Bruce Pennington

I was thinking the same thing when I read Stegel's all-encompassing post. StuW has a very informative history/introduction to the Type 95 - http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/Japanese-militaria/ija-type-95-nco-sword-info-228172/- but Shamsy's and Stegel's contributions go considerably beyond that thread. I would love to have it pinned for easy access.

Part of my problem with this discussion is my poor understanding of terminology. I probably misuse the term "hamon", because I'm refering to the white, visible line along the cutting edge, sometimes straight (suguha?), sometimes patterned/wavy (various names of patterns). I've recently learned, from a discussion of the intricate details involved in the the polishing process, that the whiteness is caused 2 ways, one called artificial and the other more natural. So, what I'm taking a long time to say (Remember L.O.T.R: "Anything worth saying, is worth taking a long time to say") is I can see the visible evidence of tempering on my 95s. I assumed that this comes out white if polished, like the example Chris provided.

Neil, Here's mine. A little worse for wear than yours. I haven't studied these, and am only famiiar, in passing so to speak, but I feel like I read that the chroming was an "early" experiment attempting to protect from rust? But dropped fairly quickly, reasons not explained. I'll try to find the reference to that, unless someone else can come up with it. But I put the issue to you - do you have a sense of dating on these? Were they early (late '30s) or were they being produced throughout the war?

Always good to "see" you Ernie! They say you can skip that Man-O-pause by removing a couple of particular organs!

I think so too, Thomas. It's like they hit the end of the Iroha list in '44 before they were done with production. And perhaps they already had the "い" slated for the first '45 run, so they started over with イ, but knowing that they couldn't start over with katakana, decided to bracket it, signifying an "oops" moment. Just wild speculation, I know, but that's what I do really well, Ha!

I'm still on the fence on the issue. One of the challenges to this idea is that some of the numbers that SHOULD be in sequence have early numbers that are Koa, then mid numbers are Nan, then late numbers are Koa again. Example: Spring '43 FU 48 Koa FU 106 non-Koa Nan FU 624 non-Koa Nan FU 757 non-Koa (no stamp) FU 758 non-Koa Nan (wavy hamon) FU 795 Koa FU 960 Koa The only way I can logically see this happening is if SMR Dalian made blades, with numbers, but unpolished. Then someone randomly grabs an armfully of blades from a pile and puts them in a box to go to Nan-man Arsenal for polishing and mei inscriptions. #48, 795, and 960 didn't get grabbed and are polished and "mei-ed" at SMR, while the others are polished and "mei-ed" and Nan-man. Because of the diary entries in the book found by K. Morita, we know for a fact that Nan-man was at least polishing Mantetsu blades. If they were making them there as well, I don't see an obvious explaination for the mixed serial numbers.

Bruce, You guys are both way above my pay-grade on the late-war 95, so I'll leave that to you 2. But would like to caution against getting the feathers riled too easily. There's not a guy (or gal) on this forum that is intentionally rude. You'll find folks that are blunt. There are some that come to a debate pre-loaded to skepticism (I have a tendency to be naively positive at times!). But no one that is intentionally disrespctful. Communication via text is fraught with pitfalls because it lacks body language and vocal inflection. An example from personal experience - We were debating a tough one and a guy told me, paraphrasing, "You don't have any expertise in this, why are you even here?" When I mentioned the rude sound of his comment, he copied a link to an older conversation where I had said the exact thing to him! He was quoting my own rudeness!!! Ha! Hate it when that happens! One of the joys of this hobby, and these forums, it the detective work. In the process, we toss ideas and theories around, hopefully eventually coming across some real evidence to pin something down. In the meantime, having a good debate on the pros & cons is just part of the deal. If you plan to be around for any length of time, and I hope you do, assume the best, ignore the rest, and "party on, dude!"

For the life of me, I don’t see any numbers in the other side.

Wasn't me, Chris. As to papering, I don't remember the thread where it was shown that Japan is allowing war swords to be registered if they were either owned since the war, or were owned by family members who fought in the war. I think they've gotten pretty loose about it. I was in an antique shop recently, looking at an old gunto, pretty bad condition, and the shop owner said that if I wanted to buy it he'd get it registered and ship it to me. Agree the nakago is really unusual, by you know how it is with gunto - make a rule and you'll always find the exception! A 5-digit serial number isn't what I'd call "high". They were making 20-30,000 of these per year!

That is outside my normal scope of study. DaveR would be a good one to ask.

Alex, Haven't EVER seen anything like that! But since we're in the guessing mode - looks to me like there were numbers on the right side that have been "x"ed out with the same kind of X seen at the top of the numbers on the left. I've seen numbers filed off of saya drags by factory repair teams, then a new number re-struck. Maybe this is what we're seeing, but I can't see why fittings would be re-numbered. But then, as I wrote that, I realized the piece may have come from an original gunto that was damaged, and as they were being re-fitted onto a new blade, the fitters wanted to number it accordingly to the new pieces during assembly. Just an idea.

Taylor, Dawson says your emblem is for Lt and Superintendant swords, and the backstrap shows it is for a Lt. You can see where the original nakago was before it was cut down for the police handle, so I agree the blade is a fighting blade, not for show. Interesting piece!

Kenny, Great sword, but I like your wife better!!! I can trade you a nice copper-handled Type 95 for her! Ha! Yours is a Type 97 Navy Officer gunto. Definitely has some personality to it. You can read about them here: http://ohmura-study.net/945.html Click on the links at the bottom for more pictures.

David, I more think that kanji is a "4". For some reason, the 4 kanji gets some pretty sloppy versions done.

I haven't been collecting koshirae stamps on a large scale. I have a small section in the Stamps Doc about them. I just thought you had started a thread on it, but couldn't find it. Here's the one I came across

Sorry Thomas, I have not been keeping pictures of the koshirae of the vast majority of the blades I've recorded. And don't have any pics of '42s with W stamp.

Oh ok.

I’d forgotten that conversation. It confirms Ohmura’s reason for stating that the Showa stamp had been assigned to the Seki Guild. I’ll have to add that to the Stamps Showa discussion.

JP, The email for the site is: imperial_military-swords@s8.dion.ne.jp I tried writing to them when I was compiling the Stamps Doc, but got no reply. Nick Komiya thought they would only reply if you wrote to them in Japanese. Someone composed my email in Japanese and I sent that out, but still no reply.

I tried to bid, but it says I'm blocked because they're not sure they can ship to me. ???

Neil! Is it possible to get a photo of the '37 in Slough? I don't have ANY '37s,

Don't stop!!! I would love to have it in PDF form for my files!

'38 is the earliest blade I've seen. Ohmura says they started planning the blades in 1937, so it's possible there were some produced that year. He also states that the Koa Isshin came out in July '39, but I've got a Winter '38 Koa on record.

While we're on smiths - I have a Winter '42 blade with a mei that says "Takanobu quenched this." The NMB discussion says he was Suzuki Takanobu, a Mantetsu manager in '38. Have no idea if he was an actual smith. If anyone is able to dig up more on him, I'd appreciate it.

Nick Komiya didn't like my use of just "Rinji" for short of Rinji Seishiki. I've forgotten his actual words, but he said it's like saying "Junk" when using the Rinji without the Seishiki! Ha! I just hate taking the time to type both words. I'm considering calling it the "RS" model; but then no one would know what I'm talking about.