SteveM

I even wonder if it is Japanese. It is rare when you can't pick out a single kanji from a sayagaki that long. I would expect to recognize something - a part of a word...a name, a location, a title, a year, a description, anything. On this one, I cannot pick out anything.

I think the original Ludolf tsuba is 友貞 (Tomosada) as initially thought. The tsuba added by Christian is, I think, 城州, rather than 武州 or 勢州. Wakayama mentions nothing about a kin'in for either smith/craftsman.

迟ホ次郎 - is something trying hard to look like a Japanese name. 次郎 -jirō is a viable personal name, but 迟ホ is a funny hybrid of a kanji that is not used in Japan, and a katakana "ho" that has no place in a family name. The reverse side has a similar jumble of seemingly random kanji. I'm afraid it makes no sense. 坎?征千代. Could still be an authentic blade that somebody tried to tart up by adding kanji (and hoping to sell to a naive newbie). Unfortunately the odds of this being a blade of any value are pretty low.

Sanrakushi would be a personal pronoun: a name, but I don't know if it is an art name, or location-related name, or something completely different. Oite is a very common kanji, meaning "in". Tsukuru is also another very common kanji meaning "made (by)".

Hmm - try this (関) 於濃州勝?山楽師山麓吉道造之 (Seki stamp) Oite Nōshū-jū Katsu(?) sanrakushi Sanroku Yoshimichi tsukuru kore An unusual mei. I couldn't find another like it on the internet.

I think the seal is just one character. I looks like 保. It is the same character that is on the Masaie tsuba. Maybe it points to a specific school or workshop. It isn't a kao or a go. It's called 金印 kin'in (gold seal), but this is about all I know.

I've never seen a name on the tang's mune before. I believe it might have been the owner's name. Mamoru is a common first name for a male. This is assuming the kanji is indeed 護. I still have doubts, but in lieu of a more viable alternative I'll stick with it for now.

Hmmm - the scholars don't mention that. They are discussing whether some of the kanji were deliberately removed, and if so, why, and what meaning the remaining kanji had for the owners. Like I said, it seems they prefer to place the sword and the inscription in its historical context, and so they are leaning towards a political interpretation rather than a mystical one.

和田護 Wada Mamoru ↑ My best guess. The Wada is obvious. The bottom name, not so much due to the balance being wrong for 護. Still, its the closest I could find without digging into the really obscure kanji. http://kakijun.jp/page/2009200.html

You can find the sword here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Ddaijiyama_Sword and you can see it if you look at the Japanese entry for the above page https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E5%A4%A7%E5%AF%BA%E5%B1%B1%E5%8F%A4%E5%A2%B3 I would say the interpretation of the writing on the sword is still the subject of research, so I wouldn't take the wikipedia entry as the definitive definition. Some discussion here too, in the middle of the following page. These two historians are doing a word-by-word analysis of the inscription. I should say that they are speculating on the various meanings of each kanji: for example the first two kanji 中平 likely refers to the Chinese era name (see below), but the date has been obliterated, perhaps deliberately. So the scholars are speculating on why that occurred, and that perhaps the reading of 中平 with the following 五月 gives a clue. The thinking is that the pronunciation of these characters together might have some alternative, political meaning, rather than just being simple date. Likewise, 百 they speculate to mean a location name, rather than the number of times the steel was folded. Anyway, if you are keen to have a try, you can find the discussion here (Japanese only). http://f-kowbow.com/ron/lekishi23/lekishi23.htm https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%B9%B3 I should say the consensus is that the sword was made in China and brought to, or gifted to Japan/Wa.

Actually I was thinking it was Yasuyoshi, but Yasunori is also a possibility. I didn't look in my books, I found him on the net... http://brim.blog.jp/archives/10438477.html http://www.surplusleopard.com/newpage8.html first link didn't work when I posted it... trying another Ah... Markus Sesko found him...page 323 (of the German version, anyway). Markus has him as Yasunori.

武州住安儀

As we say in Japanese 達筆過ぎて読めません The calligraphy is so beautiful, nobody can read it This one defies all attempts to make sense out of it. The easy pickings on this one are no help at all. 右鍛 means nothing to me. 剱 (tsurugi, ken) appears twice, right after a kanji that resembles 相, but with 手偏 and an extra stroke in the right side. I have no idea what that first kanji could be, but I think we can eliminate the possibility that this is a reference to 相州 as was speculated in the earlier thread. There is what looks to be an orphaned 定 in there, but its use in this context eludes me. There are a couple of 之 kanjis in there, and a 友 and all of these bits point to some sort of kanbun phrase, one with enough clues to take a stab at a meaning... but, it ain't happening. And those were the easy bits. Even the name at the end looks unusual. It might be 浅井禾山 (Asai Kayama, Ineyama?) as mentioned in the other thread, but that feels like an unusual name to me. Asai is correct, but 禾山... it isn't out of the question, but together with other very stylized kanji on this tang, I'm guessing the name isn't as simple as it appears. The whole thing is an enigma. Perhaps Morita-san or Moriyama-san can untangle this knot.

fretwork

Here you go http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/20283-inherited-sword/

Hmm, I'd have to argue against this. Cast-iron (鋳鉄) is a different thing. Nabe refers specifically to a cooking utensil: a pot or a pan. The cooking utensil may be made out of cast-iron, but you wouldn't use 鍋 as an umbrella term for any kind of cast-iron.

Both shiro and yo are viable readings for the kanji 代. In this case, I see other instances where the reading is Mitsushiro. http://sanmei.com/contents/en-us/p2015_%E8%84%87%E6%8C%87%E3%80%80%E9%8A%98%E3%80%80%E8%82%A5%E5%BE%8C%E5%AE%88%E7%A7%A6%E5%85%89%E4%BB%A3.html I don't know what the definitive reading is.

Close, but I think this is 以古鍋鐵作之 motte ko nabe tetsu saku kore I don't know how to read as kanbun. If I take a clue from James's (and Markus's) work above, I would say Ko-nabe tetsu wo motte, kore wo tsukuru Note the nabe used in the inscription is a variation of the kanji for nabe (鍋) in use today. Edit: Oh, I almost forgot... nabe means pot or frying pan.

I think its supposed to be 関之金高 (Seki-no-Kanetaka)... It looks suspicious to me.

I think the tang may be (paradoxically) easier to decipher than the box. The writing on the tang will follow certain known conventions, and I guarantee it contains some variation of the futatsu-dō (貳ツ胴) seen on the hakogaki. The hakogaki is more of a summary of handing down of the sword, rather than a summary of the act of the tameshigiri or the sword itself. If I'm not mistaken the last bit is a list of the descendants of Kuwayama who inherited the sword. Kuwayama bequeathed it to Densaburō (傳三郎) who bequeathed it to Hayato (隼人), who bequeathed it to Shikibu (織部), who bequeathed it to Ihei (猪兵衛).

I would have guessed 包清 (Kanekiyo). But my enthusiasm for this rendering is dampened because I can only find one, slightly suspect example of this smith on the internet (another kogatana), and I prefer the safety of numbers... http://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/f151651201/ I wouldn't have thought Masa, just because it is so unlike the previous Masa. This could be a case where, as Morita-san says, the a duplicate kanji is written in a different style in order to conform to calligraphy conventions. But it does seem a step too far from 正 for my liking.

The mei looks like Tomokata (知賢), but it seems to be done in a different hand than other Tomokata pieces. http://www.winners-auction.jp/productDetail/57859 http://art.thewalters.org/detail/19191/tsuba-with-leaves-and-cherry-blossoms/ The script that makes the design of the pieces is called Tensho script (sometimes called Chinese seal script). Note this is just a style, and it doesn't mean the pieces are Chinese copies. (Sorry, I am not a great decipher of Tensho script, so I cannot tell what message is on the pieces...probably a poem, or some proverb/maxim.)

Kanenami 兼波 was my first thought, but I'm not super confident about it.

The writing was done in 1974 (Shōwa 49), by an anonymous writer. This is the low-hanging fruit of the script. Everything else is hard work. The original owner (or the person who commissioned the sword), was Wada Shikibu from Sendai. Not sure about the reading of the personal name, but the other word in there Kokurō, refers to a quasi official position of elder statesman. The person who performed the tameshigiri, Kuwayama Sadamasa, executed a futatsu-do. He shows up in Guido's list of celebrated tameshigiri. As you mentioned, Kuwayama died in Genroku 13 (1700), aged 88 years old - which is noted in the writing. I can't make out what is in the two seals. The box also mentions something about 1600 goku, which is an old unit of value. 1600 goku is quite a lot.. maybe the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars or more. I can't make out what this refers to...whether it refers to the cost of the thing, or if it is being used to somehow describe Kuwayama and his fief. On the front of the box lid: 桑山丹後守貞政貳ツ胴斬落 Kuwayama Tango no kami Sadamasa futatsu-do kiriotoshi 摂津守藤原永重刀 Settsu no kami Fujiwara Nagashige tō (katana) 桑山家傳来 Kuwayama-ke denrai There is also a reference to another celebrated tameshigiri, Yamano Kaemon Eikyū. I think it is describing the contemporaries of Kuwayama. Sorry for the piecemeal work. I'm picking out things as they become clear to me.

No help. Not a clue.