Bruce Pennington

For the record. AOI sale, found by @Tsuku, HERE

Mike, Trust me, it's quite easy to remove the handle. The small bamboo peg in the handle can be tapped out from the opposite side. It is the only thing holding the handle and hand-guard on the tang. Once you remove it, everything slides off. Sometimes they are on tight, but usually they slide off quite easily. There is often a swordsmith name and/or date on the tang. Yours is fitted in a wooden scabbard that originally had a leather cover. Sometimes that means the blade was an older, ancestral blade; not always, but it could be.

And yet, there are Army examples too, so maybe the practice was just more common than I picture it.

@Shamsy - good to see you again! What an amazing gunto! And the Roman numeral markings are an interesting development. Looking in the files, I have 2 other habaki from Toyokawa kaigunto with Roman numerals. More Interesting-er, both of the other examples had different shop logo. Soooooo ...... was the Roman marking done by the arsenal? If so, why??? Was the style of marking dictated by the arsenal? That may make more sense:

Whether the sword is a bottom-rung item or a top one, my experience is that it's difficult to find a blade fore sale that is under-priced. My abandoned effort and getting into buying/selling is because of this. Of the 10 or so gunto I moved, only 2 or 3 were found under-priced. The rest, after auction premiums and shipping, were all sold at cost or at a loss.

I appreciate your thoughts on this. It's still a piece of history that "lived" through the biggest war mankind has ever seen. Should be preserved. Closest I have like that is my Type 32 Ko. I didn't do the "cleaning", so it must have been cleaned up by a prior owner. You can still see the pitting, though. I believe the course file marks are something done in the field. There are several examples of that on NMB and a thread where someone pointed out a reg or something that showed it to be war-period filing.

A couple of thoughts. I have a lot of star-stamped blades with painted numbers, as of yet, none with quite as much painting as this one, but not unusual at all. Secondly, as I've been scouting through the files, I found this 1945 Kanetomo with painted numbers right across the mei. You'll notice that the paint didn't get down into the mei cutting, so the painter's strokes were likely fast enough, or light-handed enough to not get down into the chisel grooves. Since the one on topic is powdered it's hard to know if the paint as first or the kanji, but having now seen another example where the paint was not in the mei cuts, I don't think that would be a firm determinant. The only real evidence would be if the powder were cleaned out and the mei cuts were obviously new. We face a lot of fakery in this hobby, so skepticism is never out of place.

@loiner1965 - Steve, could we get some nakago photos of your Kanetoshi and the Seki stamp? Date if it has one?

Listed as Gifu, so yes.

Thanks everyone, fabulous as always! Brian, with a little zoom, you can see the powder here and there outside the kanji. Richard's Oshigata on Japaneseswordindex has the same mei: http://japaneseswordindex.com/oshigata/sukenobu.jpg

Thanks Charlie! I'm starting to recognize some of the name kanji - as in "I know I've seen that that kanji many time before!" - but the remembering part is yet to come along.

Thanks Kyle! That's the 3rd dang time I've forgotten that I knew about that variant of 20!

Would appreciate help with both sides. Normally I can see the dates but this one is confusing:

Haven't tried to have the mei translated yet: https://www.proxibid.com/Firearms-Military-Artifacts/Military-Artifacts/Japanese-KATANA-SWORD-w-SHIRASAYA-SIGNED-TANG/lotInformation/65039084#topoflot

At the risk of running up the price for someone that may already be after this one: https://www.proxibid.com/Firearms-Military-Artifacts/Knives-Blades/Very-Rare-Copper-Hilted-Japanese-Type-95-Pattern-1935-NCO-Shin-Gunto-by-Kokura/lotInformation/64741722#topoflot

That is an exquisite collection in so many ways!!! Wow.

You can see it in thes photos: Hash marks on nakago are the modified Roman numeral system with "\" being "5", so \III is "8", therefore "88" which matches the number on the tsuba.

Not Japanese. I don’t know what kind of swords the Chinese carried around. But the emblem on the tsuba doesn’t look like something even they would use.

Type 98 Japanese Officer sword. You can read all about them here: http://ohmura-study.net/900.html

Tim, The stamp is poorly struck. In full, it looks like this: It seems to be only on Masafusa blades. Yours is the 3rd I have on file now.

I don't think Trystan or Kyle would have even translated the writing if it were faked. The fakers rarely get the mei correct. The rest looks like a legit civil sword, re-fitted for the war. If you want an evaluation of the age of the sword, I'd post it, with pics of full-length, naked blade on the Nihonto Forum. They'll want a measurement of the straight-line cutting section from tip to notch on the back edge. Like this:

Here's a puzzler found by @Stephen. Enough similarities to the Yamamoto Gunto Shop, but enough differences too. I'm leaning to the side of it being a different (and unidentified) shop logo. Any ideas, anyone? Yamamoto Mystery

Asking the owner of this one on THIS Wehrmacht-Awards thread for some better pics. I'll update if I get them. Comes from a grouping from a passed-on Marine who collected them on Saipan. The owner knew him personally. After getting a better look, though, this may be a civil sword refitted for the war, and not a late-war Army gunto. I'll update or delete depending upon what he gives us.

For Sale or Trade Wanted to Buy

Ha! We're getting Eric hooked on tracking/finding number-stamped blades! Love it! I see what you're seeing. The only way to find out is if we could get Roger to knock off that active rust (which needs to be done anyway!) with a deer antler. So far, the only blades I've seen with numbers stamped that high on the nakago are Navy blades. This could have been a navy blade, now heavily rusted, re-mounted in civil fittings. The rust does look new, not much of the old dark patina there. But the middle hole looks older, and Dave's eyes for older blades are much more experienced than mine. Maybe Roger will enlighten us soon with a better view!