Cloth Tag Translation

[DTM72]

I got to talking with a Constable (Retired Police Officer performing security) that was working at the local gun & knife show. He has a katana that came with a cloth surrender tag. Looking at the pictures he showed me, it appears to be an early shinto katana with a 2 hole suriage nakago with the original hole being 2.5 cm above the end of the nakago...was definitely a much longer sword.

He would like to attempt to find the family of the person who surrendered the sword, and return to them, as a good will gesture. I agreed to help him, if possible. I made him aware that some families are very thankful and other families may reject the offer. He is prepared to accept the families wishes, if they can be found.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Dan

[SteveM]

Hello Dan, 

These tags usually have the name and the address of the person who owned the sword. In this particular case, the characters are faint and I can't quite pick them out. The characters on the right might be 杉本了 (a name: SUGIMOTO Ryo). 

 

On the left is probably the address. The only character I can pick out is 野 (means "field" in Japanese, and is one of the most common characters used in addresses) . After that is a katakana character "き", which, by itself, means nothing, but maybe its also part of an address. As I said in my other post, I can't really give you any meaningful input.