Bruce Pennington

Ha! Me too! Thanks Brother!

Wish I had some! Yes, it's time to beef up the "Unknowns" section of the Stamps Doc. I PM'd the owner (inactive since 2017), hopefully I can get a pic without the red lines. Thanks Thomas for tormenting me! Ha! I reminds me of this one, but there's differences

Stephen, Any date on this?

Ask him what he thinks about chem-trails,

Date is April 1 1945. someone else will have to translate the rest.

This is better:

Barry, Here are the 3 examples I have:

After finding the fabulous anti-rust blade for sale, by Ray Singer, with a kakihan, made by "Morimichi" I checked my files and found this Morimichi with kakihan on a kogatana (if I've used the correct term), but they're different kakihan. Are they the same mei? Ray's blade is HERE.

I agree with Dave. This looks like a shirasaya, not a field-made koshirae. Value depends on your feel for it's authenticity and your personal preferences for collecting. The pictures don't give sufficient close-up detail to detect hamon, so from a distance, it looks like a badly treated sword, Japanese, but badly treated.

And there was no Seki armory. The Seki sword guild made swords for both the Tokyo first arsenal and the Nagoya army arsenal. It mostly means that the blade was not made in the traditional way.

Hi Steve, welcome! I hope you realize we're not going to let you get away with such a tease without ponying up some pictures! I did the same thing for my Dad's Mantetsu. I got it at no cost, so it was easy for me to spend the dollars to have the blade polished. You'll find several links in the tab above titled "Nihonto Info". The first item in the drop-down menu is "Links", then go to the "Commercial" pages. You'll find polishers as well as guys that can restore the fittings. That tab is a bit dodgy - it disapears on me several times before I can get it to stay still long enough to get over to the Commercial pages. For a more direct answer on who we recommend, it sort of depends upon the particular blade. So pictures of the full blade, naked, and the tang (nakago) are needed.

Thanks Brian, and nice work on the description you gave for the star stamp. A bit better than anything I could have written. I had thought the same thing as you did about adding poor examples with the good so that people could recognize a poor one for what it is, but there are so many permutations of poorly struck stamps that I decided to stick with the full image. I'll keep adding to them as time allows. Great idea, Brian, on the reference page! Sometimes you just need a single picture to add to a discussion and this page is a quick and easy place to find what you need.

Thanks David! It represents the unknowns we face in trying to study these WWII pieces of history. I like your theory as we discussed on your Matsu Stamp thread. After seeing other RJT certified blades with numbers, but not the Matsu, I'm leaning toward it being a personal mark chosen by the Yamagami brothers. But your idea of it's meaning may have been what appealed to them as they chose a mark.

Thanks Thomas. That's the first kana-led number I've seen prior to 1944. The matsu numbers were earlier, but this is the first non-matsu number prior to '44 that I've seen. If someone could take a snap shot of that page, I'd love to add it to the files.

Sometimes see it on nakago, too.

Slendor Sunshine Found HERE.

Type 94 Removeable Ashi That’s a nice collection Jon. There are some more examples on this thread:

Those of us who preserve history are the living conscience of our society. "Suburban" may be where we're located, but it has nothing to do with the importance of what we do. A P.S. on the "gunto" label - I just saw an expanded view of the tsuka and can see the army menugi. So, it definitely was a civil sword re-fitted for the war.

Thanks Steve! It was my thought, too, but I wanted to check since I had not seen a number with that kana on one of these blades until now.

Edward, Thanks for the photos of the saya! It was definitely mounted for the war, with the leather covered saya. I've seen a couple of these - swords made by wartime smiths, mounted with civil fittings, but then fitted with a military saya for the war. It would be interesting to know the story of the blade and the route it took from smith, to maybe a civilian, who then read the pleas from the Army for donations (the army would buy the swords from owners, too) for the war effort.

Dang, that's just mean! No serial number!!! Ha! Like the fish that gets off the hook.

It’s just a plastic storage bin, Chris!

Sometimes finer detail is lost with oshigata. What's your thoughts on the katakana in front of the "306"? タ or ク? I'm thinking ク, but the top left looks more like a 刀 to me, but that may be, like I said, errors produced by the oshigata process.

Edward, Does you nakago have the star at the top, like the one in Slough's page? How about stamped numbers at the bottom? Wondering why you called it a "gunto", too. The tsuka and tsuba are civil. Is the saya the leather-covered wood? Admittedly, Kanetsugu was an RJT smith, but there were actually some swords sold on the private, civil, market during the war too.

Here is a list of his "pinned" articles: Master Index for Reference Articles by Nick Komiya