Bruce Pennington

Don't know if you have this one yet, Marcin. Long mei with general's tassel in a UK auction HERE. They know what they have and are asking a pretty penny as expected.

Wow, nice to see we are finally making some progress in the collecting world! ZevAntiques has a souvenir at auction HERE with a title of "US 8th Army Japan Occupation Souvenir Sword" and a full accurate description! Hurray!!! It's the first souvenir on file with an Inaba blade, third with "29"

Do us all a favor and remove the screw that is holding on the handle. The underlying tang could be signed and dated.

@BANGBANGSAN What do you think about this one? I have other blades with various shop mei. Think this our same Hyakuren-do?

Thanks, Trystan! Very interesting information. @mecox Do you have info linking this smith to this shop? If not, looks like you do now. The other one I have on file was made by Kanehisa. Also just found this mumei one, also bearing the Seki stamp, beginning at this post:

Chandler, You'll find a more in depth discussion of that here, but I don't think anyone knows the answer for sure:

Ted, No way to know whether an officer or NCO equivalent. Could have been either.

Great, thanks, Conway! @SteveM Steve, can you confirm Kaneyuki?

The other side is the date - 1942

Hi BP. First a forum technical note. If you actually go by "BP", then never mind, but if that's not what you go by, please go to your profile page and add a first name. It's NMB policy and we all like to talk to real people. Thanks! So, for decades the collecting community have held the all-brown tassel to be a late-war army tassel (Navy is all brown, but it's a richer, darker color and of course found on kaigunto). Even the reference books call it that. However, a couple years ago, a respected researcher found the 1943 Uniform Regulation Change that spoke of the brown tassel and said that it was assigned to the Gunzoku. I asked Nick if the wording would have allowed that the tassel was already in use by the army, but was now also assigned to Gunzoku. Nick answered that due to the wording, it would have been specific to just the Gunzoku. That's all I can say. If you would like to read his discussion, see this: The All Brown Army Tassel - Nick Komiya

Here is a video showing how the remove the handle (tsuka). These blades were often signed and dated by the sword smiths. The all-brown tassel was used by the civil branch of the military, called Gunzoku. The wore military styled uniforms and performed many non-combat functions like maintenance, admin, etc.

I like that one, Sam. Actual example of a Type 8/19 being worn in a formal function, rather than a photo posing setting.

Nice sword, Detlev! Stamps an Japanese swords are commonly called arsenal stamps, but there are a couple - the Showa stamp and the larger Seki stamp - are not. Both were used by the Seki Cutlery Manufacturers Association. The large Seki, like yours was used between 1940 - 1944.

The kakihan looks like a cut test kao.

John, No flack from me, brother. I think you're the guy that started to study the painted numbers, right? If so, you are currently the resident expert! I do think you are right about the colors and number schemes being specific to shops, forges, and arsenals. We have that one photo of several blades lined up with white, or the pale blue, numbers. With that in mind, the 2-digit black numbering on these souvenirs is specific to Tenshozan, which actually backs up your point.