs something, some kind of counter after the numeral. Tori, when used in a compound word, is read as "chō", so I also wonder if there is some wordplay when read as a compound word 廿一鳥 (nijūicchō), that I am oblivious to. Also, the poetic usage of 孟冬 (mōtō) for October, along with the slightly idiosyncratic kanji used for "21", hints that the writer/inscriber might also pick a distinctive or unusual kanji variant for day as well. But this is as far as I got. I haven't seen tori or karasu used in place of day before. Would love to hear from Markus or Morita-san, or anyone familiar with this. Or Moriyama-san, who seems to have gone quiet lately. Anyway, very interesting inscription.

Being part of a saidan-mei, it means "cut by the hand of", in other words, it refers to the person doing the test. Pronunciation would be kirite. (Postage stamp is also a valid translation of 切手. In fact, it would be the most common translation, and therefore any machine translation will most likely default to this in lieu of any other context)

Hello Bob, These are two very sensible, and very common questions we get asked here on NMB. If you perform a search on sword oil or machine oil, you should be able to find a great thread that compared the various oils available. Spoiler: sewing machine oil should be fine, but use sparingly. Value is probably the most often asked question, so, again, have a look around using the search function and you should get many, many useful hits. The market is awash in unsigned, unpolished wakizashi of unknown provenance in distressed mounts. I think you would be looking at about $700 - $800. If you spend any money towards a restoration, that range hardly moves, but the chance of you achieving the upper end of the range becomes higher.

I think Uwe is right. Part of a saidan-mei?

The seller could be right. The mei doesn't say Kanechika, but the mei is another name for Kanechika. Now, armed with that info, you should be able to search and get the rest. * As usual, I do not claim the signature is authentic, I can only tell you what the inscription says. 菊一文珠 edit: You beat me to the punch!

Sadakiyo is normally 貞清, with 清 as the second kanji. The one on this fuchi is 精, which usually has the name-reading of Aki, so my inclination is to think this is Sadaaki. I pull my punches on this one because I can't find any other independent samples of a Sadaaki mei.

天照山鍛錬上鍛之 Tenshōzan tanrenjo kore wo kitau 昭和十八年五月日 Shōwa 18 (1943), May I echo what Bruce says about the "May" inscription. It seems very messy - almost to the point where I start to doubt its a 5. But I think Bruce is correct. Ohmura's site is very helpful for this http://ohmura-study.net/731.html http://ohmura-study.net/212.html Also, several entries here on NMB if you search for them.

Looks like shōbu-zukuri, which may be why Steve is wondering about the shape. Steve, if you search the web for other examples of shōbu-zukuri, you will find a lot of swords that have the same shape as yours.

寛文三年二月弐一日 Kanbun 3, February 21st 山野加右衛門永久（花押） Yamano Kaeimon Nagahisa (kao) 囗囗ニテ貮ツ胴截断 (~~ni te futatsu-dō setsudan) Two-body cut performed at age of ??

園部芳英　Sonobe Yoshihide

And another http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/4601-signed-shingen-tsuba/

Yes, Yasuchika (康親) in Chinese seal script.