Bruce Pennington

John, I agree the art in the carving is really pleasant. I'm attaching some poor pics of another sword with Damascus steel. If yours has this steel, like the guys said, it's Chinese. Some of these are nice enough that I've begun wondering if they weren't made for the tourist market, in China or elsewhere. Japan had their own tourist pieces in the 1800s. Also, some of these don't seem to be trying outright to be Japanese. The ones that are imitating WWII gunto are obviously intended to deceive, but others like this, I wonder if they were simply Chinese tourist pieces that, post-war, get pushed around by dealers and sellers as Japanese. They are clearly not Japanese at any rate.

This 1944 production chart (and I assume other years had similar stats) showed that Nagoya Arsenal (along with SMR and Nanman) transfered blades to Tokyo 1st. This is why I have never been bothered by seeing the mix of stamps.

Nov '41 Yukihiro, Na/Ho: Jun '42 Sukenobu; Na/Ho: Mar '42 Norisada, Na/Ho:

Another. Hiromasa, Aug '43: And smith and date unknown:

Here's a couple more and some of the fittings:

Finished looking for RJT blades made in the Kukuoka area - none found with numbered nakago (for the record, the ones I searched were Hiromitsu, Hisakuni, Kazusuke, and Kunimitsu). I'm working on the Gumma area now, but not finding many blades made by Kiribachi Kanemune. If anyone has examples, please post, whether numbered or not. The lack of numbers might wind up telling us something useful as well as the numbered ones.

Found a great example of the flow, over the war years, of the stamping on a single smith's blades - Kanemune. He had both Showa (Thanks @george trotter) Seki (thanks @Infinite_Wisdumb) Then "Na" of Nagoya (thanks @Philip) and Gifu (thanks @ww2colorado) He was obviously making blades the full length of the war. The Showa and Seki blades aren't dated (which is pretty standard for pre-1942 blades). The Na blade is 1943, and the Gifu blade is 1945. All made in the same area (possibly the same shop?) but the stamps changed as the army took control over blade production.

Thanks Jim! Could I get a more clear picture of that stamp? It's blurry enough that I can't tell if it's Showa or Gifu.

It's a common stamp on Chinese fakes. Appears to be in Tensho script, but I've never had anyone try to decipher it.

Ahhhh. A mind is a terrible thing to waste! 10 blades per month - 1 blade every 3 days! That's quite amazing for traditionally made blades, and that assumes no days off.

Interesting similar discussion ON GUNBOARDS about black-painted Arisaka rifles. Most seem to be period paint, as a couple have ground-off mums that show the paint was there before the mum was ground off.

2 on a Kaneaki (no date) found here

I've checked both Dawson and Fuller and don't see an easy match. It's either a Police or a Navy prison guard/patrolman sword. Could be early Meiji era? I'd run it by Nick Komiya at Warrelics. He seems to know all the variants of these things.

Thanks Thomas, that one shows the unusual stamp at the end of the nakago, but it doesn't show the "KO" stamp. I don't see it anyway. On the topic of weird stamps - what the heck?:

Mal, I'm going through my Star-stamped files and the first one I found with Star and Ko is of Hidehiro. Slough says his "last known residence" was Okawa city, Sakami. My google search says that is in Fukuoka. Assuming he did his work there, that's nowhere near Tokyo. So I'm thinking my "collecting, packaging, and shipping to Tokyo" might be the answer to these inspection marks. But wait! (idea just hit me) - these blades are from 1942. We don't see Osaka, Nagoya, or other arsenal stamps show up until 1943 and 1944. Maybe the inspectors that traveled all over the country carried Tokyo Arsenal inspector stamps because they were from Tokyo!

Mal, On your first Shigefusa, page 29, I can't see the Ko stamp. Do you have a more clear shot of it? Also, what is that at the bottom of the nakago? Is it a hotstamp?

I wish I had a better memory. ... I read somewhere, recently, that Army RJT inspectors went around to the forges and collected blades, packaged them, and sent them to Tokyo for storage and distribution. Could this process account for the stamps on this blade?

@PNSSHOGUN is the best guy for your answer. I can tell you the second haikan (hanger) was removable and a great many of them were removed and/or lost. John can fill you in on the other differences (or other guys that follow the fittings closely).

I definitely see lines in the steel in this one Neil. Maybe it was at the end of their experimental work.

It's been a while since I read the history, but I remember the earliest ones were made a different way before they refined the production concepts. I want to say '37 was the experimental year and after that they got more standardized. But I'm talking from memory, which has often betrayed me with false info! Nice one Neil!

There is a thread here at NMB where a guy found a supply and was hoping to get other guys to chip in to buy a roll. Might be able to search the site and find it.

Jim, @mecox and I have been tracking these numbered blades. Thanks for the new one! Is that a stamp in the upper right corner? Any on the nakago mume?

Chiba .... now that’s interesting!

Ha! Go ahead, the pay is lousy! And I hate reading the fine print! So, it begs the question then - who put that blade in there and why?

@IJASWORDS has this one for sale. Wartime polish, so tough to see hada, but you can make out a bit near the tip: