Help me finish this Mei

[lancashireparade]

I have been trying to learn how to read Mei, and this sword I believe is from the 16th or 17th century. As I read the characters, I think I have narrowed it to the following:

羊找肋

These characters together don't show up in the Nihonto Club sword database, so I am running out of ideas as to where to find this smith.

 

Running this through Google Translate gets me "Lamb Ribs" which is either unfortunate or misleading. Is anyone able to help me push this across the finish line?

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

[Nobody]

義助 - Gisuke/Yoshisuke

[cju777]

Hey Neil,

 

I think you might have transliterated it wrong. To my eye the first character you have is actually the top radical part of the first character not a seperate, so a two character mei “ni-ji mei”. So more like 義肋

My background is in Chinese though, so take it for what it’s worth. 

 

 

 

 

 

[cju777]

Ahh too slow- Nobody beat me to it, at least I feel better with what I was thinking. 

[John C]

1 hour ago, lancashireparade said:

Google Translate gets me "Lamb Ribs"

Neil:

I have found you need to do a double translation with Google translate; first the google literal translation then the Japanese equivalent. There was a tanto posted here recently with writing on the handle that google translate showed as "pine island." One of our amazing translators translated it as Matsushima, which does indeed mean pine tree island.

John C.

[reinhard]

Listen to Moriyama-San's kind assistance here and forget your silly translation apps!

Mei on swords are about artist's chosen names.
This is far beyond Google's translation-abilities.
They won't get you anywhere when it comes to mei on NihonTo.

The mei is GISUKE, which can be read YOSHISUKE as well.
Suruga Shimada ToKo signed like this during Muromachi-period.
Verification of the signature is still pending though.

reinhard

[PNSSHOGUN]

The only valuable use for google translate in these scenarios is to get the Kanji characters for easier searches.

[ROKUJURO]

Neil,

it may already help you to put the picture tip-upwards to facilitate reading.

[lancashireparade]

Thank you all! I kind of figured Google translate wasn't going to win me the day, but I was really trying to find how to pronounce what I had found. I wondered at first if the first two characters were combined, but I was having trouble finding anything that looked like the two of them together. Then I stumbled on this site that helped me figure out the radicals a bit better, (Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary)But clearly my inexperience won out.

 

Much appreciated, and much learned! My apologies about the picture. I had rotated it for myself, but when I uploaded it reverted to its original position.

 

Thanks,

Neil