SteveM

It's an address. From the saya on top: 本籍地宮城県宮城郡浦戸村寒風澤百拾七番地 現住所宮城県塩竈市泉澤 伊豆興四松 The saya on the bottom has basically the same writing. I'm not 100% confident of the given name. I've basically just transliterated the kanji. It points to a location and a name. It doesn't seem to be a significant name or location.

Postcard of the 20th century actor Chiezo KATAOKA. The little cartouche has the name Ken Kichi (Kenkichi?) in it. I presume that is the artist's name, but nothing shows up in Google.

Wow! That is a powerful attachment! Regarding the sword polishers, there are a few videos around which show how they polish - the short answer is, no they do not use tape or a vice. (Not the ones I've seen, at any rate). The ones I've seen polish the blade while holding it in their bare hands, or maybe wrap some cloth (I don't know what kind of cloth) around part of the sword if they want a better grip.

Hello Darius - this set off a little red flag in my mind. Was the person who redid the tip of your sword a nihonto specialist? It definitely gives the impression that your reshaper wrapped the blade in duct tape/masking tape so he could grip it to work on the tip. I don't think the spots are fatal to the sword, but I'm slightly suspicious that the work was done by someone who was not really an expert(?). Kind of curious to see how the tip looks.

Looks good to me.

宝暦十二癸未歳二月吉日大小？仕之小川偉臓？（花押） This is what I can come up with. The zodiac year (癸未) corresponds with Hōreki 13. Perhaps that extra stroke has been worn away - I don't think it would be a typo. I don't have much confidence in the rest of the kanji after 吉日. The 仕之 are fairly clear, however these by themselves don't tell me much. The last kanji above the kao are certainly part of a name. I'm taking a bit of a flying guess with 小川偉臓 (Ogawa Izō). I don't think 臓 would be used in a name, but I throw it out here as maybe it will inspire a better answer. Very interesting, by the way. I've never seen writing inside of a saya before.

No, I think it means the date of having been summoned by his Imperial Majesty to join the army. But I am not completely confident of this. You mean transliteration? Kanbun is not my specialty. I can only guess based on the original Japanese phrase 皇国興廃在此一戦 Kōkoku no kōhai wa kono issen ni ari

The year isn't on the blade. The top two kanji are 拜詔 (haishō). 拜 is the old version of 拝. I don't know how to translate this. Honorable summons/conscription, perhaps? 皇国興廃在此一戦 This is the classical Chinese version of Togo's phrase; 皇国ノ興廃此ノ一戦ニ在リ、各員一層奮励努力セヨ You can see the English version of this phrase here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_flag

Here are a few more 2nd gen Kanemoto (Magoroku). http://iidakoendo.com/809/ http://www.touken-sato.com/event/katana/2014/03/D-kanemoto-01.html http://www.aoijapan.jp/%E7%9F%AD%E5%88%80%EF%BC%9A%E5%85%BC%E5%85%83-%EF%BC%88%E3%81%BE%E3%81%94%E3%82%8D%E3%81%8F%EF%BC%89

It would seem to be 勢州久居住勝久 But...not a lot of info on this mei, other than a few random entries for auction sites.

Looks like Kojima Kanemichi (one of the ones mentioned in Stephen's link). Here are some other Kanemichi signatures for comparison. http://www.sanmei.com/contents/media/G45577_S8110_PUP.htm http://www.e-sword.jp/sale/2014/1410_1063syousai.htm Showa 14 (again, repeating, or affirming Stephen's post), or maybe Showa 10 with a zodiac sign after it... hard to tell. Some closer shots would help. The chalk is a bit distracting.

豊佑作 (Toyosuke Saku) would be my guess. The suke in this mei uses ninben instead of shimesu-hen. Pretty confident on the Toyo. I have less confidence on the suke, but looking at the way 作 is carved, it seems that 佑 is more likely than 祐 - but I've had a look around at the online databases and I can find no online reference to 豊佑 or 豊祐, so it is bit of a mystery.

Haha - bugger me, you are right! I was also thinking that maybe 美 (yoshi) was also a fashion of the time, and so 正美 as Masayoshi was maybe more common than I originally thought. (So, there could well be 2 or 3 smiths with the name Masayoshi 正美 at that time, and that it wasn't so much of a coincidence.

Your reading of Kaneuji-saku is correct, but it doesn't match any of the signatures of the wartime Kaneujis. I'm afraid your blade has endured an amateur polish job which has, for now anyway, ruined the condition of the blade. The kanji on the blade itself are 大和魂 Yamato-damashii (spirit of Japan/Yamato). You can find other Kaneuji signatures here and compare. http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/oshigata/index.htm

Yes, Ryu Masayoshi, one of the rikugun smiths. This might be the art name of the last smith on the list Stephen provided (Kosaka Masayoshi). I'm looking for confirmation of that, but I haven't found any yet. Seems likely, but I can't quite exclude the possibility that these are two different guys. Actually, I'm wondering if the last two Masayoshis on that list aren't the same person. One is from Shizuoka, and the other is from Ōsaka, but Masayoshi (正美) is a slightly unusual spelling, and the birth/death dates match, so I'm wondering if its not the same person, or just an amazing coincidence. Anyway, Ryu Masayoshi is your man. http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/gendai2.htm

Tips for deciphering: 1. Generally speaking, mei usually include location + smith's name, in that order. The location will usually include the old domain/province name. A few domains were prolific sword-producing locations, and so these names appear more frequently than others (Mino, Bizen, Bungo, etc...). Once you have input the province names in your head, you can usually pick out the location. 2. If you pick out the province name, the personal/art name of the smith usually follows, and is usually a two-kanji name. However, smiths often added "Fujiwara" to their names as an allusion to an old noble family - kind of like me saying I'm "Steve M of the House of Windsor". 3. Certain names are associated with certain provinces. The Kanji 兼 (Kane) is a component of names that are associated with Mino province, for example. Once you have nailed the province/domain, it might give you a hint as to the name of the smith - or at least a part of it. 4. Unfortunately for us, many smiths inscribed their names using a cursive style, which means the kanji don't appear as they would in a normal font. On the positive side, the cursive styles followed certain conventions, and so there tends to be a certain similarity to how the kanji appear. Again, I'm thinking of kanji like 兼、光、國、義 Now that you have some basic rules-of-thumb, we can throw them all out the window when we look at the three swords you've posted. 1. Your first sword is a Showa-to (war-era). These mei are often very choppy, like the one in your picture. Its as if the smiths didn't have the time to carve careful, delicate lines into the steel, and instead just used a sort of shorthand, employing a severe economy of short, hasty strokes The one in the picture also doesn't follow the above rule of location + name. It is just the smith's name. The good thing is that modern swords normally don't have mei that are eroded or obscured by rust, and so there is less guesswork. 2. Your second sword uses an alternative name for the location - you'll pick this up with practice and as you see more and more swords. It is cut off just before the smith's name, although with this particular location name being used, one might be able to deduce who the smith is. (You can tell it is cut off at the location name because the final kanji is 住, indicated that everything above that is address (basically), and everything below that will be name. 3. Your third sword doesn't have a location, and has a 5-kanji art name. The thing with this one is, the art name is such a big name that you will become used to it as you look at more and more swords.

↑　On behalf of some gullible guy who was likely to pay good money for that hunk of junk, your efforts are much appreciated.

That (the one on the right) would be Osa (from Osafune) . I can see where you see the resemblance, but I don't think it is Osa. For one thing, the top horizontal strokes on the tang on your sword are placed too far to the right (literally running off the edge of the sword). I don't think that would ever happen with Osa 長.

The top one (I think) is カーン and represents Fudō Myō-ō The bottom one is アン and represents Fugen Bosatsu On the site below they are #10 and #6. http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/sidtyoukoku/desin/bonji/bonji.html I'm not completely confident about the top one.

Hello Ben, I think its too far gone to be deciphered. Where are you looking that you see a part of Osafune? I can't find it. The only thing that stands out to me is a horizontal line (that may or may not be part of a kanji), and a peaked shape underneath that line that reminds me of the top part of the kanji "金” meaning "gold".

Wow - now I'm really intrigued. I thought for sure that Steven K was correct with Handaka Sonja (半託迦尊者）. There are other artworks featuring the motif of Handaka Sonja (or Panthaka, or Pantha the Younger) conjuring a dragon from a bowl. http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-handaka-sonja-handaka-sonja-one-of-the-sixteen-rakan-or-arhats-one-60196774.html http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/handaka-sonja-10336 http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/isida_tooru/GALLERY/show_image_v2.html?id=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.c.yimg.jp%2Fres%2Fblog-9f-18%2Fisida_tooru%2Ffolder%2F818926%2F59%2F61864059%2Fimg_1%3F1365387714&i=1 But Mauro's post above indicates the same theme coming from a different place in Japanese/Chinese lore https://archive.org/details/mma_the_chinese_sennin_chen_nan_japanese_chinnan_37263 Now I don't know which one is correct (and how unusual that the two exact themes seem to be independent of one another). Note that the book to which Mauro linked lists both legends: Chinnan on page 38, and Handaka on page 109. If I had to pick one, I'd say that the lack of any obvious Buddhist paraphernalia makes me think the figure is, as Mauro suggests, the hermit Chinnan, rather than the Buddhist disciple Handaka Sonja.

Something a bit more prosaic, I think. To me it looks like a fairly common Japanese surname, Abe (阿部). Possible to get a look at the other side? "Goodbye" in Japanese isn't normally written in kanji - you can write part of it in kanji, but its a bit unusual to do so.

This is a particularly good thread that might be of use to Julian http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/12646-advices-for-newbies-buyers-rules-of-thumb/?hl=%2Brules+%2Bbuying&do=findComment&comment=130767 Also, Guido's article is good for a bit more food for thought for the person thinking about nihonto collecting http://www.nihontomessageboard.com/articles/Collecting.pdf

Well, you can judge for yourself how close she is to my translation. The skinny tag is simply a name/address tag, and there isn't a whole lot of room for artistic license. The address names still persist in one form or another,. So Mamedo (let's call it a village) in Imajuku city in Hiki county in Saitama prefecture is still Mamedo village, Imajuku city in Hiki county in Saitama prefecture (even though it may have been merged into a larger municipality since the war). In Japanese its pronounced as Saitama-ken, Hiki-gun, Imajuku-shi, Mamedo-mura. So your friend has just rendered the Japanese into an approximate English pronunciation, give or take a few errors on her part (pronouns are notoriously difficult to figure out) . The village name of Mamedo （大豆戸） does in fact contain the two kanji for soybean 大豆 which is in fact pronounced daizu, but in this context the three characters go together and form a location name. Hope this helps.

It is laughably incorrect. The person who wrote that quite simply doesn't know what he is talking about, or worse, he does know, but he is deliberately obscuring things in the hope that he can trick some gullible person into believing the sword is a Kamakura artifact. Fun fact: the kanji he says is 浓 is not used in Japan. It is only used in mainland China.