Help With Kanji On Blade Please

[Mark]

i have a tanto, signed BuShu Ju Minamoto Masatsugu. No date but I am thinking ShinShinto. There are kanji on the blade. Can't make much from it, can anyone help?

 

Thanks

[Mark]

any ideas? 

[Shugyosha]

Not really, which is why I hadn't replied sooner. 

 

The kanji in the second photo are (I think): 運者右天 (un sha u ten) but they don't make any sense to me in this combination. 

 

As regards the other side, I'm struggling to make out the kanji at all apart from the third one 者 (person) which also appears in the other inscription.

 

Hopefully you'll get some better help shortly.

 

Best,

John

[SteveM]

Hello

I think the first one, though confusingly etched, is 運者在天 (Unsha zaiten), which leads me to believe the other side should be 勝者在人. Together, these form a saying that is linked with Miyamoto Musashi, "Luck belongs to heaven, Victory belongs to man". 

 

However, the second side doesn't say what I would expect it to say. It looks instead like 囗戦者不実 which is kind of a random selection of characters, but the inclusion of 者 on both sides indicates that it is a couplet, with the same sort of juxtaposition of luck and skill. 

 

It looks somewhat amateurish, with the same choppy strokes one sees in the mei of WW2 blades - so to me it has the look of an inscription someone might have done before going off to war, or maybe during?