Translation And Quality Help

[chrisfe]

i recently purchased this katana from the descendant of a WWII vet the story is that his unit raided a sword armory and this one was hanging in the only office. i assume that it belonged to the officer in charge of the armory but their are a few things i need help with. one is a stamp on the blade that i dont recognize but assume means it is a machine made blade, i also havnt had any luck translating the tang. the second is the tassel it is a brown tassel but has a yellow loop on the end and is the first i have seen like this.

p.s. if any one knows anything about a green/brown rank tassel that would also be appreciated i havnt been able to find anything about a green brown combo but know that blue brown is company grade

[Stephen]

Kanesada...dont type well on phone....sorry i cant help more.

[Bruce Pennington]

the year is "Showa 17 year" so 1942. The stamp appears to be a Seki stamp, but I've never seen one on the blade before.

[Bruce Pennington]

Here is a link where Ohmura shows a brown/green tassle and says that it is simply faded:http://ohmura-study.net/754.html. I'm looking for a reference about the all red(brown) tassle in your pic. I have a memory of reading somewhere that late-war army tassles went to all brown, but the shade was different than the all brown navy tassle. I'll post if I can find it.

[Stephen]

showa ju ku 1944

[chrisfe]

Thanks for the help and I believe your right about the faded tassel definitely explains why I couldn't find any others like it or any information on it

[Shamsy]

It looks like a Muckden stamp, except the circle is too small? These are referenced in F&G and I remember reading that they stamped on the blade above habaki (cannot remember where).

[chrisfe]

I believe your right I found a similar stamp on a bayonet once I had the name mukden to look for Thank you that's one mystery solved