Bruce Pennington Posted October 15, 2018 Report Posted October 15, 2018 Help! This is the serial number on the nakago mune of a Mantetsu blade. The first kanji SHOULD be a katakana, but I don't see this one on my chart at all? Any ideas? Thanks! Quote
george trotter Posted October 15, 2018 Report Posted October 15, 2018 Hi Bruce, katakana for "to". Regards. 2 Quote
Peter Bleed Posted October 15, 2018 Report Posted October 15, 2018 This is a HIRAGANA not a katakana "TO" . Notice that the last cipher is a ZERO. Nice mixing of writing systems. Peter 2 Quote
DRDave Posted October 15, 2018 Report Posted October 15, 2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_(kana) Quote
Bruce Pennington Posted October 15, 2018 Author Report Posted October 15, 2018 This is a HIRAGANA not a katakana "TO" . Notice that the last cipher is a ZERO. Nice mixing of writing systems. Peter Please forgive my ignorance, but is hiragana equivalent to our script writing where katakana is like our print? Quote
Peter Bleed Posted October 15, 2018 Report Posted October 15, 2018 Bruce, Hiragana is the writing style used for "Japanese." You can write anything you need to is Hiragana. Katakana is the style used for foreign sounds/words. These are all purely Japanese sounds as well, but the fact that something is rendered in katakana may suggest that pronunciation may be a bit "foreign". We all know that katakana was used for the large series of Arisaka rifles so mebbe they would also be used on Mantetsu blades, but I bet they weren't. I am not sure how many Mantetsu blades were produced, but I can't believe that the numbers involved were at all like the volume managed by the rifle arsenals. Can you show us a Mantetsu blade with another kana? In any case, do we know what kinds of units were marked by the kana? They could be series definitors - like A1, A2, A3 etc. OR they could be abbreviations. This sword could be the 450th one made at the Toriyama shop (I'm making that up), or something like that. In any case, I think we can easily overthink these sorts of things. How's the sword? Peter Quote
Bruce Pennington Posted October 16, 2018 Author Report Posted October 16, 2018 Peter, It may be surprising, but the massive majority of the Mantetsu blades are marked using katakana. Only a few have, what I'm learning, is hiragana. I even have record of 3 very early Mantetsu with English alph-numeric numbering. I'm posting some examples, along with my dad's Koa isshin with some before and after pics. Quote
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