Takahashi

Hi there, I am 30 years old and just recently bought my first wakizashi. But I was interested in the Japanese culture since my teenage years. Especially the movies of Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, RAN and of course Seven Samurai to name only a few) left a great impression on me. It is actually quite surprising, that it took so many years till I got really interested in Nihonto. Now I am, and I already had several arguments about it. My wife just cannot understand why anybody would spend a lot of money on old extra large "kitchen knives" . Therefore the wak will probably be a single piece for some time Cheers,

Thanks for the advice. I will try to learn reading and writing Kanji. I already went to a Japanese institute in my area and they offer basic Japanese courses :D Cheers,

Hello everybody, I just found this section and wanted to introduce me properly. I am Robert from Germany. Since my youth I was always interested by the Japanese culture. Through a few Japanese friends at my university I was introduced to Japanese swords but had no time to focus on this as my exams were due. Therefore it took a long time till I decided to look into this topic seriously. I found this board very helpful for identifying the multitude of fake swords sold in the internet (thanks for the info). I am looking forward to discuss various topics in the future with you. Perhaps I will even find other board users from Germany with the same interest. Cheers, Robert

Thanks for the chart. I got the book "Samurai sword" by J. Yumoto and will try again to compare the kanjis in there with the kanjis found on the sword. I probably just need a lot more experience to see the resemblance. I will train on pictures of mei found on the internet.

Thanks for the fast response. I admit I never thought of those two kanjis. Shame on me I actually thought those Kanji were hard to read. Stephen did you already know the signature or did you look it up? And if you looked it up, where did you look it up? I am still searching for a good introduction into mei translation and perhaps you could give me an advice on that as well.

I recently bought a koto wakazashi (at least the seller described it as one). It is not in perfect shape but as I am quite new to collecting swords I started off with buying a sword for a reasonable price. If I stick to collecting/admiring Japanese swords I will probably buy a sword in a better shape. But for now I am stuck with translating the mei on this wak. This is tougher than I thought since the kanji are hardly readable. My guess is "fuyu" and "saku" but it could be that I am completly wrong as I cannot read Japanese at all. Therefore I had to compare the kanjis with those found on the Nihonto Kanji Pages and they did not match 100%. I hope someone of you may help me with the translation or at least give me a hint to translate them myself. Thanks!