Help With Translation

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Hello, I recently acquired a sword and I am having difficulty with the Mei. I received this in on  trade and will be keeping it just wanting to know any details.

 

Thanks

Bruce

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

My difficulty is where one character ends and the next one begins. I have been trying to read through a lot of sites and find it hard when the characters (to me) are all together.

[Geraint]

Hi Bruce.

 

Really can't make too much of this for you but here are a few ideas.  First two = Mikawa, the one by the mekugi ana eludes me then I think Nyudo.  I can't find a reference that makes sense of this but Hawley does have SAD 843 Kuhara Sadayoshi where Kuhara would replace nyudo.

 

There are also a couple of Daido smiths, Mikawa no kami nyudo Nobunao saku and Mikawa no kami Daimichi Nobunao.

 

These suggestions are probably more trouble than help but maybe someone else can nail it for you.

 

All the best.

[Ron STL]

It would help if the nakago was shown vertical (reading top to bottom) so the kanji are right side up. Common problem with newer guys asking questions. We can of course fix this ourselves but...takes more time to do so. Just a suggestion.

Ron STL

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Thank you very  much for your time helping me translate this sword. I really do appreciate you helping me with this . I did an attempt at it and got char 1 and 2 = SanShu or Mikawa, Char 3 = Ju   4th = ? 5th maybe nao or nobu  and can't make out the last 2.  did you could 7 characters?

 

Thanks again for your time

 

Bruce

[SteveM]

三河 (Mikawa) and 入道 (Nyūdō) are correct, as Geraint said. 

 

Other than that I would take a flying guess at the kanji after 入道 being 宜 (Yoshi or Nobu are two possible readings for this kanji). 

Nyūdō means lay priest and is sometimes seen on sword signatures. The kanji after that would usually be the smith's name - which typically takes the form of a two-kanji name. So I would expect (for example) 宜宗, or Yoshimune. However in this case I can't make out the one after 宜.

 

Everything above and beyond that is a mystery. With all these readable bits, it should be easy to identify the smith. Alas...as Geraint says, nothing in the databases are helping identify this mei. 

There are various possibilities. I could be wrong in the reading of some of these kanji. Or, it could be a smith so obscure he never made it into the references. Or, it could be a fake signature trying to look like something authentic.

[Geraint]

Bruce, 

 

There is one more thing you might try, dust the nakago with talcum and wipe off.  Sometimes the talcum trapped in the mei makes it more legible.  Chalk dust might also help but that's getting harder to find now.  The otehr approach is to d a very careful drawing of what you can see, sometimes that clarifies things a bit.

 

Have fun!

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

• Thank you gentlemen for the help again its a lot of fun finding the name and then I'll give it a try at trying to find the smith and date the sword.  Great idea trying the powder, I'll try that next and post more pictures.

Bruce

[uwe]

Dare a guess.....

"Sanami Nyudō Nobuie" ?!

[SteveM]

BINGO!!! You got it!

 

三阿彌入道宣屋

San'ami Nyūdō Nobuie

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Here a hand written version of what I see. The powder didn't really help but I did get some better pics. More pics to follow.

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

char 6

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

char 7

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Char 4 -5

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Wow, I would of never got that in a thousand years, thanks guys. Question so all 7 characters equals - Sanami (which is the school) and Nyudo Nobuie (Smiths name) or does Mikawa also go with it?

 

三阿         彌入       道        宣屋

Mikawa  Nyudo  Sanami  Nobuie

 

 

Or am I missing something.

Bruce

[SteveM]

No, Mikawa doesn't go with it. Its just that Mikawa (三河) looks very much like San'a in San'ami (三阿). This threw me off, and I mistakenly read it as Mikawa, so I was coming up empty handed when I tried to search for a smith in Mikawa who used the words Nyūdō or Nobu in the name. In other words, my misreading sent me on a wild goose chase, which often happens.

 

In addition to 河 looking so similar to 阿, part of my confidence in thinking this was Mikawa (and totally discounting the possibility of it being anything else) was that Mikawa is a well-known location name in Japan and it would be very natural to see it in a mei like this. The word "San'ami" (三阿彌), on the other hand, was something out of the blue for me. Apparently it is a word that originally referred to a particular school of art. I don't know of its connection to the sword world. Actually, I had never heard of it until today.

 

三阿彌　San'ami

入道  Nyūdō

宣屋 Nobuie (may also be read as Nobuya)

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Again gentlemen, thank you for your help in the translation, I would not of got anywhere without your help and time spent.   Now, I'm off to try to find the smith and what dates (Time period) he work in. Any ideas on where to start for me? I've been looking in the Nihinto club under smiths and found a listing for Nobuie source Hawley Reference page NOB647 but not sure if he's the one.  Any other resources to look at?

[Stephen]

NOBUIE (宣屋), Kanbun (寛文, 1661-1673), Mino – “Nōshū Seki-jū San´ami Nyūdō Nobuie” (濃州関住三阿弥 入道宣屋), he also worked in Shinano province and his name is quoted in some sources with the reading Nobuya

[whiteowl022 - Bruce]

Stephen,

      Thank you sir for the additional information.

 

Bruce