Bruce Pennington

Wow, how strange. The "hisa" is missing from the mei! It fits the profile of a Takehisa blade. Thanks for posting it.

Thanks Mark, nice gunto!

Mike, The wooden saya would have originally been covered in leather. The torn leather seppa would have had a tab with a snap. Swords in the "combat saya" or "informal saya", as Ohmura called them, usually come with a tsuba that has a larger side hole for the leather tab. Your tsuba looks like it was originally made for a metal chuso latch, then widened for the leather tab. The lower positioning of where the tab was on your seppa lines up with the widened hole.

Thanks Brandon! You have the larger SEKI stamp to the right of the hole (ana) in that first photo. The rest are just metal flaws/pits. Seeing that, I would say your blade is nicely made showato, not traditional. I appreciate the update.

O.M.G. I guess Samurai were stamping serial numbers on their habaki, even back then!!! I can't believe the seller even bragged it was Damascus.

Update on that The blade has 2 ana, but mounted in Type 94/98 fittings. I've looked at a few RS blades to compare, and I'm not sure the spacing of the ana on this one are what we normally see. The blade is also fullered, not a normal feature on RS blades. So, unless someone has other thoughts on it, I'm not so sure we've found and earlier RS than Dec '41.

Wow, what an unusual, and appealing sword you have there, David! It's hard to say, now, if this was made originally for RS fittings or not. The 2 ana is what made me think it, but after comparing to some other blades made for RS, I'm not sure. The spacing of the ana isn't quite the same as the others. Yet, why would it have been made with 2 ana otherwise? Very interesting piece.

Thanks Mark! NA 106 is in the last series of 1941, so sort of gives an idea as to when it was made. Can we get an over-all shot of the whole rig for the files? Tsuba style, etc.

An update: David, @Akitombo, has this October 1940 Amahide in RS fittings:

I think I found it - Timeline of the Type 3 Gunto, and it looks like Dec 1941 was the earliest known on that thread. Brian, what do you think of moving this to the military forum?

David, Can we get a photo of the fittings? I cannot remember where we talked of the earliest RS gunto (Type 100, Type 3, etc), but this seems pretty darn early. The press release for the style came out in August 1940, so this one is just 2 months after. @Kiipu - do you have the earliest RS/T100 on record? Do you recall where we discussed this?

Thanks Brandon! I see it now - 祐弘. Well, my track record of being wrong half the time is holding strong!

The two holes meant that it was probably mounted in RS fittings. Do you own the fittings?

That's a relly nice gunto, Gareth! The smith is 祐光 (Sukimitsu). Can't make out the full date, as I don't have grass script down very well. It's one of those "Year 2600 + 'number'" dates. Someone like @SteveM can help with that. Actually, Sesko has it as "Sukemitsu" not Sukimitsu, and has 2 smiths listed during the war: "SUKEMITSU (祐光), Shōwa (昭和, 1926-1989), Shiga – “Bitchū no Kuni-jū Takeshita Sukemitsu” (備中国住 竹下祐光), “Gōshū Suzuka-sanroku-jū Takeshita Sukemitsu kore o saku” (江州鈴鹿山麓竹下祐光作之), real name Takeshita Zenji (竹下善自), born May 20th 1915, his father was a certain Eitarō Sukemitsu (栄太郎祐光), he studied under Okishiba Masatsugu (沖芝正次) and worked as rikgun-jumei-tōshō (see picture right) SUKEMITSU (祐光), Shōwa (昭和, 1926-1989), Gifu – “Sukemitsu” (祐光), real name Fukuda Yoshiji (福田吉二), born October 10th 1909, he worked as guntō smith" The inked writing on the end of the tsuka is just a matching number "0417"

Yes, that is why I mentioned Wakasei. That shop made these, and I was wondering if all their kiagunto included the chuso. I'll check other threads to see if I can find more.

Can you tell if the blade was traditionally made? Ohmura states that they were not inspected/stamped by the Association.

No. Just however many it takes to snug up the fit.

David, No showa stamp or other marks?

The Dealer Showcase has trusted sellers, also, though there are certainly more out there in the marketplace https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/88-dealer-showcase/ Though, by "good deal", if you mean "great sword at cheap price" you won't really find that with dealers. Their prices are usually at the top of the market range. The "good deal" they offer is that you can rest assured they are not selling you a Chinese fake. I've bought a couple swords from dealers, at much higher prices than found on ebay, but they had something that I REALLY wanted, so it was worth the price. You can also find good swords from members sales here: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/130-swords-and-edged-weapons/ These are often in the middle of the market price range

I did address the dots in my first post. No one knows why the dots were used. They are not like the assembly, painted, numbers as they never matched numbers anywhere else on the fittings. They are mostly seen on WWII blades, however, I have seen a rare few older blades with dots, so it's not just a WWII thing.

My youngest brother was a Brian.

Another like Alexi posted. Found on this Estate Auction. Has a large seki stamped Kanemune blade, no date. Lots of seppa. I wonder if Wakasei made all their kai fittings with chuso?

Posting photos for when the link goes dead

This is what Sesko has on him: "MASATSUNE (正恒), Shōwa (昭和, 1926-1989), Gifu – “Masatsune” (正恒), real name Amachi Reiichirō (天地鈴市郎, first name also reads Suzuichirō), born. September 23rd 1894, he worked as guntō smith and died May 12th 1949, Fourth Seat at the 6th Shinsaku Nihontō Denrankai (新作日本刀展覧会, 1941)"