Bruce Pennington

If he had valuable blades from big named smiths, he'd sure as heck tell you and ask a high price. Refusing to give smith names means he's got mumei or common smiths and then wants to jack up the prices.

The blade is interesting, but what do you think about those fittings? The saya is steel, so WWII era? but the fittings aren't. More like Chinese stuff, unless there were civil or tourist fittings that looked like this?

Nothing on him in Sesko's book. There were several WWII smiths using that "Take" that are pretty much unknown.

The Gifu stamp is a bit of an unknown entity. I used to think it was something the Seki Cutlery folks used as the large Seki stamp tapered off, but I found it was on tachi mei blades, like all the arsenal stamps. The civil stamps are on katana mei blades. So, looking at the timeline, the Nagoya "NA" tapers off after '43 and is practically gone by '45 (only 1 blade found with one from '45). While the Gifu begins in '43 and runs stead through '45. So, I think the Nagaya Arsenal used both in '43 and '44 and went completely over to the Gifu in '45. Unfortunately, I didn't think to make that change in thought in the Mar '25 Stamps doc. But it's in the update for next year.

Nice one, Conway! I bet it's heavy! As to it's place in the series, it's hard to say exactly. '39 was the year of overlap as they finished out the English lettering N-Z (we only have examples of N, O, V, and W) and began using IROHOA. All the Alpha/numerics for '39 were "Spring" and the IROHA started with Spring, so either they finished the Alpha/numberics before staring IROHA or they ran the two numbering system simultaneiously. 1939 -- -- -- -- -- N-423春 N-574春 N-597春 O-4春 -- V-18春 V-33春 W-23春 W-38春 W-82春 -- None春 I イ(イ) i 　い Ro ロ Ha ハ Alpha Numeric Missing Kanji 1939 I イ RO ロ HA ハ NI ニ HO ホ I 132-S I 169-S I 376-S I 466-S RO 69-S RO 75-S RO 233S RO 270S RO 381S RO 446S HA 24-A HA 35-A NI 53-A NI 57-A NI 190-A NI 375-A NI 422-A NI 539-A Ni 657-A NI 679-W Ni 733-A HO 113-W HO 122-W HO 123-W HO 125-W HO 168-W HO 171-W HO 213-W NoNmr-W

Another one found by @Pav. Undated Kanekuni. Looks gendaito to me:

Hi Nazar, Other than the light color ito, it looks legit to me, and even the ito looks properly wrapped, so maybe custom job? Would help a lot to see the nakago (tang).

Ah, yes! Marking above habaki? Do you mean this: With all the pitting, I think it's just more corrosion/pitting. If it was a horimono, the corrosion has destroyed it. But Horimono is usually quite deep, and I think plenty would survive enough to be visible.

Mark, What I see looks like WWII legit gunto. Can you post a pic of the nakago?

Thanks Mark. With the corrosion, it's hard to say for sure, but I think there is a Showa stamp. I have dated blades from him, on file, made in 1940, '41, and '42. Most Showa-stamped blades were made in 1940 - 1941.

Good catch Trystan. I’ll have to correct my files.

I'm the worst guy to ask, as I don't study that stuff. The pics are fuzzy when zoomed, but I think I see hada in the steel. I don't see the famous black spots in the hamon of an oil quench, but the artificial polish might have obscured that. Mostly, I don't think the focus of the photo is clear enough to say. But again, I'm really not the one to ask.

This was in Plimton's book. No blade shown: This one leads into the group of gunto with varing amounts of mixed officer/NCO parts. I've seen several NCO blades with 95 tsuka/tsuba in officer saya, like this on from Plimpton. More puzzling are the Type 95s with signed blades that would normally be in officer fittings. I have 2 of these on file. Personally, though, I'd be more likely to believe these were custom blades paid for by an NCO with money, who wanted a quality blade in his rig. The shortages that drove officers to buy Type 95s were blade shortages, not fittings shortages. An example: Masatsugu, Jun 1945, posted by @drb 1643 Another Masatsugu, April 1945 from @mdiddy

More from the files: Posted by @The_Derz

I forgot about this thread until Sam - @Scogg - came up with another example. The early (copper handle era) number on this one and another from @Stegel falls inline with the era discussed in Nick Komiya's discussion. I don't know what date range the one on the OP phots falls in, but there were shortages throughout the war that would have caused a young officer to resort to this way of obtaining a sword. Sam's find: Stegel's gunto

How interesting! Now I'm curious to know what exactly that material is that is under the ito. In the first photo, at top, you can see it's been torn and missing as you near the tsuba. We know from a repair team report that many swords were repaired by them in the field, and the item most damaged was the tsuka (handle). This could be one of them.

Very unusual for an army sword to have the black ray skin. That is normally seen on Navy swords. However, in the past year, I have seen two or three others like this. Must’ve been a custom request.

Just for the trivia interest - The earliest observed Showa-stamped blade was dated 1935, and it was a Kanetaka.

I would say it is the larger Seki stamp. The small one is often hard to see, it's so small.

In March, '45, they ordered changes to kaigunto to save on precious resources and speed production. The second haikan (ashi) was elliminated as well as the gold gilding.

It would be above the mei like this

Just a guess, but I'm thinking the hashed "23" was the original number that matched the numbered original fittings. "3" would be the fittings number of the current set. The 2 ana (holes) mean the blade was refitted to the current koshirae and had been in something else originally. It's a fairly common thing to see.

Great, Steve, thanks! So no star?

Hi Ray, I was only looking, and talking, about his title and hadn't seen the description. But it is easy to see by his description that he still hardly knows anything about WWII Japanese swords. He doesn't even know that officers had to buy all their gear and weapons. Only NCO's were issued swords. The first half is true, but the second half shows that he doesn't know what a tsunagi is and what they were used for.