Bruce Pennington

Thanks Chuck. I appreciate your efforts to finish fitting the bare blade out. If it were me, though, I'd find a good army tsuba/seppa set, as the rest of the gunto fittings are all army. Army had some black colored saya as well. I'm puzzled that the black paint simply comes off with alcohol? I haven't tried alcohol on original paint before, but I've tried acetone, and original paint really resists coming off with acetone. Post-war paint comes off much more easily. Does anyone know if original WWII paint comes off easily with alcohol? The whole thing, like John said, looks like a post-war Bubba slapped a bunch of pieces together. But if there is bare wood under both ashi, that wouldn't seem to be what I'd expect on a Bubba-job, unless Bubba totally stripped an original saya for his re-paint. My leanings are toward a Bubba-job, but with real WWII parts.

Can anyone elucidate on the blue painted kanji. Doesn't seem to be the normal numbering.

And that's one heck'ov a hamon for a showato!

I'd go with Kanenao: http://japaneseswordindex.com/oshigata/kanenao3.jpg

And that would explain the use of a different kanji than I was seeing in the wartime smiths.

Well, that’s a twist in the plot I didn’t see coming! Great observations about the older blade in the RS fittings. You may also be swaying me in your direction of the stamp being a shop logo, as military stamps are not found at that end of the nakago.

Chuck, The saya came just as it is in the picture? And the blade was bare, or had the tsuba and dai-seppa with it? As to the blade, it's near impossible to know if it was made before or just after the war. Those stainless blades can be pretty clean. The post-war blades tend to have unfinished ends on the nakago, but not always. I've seen a few of the souvenir rigs with well shaped jiri. So, no way to know just by the blade. Still need to know more about the saya, though.

So. The plot thickens. I'm fairly certain that is a Matsu stamp: I don't see evidence of a number, although corrosion could have destroyed them. Making this more interesting, if it is a Matsu stamp, is that the majority of Matsu stamps have been found on blades made in the Niigata prefecture. We have 2 recorded from neighboring Nagano, and now this one from either: Aichi, Mino, Dewa province (which back then included Yamagata), Yamagata, or Gifu, which is where the known Kaneyoshi smiths operated from. As you can see, they all neighbor Niigata and Nagano, so I'm starting to think this stamp was an Army stamp used for certain areas, like the katakana stamps we see with numbers. @george trotter - thoughts?

Charles, I think you're right. The nakago is longer than usual, so the hole at the very end must be for the sarute. Still don't understand the hole just below it, though, unless the blade was originally made for RS fittings, then sold to a Navy buyer.

My blade was in similar condition. It was my dad's, so I decided to have it polished. They come out quite beautiful, but it costs more than $2,000 to have it done.

I did some checking and I think that's the FIRST Mantetsu I've seen in kaigunto fittings!!!! You own a VERY rare item there my friend!

A cool pattern posted by @Utopianarian HERE

If you haven't read the article on these, it can be found here: I have one because I feel they are the "book-end" to Japanese war swords, meaning, the last swords made by Japan for war. There is a chance that some of the blades were surplus, made for war but never used. So, in that regard, some of them likely carry the last blades made for WWII. I think most of them were made after the war, but that's speculation. They usually have nice, stainless steel blades. The fittings, in hand, are fairly light-weight, and while they look good, are somewhat cheaply made compared to the war fittings. All in all, I'm glad I own one. They tend to sell in the $400-500 USD range. Any sold higher than that are due to the buyers (and sellers) thinking they are kaigunto.

Matt, I'm waiting to see if there is a star stamp at the top also. In the meantime, Uwe, To my horribly untrained eye, I don't see this kanji used in the 3 examples in Slough, or the 2 shown on Japaneseswordindex. I have heard of smiths changing their kanji over time. Do you think this might be the case here? Or is it the case where there can be 5 or 6 different smiths going by the same art name?

Steve, The uniform regs were changed in the last year of the war to allow for 1 haikan (hangar) and lesser quality fittings, so this koshirae is likely made in the last year. It's a nice looking rig for a late-war kaigunto, actually! Puzzled by the 3 holes in the nakago, but that doesn't detract from it's value. Someone else will have to help you with the saya crack question.

@Utopianarian - George, could I get a closer shot of that fancy habaki for the Cat Scratch Habaki thread?

You were right that the mei didn't match the Mantetsu, good call! You've got, what is likely to be, a really nice traditionally made blade by an RJT smith. I only have 3 star-stamped blades on file dated earlier than this, so it's cool to own one made so early in the RJT program. The stamps are the "Na" of Nagoya Army Aresenal and the "Ho" of Kokura Army Arsenal's 1st Factory inspector. Here's the page on him from Slough:

Right. some of the most challenging stamps are the ones that are partially struck.

Thomas - @Kiipu, Got to looking at the 3 unobserved katakana in the Mantetsu lines and realized that one of them is the "HE" also used by the Heijo factory of the Jinsen Arsenal. I'm starting to wonder if it is an intentional omission to avoid confusing the mark on Mantetsu blades from Jinsen Arsenal work. If so, do you think the WI　ヰ and O 　オ are intentional omissions as well? If so, what other uses of the kanji were out there being used, that these would be confused with?

That's right, David. And now I'm speculating, but you'll notice it is the end of the 1st third of the year's production, so IF production numbers were linear and equal in amounts of blades in each group, then your blade came out in either April (if SMR was going by a calendar year) or August (if going by Japanese fiscal year). But that's really getting into speculation.

Duplicating some posts on other threads, but I've scanned all the pages on this thread and don't see them mentioned, so adding a couple of habiki with 5 star mons: This from @robinalexander and this from @Butch

Thought I would consolidate some mon being discussed on 2 or 3 other threads, having to do with stars. And please correct me if one or more of these are something else, but there are some mon having to do with 5 stars, 7 stars, etc on habaki and even a kaigunto tsuba. Here they are: This one posted by Gareth, @Butch: This one posted by Rob, @robinalexander: And this one by David, @m4l700:

That's a Bingo! Thanks Rob! I'm no mon expert but I'd guess those are 5 stars. Like all mon by WWII, it could be for any number of family names.

Gareth, That is quite a fantastic gunto! You are right about the pattern on the habaki. A similar one was discussed earlier, if I can find it, I'll update with a link, but it is a mon. The fittings are simply late war. I had a similar discussion with Nick Komiya, HERE at Warrelics, and this is what he said: "It depends on what is meant by a sword for “Homeland Defense”. Does that mean for issue to Civil Defense groups or does it simply mean a last ditch (in the homeland) army sword, a makeshift version of the already “substitute status” Rinji Seishiki sword? There is no chance that such a sword was made for civil defense units. Core members of civil defense were policemen and firefighters, but such personnel simply could not get swords, due to wartime shortages. This shortage got to the point of prefectural police chiefs receiving a nationwide memo dated 27th February 1945 saying that though huge efforts were being made to secure a supply of badly needed swords, no magic solution was in sight and that the only immediate remedy was to ask retired police and fire brigade members to hand in their swords for use by incumbents, should they still have them. On the civilian front, the standard weapon of choice for Homeland Defense was the stereotype of sharpened bamboo poles, and there certainly was no plan nor intention to arm civilians with swords. What Bruce is calling a Homeland Defense model can only be a last ditch effort to continue the Rinji Seishiki effort. As I already explained here, the heavy bombings of 1944 basically killed off the sword industry by spring of 1945. Manufacturing within Japan was in the process of evacuation and relocation to a remote area outside the normal target areas."