Hello, this is my first post. I have recently found a very old tsuba (older than me anyway haha). I only know it's a tsuba, I can't date it or even gaurantee if it's real it not. http://imgur.com/a/WJi7PDI It is iron, 41 grams and approximately 60mm high by 45mm across. The hole in the middle is 16mm high by 10mm across. The words 武运长久 are present on the tsuba. People have suggested it's for a toy or display piece, a fake, even a tsuba for a naginata. Most traditional tsuba were made of softer metals, such as shakudo and shibuichi which were given to me as examples. Modern WW2 Gunto tsuba were mass produced brass. The words used are a simplified version of 武運長久. What research I've conducted suggest that this is a Japanese military good luck charm. The words traditionally are meant to wish luck to a warrior or used to pray to a guardian god to fight well and defeat strong enemies. If you Google the phrase you'll get loads of examples written on katanas and written on WW2 Japanese flags which units have signed before battle. My issues are that some of the words are simplified characters, so I don't know if it's genuinely Japanese and also I can't date this item. My belief in it being a token is because of the rectangular gap. It's very similar to the Akita Tsubasen sword hilt money from Edo Japan. But the language throws me, Japan didn't really use simplified characters until 1950 and then only a few hundred characters. China has used simplified since the Qin dynasty from before to 200BCE, but then this is a mix of Japanese and Chinese characters. I'm really stumped and would appreciate any input or educated guesses you might come up with. Thank you!
