Bugyotsuji

日本の古銃 Since there is no English version, take your pick! (Koju sounds a little stiff and formal and hard to understand when spoken, but Furuju gives a better impression of the meaning to a first time Japanese listener.) Most Japanese I have met seem reluctant to pronounce it out loud.

Jan, that has to be a distinct possibility.

Peter, I agree. Not perfect, not easy to find and not cheap, but probably the best out there.

With Ian on my side I ride happily into battle.

Incidentally it was the second of the three quoted smiths who included the forging comment on one of his barrels. Does this suggest that they were still experimenting with the right hardness of steel for a barrel, or is it a mark of satisfaction I wonder?

Nothing more on all three facets then? OK, forgive me! Now with those fine new shots for which thanks, I think we can just about confirm the 'long shot' above. Agegitae, Jotan, meaning what? In swords basic process (下鍛 = Shitagitae) completed, plus further process (上鍛). Or does it mean superior workmanship or superior forging? See No.3 on this page for the expression Agegitae, where it means continuing to hammer and fold steel to produce skin steel or harder, less malleable outer layer of a Nihonto blade. http://www.touken.or.jp/seisaku/koutei.html

If .75 bore is 19.05 mm, then this gun is a 10 Monme (11 to be exact but people tended to round them off), a Shizutsu 士筒 or samurai zutsu, much larger and heavier than a typical ashigaru battlefield weapon. A serious piece, designed to impress. It looks good!

国友津右衛門安行作 Kunitomo Tsu-uemon Yasuyuki Saku must be the reading, although for some reason I can find no other record of this smith. The closest I can get is Group 3 at Kunitomo where there were a Kunitomo Tsudayu 津太夫 and 津太夫能当, both using this unusual (within Kunitomo) Tsu kanji. Do you have any more pics of gun or inscriptions?

Small oops moment. Slip of the pen(?) When I originally wrote the smith's Romanized name of 芳賀 as Hōga, it should have been Haga, an alternative, but in this smith's case, probably more correct reading. Difficult for most Japanese to know how to read it, it seems. These two Kanji you have found are pretty well unreadable for me. I suspect there may be more kanji on the facet to the 'right' of the Mei as you hold the muzzle upwards. The only long shot is another gun from this gunsmith which bears the inscription 鉱鉄上々鍛. Could what you have uncovered be 上鍛, I wonder, i.e. Superior forging?

Opened with no trouble on my iPhone. Clear and informative piece. Thanks for posting!

When I get back to Japan I will check the passage again and translate it, but from memory my impression is that notes and references are not Sawada Taira's strong suit. He has taken much material from older books and rehashed it, adding illustrations, but he has also undertaken much of his own research. Talking with people I did get the feeling that certain merchants could be permitted wakizashi and up to 3.5 Monme guns, similarly. I will keep my eyes and ears open for possible sources to back that up.

Well, yes, that happened in the west, Denis, but I have yet to see a clear deliberate example in Japan. It is possible that you are right and that I have simply been overlooking them though. (Muzzles could become worn through constant use of ramrods, especially after they became iron.) In my list of gunsmiths there are two guns listed for Shibatsuji Chozaemon, one of 3.5 Monme, and a bigger one of 12 Monme.

Yes, one of the main Date Kamon featured three upright Hikiryo. https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=伊達家紋&client=safari&hl=en-jp&prmd=isnv&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&fir=dG104ZQuTIbZJM%253A%252CgZ5DIbm8sVPLUM%252C_%253B4cmC-90wi7Q0tM%253A%252C8Hpaeo5HgE6lCM%252C_%253BOcQ9EVPy246NqM%253A%252CsfxIhjpR5S8nBM%252C_%253Bf5K_VACdHkffHM%253A%252CFFkTxvN-s3pGmM%252C_%253BhH_T7ObgZ8PXsM%253A%252C2zflUCHIbcZzaM%252C_%253BIrL-JpUHICFosM%253A%252CTctU7eDxjo52WM%252C_%253B-wRlZ8GMULQOWM%253A%252CCLw8HsweNDPNjM%252C_%253BFMa0W93nUFIsKM%253A%252CSKvRE-WVKjRXGM%252C_%253BC1wM2jdBb4xeSM%253A%252CEAmUUD8tDUi3PM%252C_%253BJ5-mAFfJ64U80M%253A%252CSKvRE-WVKjRXGM%252C_&usg=__W4HHjEixMypdEsmlXhXWOgA7YHs%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYl-_1kMDSAhWpI8AKHeKfAnwQ7AkIGg&biw=414&bih=628

Shibatsuji in their description was a famous gunsmith's in Osaka. The very worn muzzle diameter is probably close to 1.5 cm as stated, Eric, but I suspect that the actual bore is quite a bit less. Always prepared to be wrong however! If you have Sawada Taira's book I can translate what he said, and his 3.5 Monme borderline, but I do not have a copy here in Europe. He still lives in Osaka and is most proud of Settsu/Sesshu guns. He considers himself to be the foremost expert on Japanese guns today.

The second one is an Osaka merchant's gun of 3.5 Monme or under, typically decorated, and not military, according to Sawada Taira in Nihon no Furuju.

A propos of nothing really, but a Japanese collector of armour related materials travels the country following rumours of this and that. In a majority of cases the objects offered to him bear Mon/Kamon that were added as the feudal system broke up, he was telling me. (He is on the board of the J armour society.) There was a free-for-all period where every little family started to display Mon, to lift themselves from obscurity, based upon relatively nothing, apparently.

Great information above! My sword teacher laughed when I was trying to pin down a Mon on a very nice wakizashi. There's just no way to be sure, he said, especially when the same Mon was even legitimately shared by several families. With one Tanto though I am sure about the provenance. Such cases are rare, so do not get your hopes up, I felt Brian was trying to say above. Our teppotai leader, an armour researcher and antiques expert, warned me about Mon on teppo. If they are small, three-dimensional, not shiny, and unobtrusive, well maybe a case can be made, he says. A serious military gun should not be brightly reflective on top of the barrel, he said. Recently I observed some wonderful silver inlay on a teppo in the west, but part of the inlay was overlaid on top of and to obscure the 1873 registration stamp on the barrel. Some bling decoration was for merchants or Daimyo. Having said all this, I agree a case can be made for a Date connection with the gun in question above, as Ian B and Jan say.

Well then, 4.5 Monme as near as dammit. Thanks again for the useful charts.

1.46 cm is 5 Monme, so 4 Monme something(?), according to this site: http://paomaru.dousetsu.com/file/09_hinawa_001.html

Very difficult to narrow down the date, but somewhere between 1630 and 1860...would be a starting guess. It could be older with later repairs. That pan looks seriously well used; it could be a second or third replacement? On the side of the pan is a character which may be Zen 全, meaning complete or satisfactorily made, put there by the smith, but again this is a guess as to the habits of this Sendai gunsmith house. (Are there no more characters on the facet to the right of the main signature?)

PS There is an example of a signed second generation Toyonari gun in the Yushukan Museum in Yasukuni Jinja in Tokyo. PPS None of the recorded guns are dated, sadly. Yours might have more info under the rust somewhere...

In the meantime after judicious application of Occam's razor, I have some partially good news. Your smith was first, second or third generation of a known Sendai gunsmith workshop. The thickness of the pan waist suggests a later one of these, but you have not yet uncovered enough characters to reveal his 'first' name. Here's hoping! In the meantime take your pick. Gen 1 芳賀十太夫豊平 (The use of Ju in his name suggests, to me, a Christian connection.) Hoga Judayu Toyohira Gen 2 芳賀十太夫豊成 (Toyonari) Gen 3 芳賀十太夫豊也 (Toyoya, Toyonari, Hiroya?)

Abraham Lincoln was generally speaking a good president.

Paul, thank you. Which photo contains the characters? We are expecting them to be underneath. In order to expose the characters and make them legible, you will need to remove the red rust without exposing bare metal. If you do expose bare steel, then you will have to re-patinate with something like gun blue, to protect the metal and for aesthetic reasons. This is a slightly more acceptable process than with Nihonto Nakago tangs.

The posters above have wrapped that up pretty comprehensively. I agree on the Sendai attribution, and the difficulty pinning down a Mei definitively to a single clan. (Same goes for sword koshirae.) Would it be possible to show the barrel and any interesting detail? Is it unsigned?