Another Tang For Translation. Thank You.

[mauser99]

This one Im sure wont be as difficult.   War time blade typical with painted kanji.  Not my photos another of the 4 Im being offered.

 

Thanks...

[Stephen]

Katsumasa,  paint are numbers

[mauser99]

Thank you.  Is this one dated on one side ?   I was going to add another photo but, I guess it isn't necessary.

 

Any, Info on this smith ?  Average wartime ?  That's my  thought.   

[Stephen]

Wayne ...if your in for the long haul with nihonto you really need to try the dates, not hard with some effort.

 

http://search.freefind.com/find.html?si=94437683&pid=r&n=0&_charset_=UTF-8&bcd=%C3%B7&query=katsumasa

[Stephen]

KATSUMASA (勝正), Shōwa (昭和, 1926-1989), Gifu – “Katsumasa” (勝正), real name Kojima Shichi´emon (小島七右衛門), born October 20th 1892, he studied under Kaneyoshi (兼吉), worked as a guntō smith and died September 22nd 1947

KATSUMASA (勝正), Shōwa (昭和, 1926-1989), Tottori – “Hōki Kanaya Katsumasa saku” (伯耆金谷勝正作), “Hōki-jū Kanaya Katsumasa kore o saku” (伯耆住金谷勝正作之), family name Kanaya (金谷), he also engraved a single coin crest onto his tangs, jōkō no retsu (Akihide), Second Seat at the 6th Shinsaku Nihontō Denrankai (新作日本刀 展覧会, 1941

 

 

only one in the book dont think this is your guy, check the oshigata data base and you see he signed different 

[mauser99]

Im sure.  What is the best book to buy on the subject ?     I want to get a little deeper into this.  The link is very confusing for the novice.

Showa dates Im sure are easy to figure out if you have the books info to do so.   Does that major sword site have all that ?

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the response that came in while I was typing mine.   That's another stumbling block is so many guys with the same name and trying to figure out who is who.  

 

As I said all four swords I could tell were war time blades.  Im not sure if any are of any real value above a standard type98 gunto.

[Shugyosha]

My literature on this era only runs to a couple of books. Slough has a Katsumasa working in Gifu and first name Kojima and the comment is "low to medium grade Showato". Probably the first one on Stephen's list.

 

I'm not 100% sure that this is your guy though as the other information says "nakarishimei" meaning that the signature was done by someone employed to cut the signature and not the smith himself, though the "masa" kanji is similar.

 

A reason why this one might not be run of the mill is that it is signed tachi mei and it looks like there is no stamp in the photos (though the top of the tang isn't on show). Also it is only nijimei whereas the example in Slough is eight characters plus a Seki stamp.

[Stephen]

spend a day day reading http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/nihonto.htm, all kind links to learn from, no more baby steps its time to toddle

[mauser99]

here is the blade .  Has a straight temper line.  Hope this helps.

 

according to the seller it has no other markings on the blade.

[SteveM]

http://www.jssus.org/nkp/index.html

 

This page (several pages) is good as well. Dates are expressed in a couple of ways, but usually Era name + Year + Month/Day. If you are looking exclusively at Showa blades, you only need to look for 昭和 (Shōwa) and then you can be pretty sure the following kanji are numbers that indicate the year.