TRANSLATION HELP PLEASE - A PRESENTATION GENDAITO

[Bazza]

TRANSLATION HELP PLEASE - A CHALLENGING GENDAITO PRESENTATION INSCRIPTION

 

Friends,

 

At least, challenging for me... and I certainly hope of interest to the Board members. I have run myself ragged back and forth through Nelson’s trying to find characters. Often it’s a challenge to find the right radical, never mind the kanji. Then one has to find what the inscription means. There is one character (the last in the presentation inscription on the omote) that is so elementally simple being composed of ICHI at the top with 6 strokes below it that I simply cannot find. I’m reminded that Nelson’s “lists about 5,000 carefully selected characters...” (from the flyleaf of my 2nd printing 1975 edition) so we may expect that not all characters may be found, particularly the more obscure, archaic or little used. So I’ve all but given up and turn to the expertise of the Board.

 

Presented in the images below is a gendaito with a tachi mei HIZEN KUNI JU YASUHIRO SAKU 肥前國住保廣作 (Hawley YAS 679). The sword is in an eclectic private collection and not presently for sale. A good friend has asked me for a translation, the smith being the easy part. He was permitted to take the images below and described the sword as

 

- standard wartime length of around 67cm but just slightly larger proportions giving a feeling of a better than usual, quality, very well proportioned blade.

- better quality Naval mounts – look to be special order/custom made.

- slightly extended boshi, maybe ¼” or a little less, longer than usual.

- gunome midare with ashi.

- can’t remember the hada well but I think it was ko-itame but almost muji.

 

The presentation inscription begins with a single character above the mekugiana - ZÔ (Nelson 4525, presentation, gift). Below the mekugiana is a single row of (I think) 7 characters. “I think” because the kanji press tightly one on another. The first character is our old familiar naga, or in this context I guess CHÔ - chief or headman.

 

Then follows two rows of characters side-by-side, possibly the names of people responsible for the presentation, ending in a single character below the double row - the elusive ‘elementally simple’ character mentioned above. The last character of the left-hand row is EN, IN, -in (Nelson 928), “member, number, the one in charge”. I’ve likewise identified other individual characters but have not the slightest idea what they mean in context.

 

The smith is well-known and a description of his personal history can be found here http://vbay.ru/iteminfo/100284837526290.htm. I saw one myself a few years ago in an auction that I might have bought were it not for a big chip. I felt it to be a better quality gendaito in a kaigunto koshirae, however there was no presentation inscription.

 

Best regards,

Barry Thomas

(aka BaZZa)

[mywei]

At a quick glance, not complete. Not sure of some Japanese translation - I'm sure more knowledgeable members will correct.

 

長崎_ 警察部 - Nagasaki _ Keisatsu bu - Nagasaki _ police dept

 

警務課員 - keimu kain - members of ?military police dept

 

練習所員 - Renshu shoin - members of ?practice dept

[Markus]

Matt is spot on. The only character missing after "Nagasaki" is "ken" (縣), "Prefecture",

incsribed in the old variant. The mei ends with "ichidô" (一同) which means "all concerned

(of the two above mentioned institutions)".

[george trotter]

This may be already understood Bazza, but the inscription seems to me to mean...Presented by all the members of the two police sections (to the newly departing Naval Officer)regards,

[Bazza]

My apologies for the delayed response - life intervened...

 

Thank you very much Matt and Markus for your quick reading of the presentation kanji. Having formally studied Japanese myself for a mere two years (and that a very long time ago) I appreciate how much effort goes into such mastery of the language. Incidentally Matt, I found that in rômaji the characters 練習 are rendered REN-SHÛ, not REN-SHU. Thank you too George for underscoring the meaning of ICHIDÔ.

 

I was surprised to find the name of the person to whom the sword was presented is not inscribed. I once had a photo album of a Japanese Navy visit to US shipyards in the 1920s and despite much descriptive text the name of the album owner was not written anywhere, but the ship’s name was SHIN-I. There was a photo of Japanese Navy personnel with Milton Sills, a famous Hollywood actor of the time, and one might think that the album owner would have been in that photo and noted, but not so.

 

As I had such difficulty researching the kanji I have been preparing some notes to summarise Matt and Markus’ contribution and I thought I would share them here for anyone’s interest. See below and my summary document attached.

 

The first task in finding a kanji is to identify the radical to locate it in a dictionary. I missed SAKI in Nagasaki completely because the kanji on the nakago is as pictured below.

 

 

It shows the GUCHI character under YAMA leading me to look for a kanji with a 6-stroke radical, whereas the correct radical was the 3-stroke YAMA, with the correct kanji for SAKI being Nelson 1426. The GUCHI character has been displaced to the left, thus leading inexperienced players astray...

 

崎

 

Other mistakes were made for similar reasons, the most simple being mistaking the two characters of ICHIDÔ as a single kanji. Grrrrrrrr...

 

I have learnt a lot from this exercise thanks to Matt and Markus. Thanks and salutations again.

 

Best regards,

Barry Thomas.

 

NMB discussion - kanji explanation sheet.doc