Help translating sosho katana mei

[Stu Payne]

Hi there, 

Could I please get some help translating the mei and date on my blade's tang.

I have owned this  blade for about 36 years. When I bought it for $40 at an antique market I was 14 and I was seriously into karate training and ninja movies of the time. The blade was extremely rusty, had no fittings and was inside a WW2 scabbard with no liner or fittings. I was going to clean it up fit a handle and have fun chopping down saplings, but when I started to clean it up I realized it had writing.

I have attempted to find out what it says numerous times but because of the cursive writing style, no luck. I'm married to a Japanese lady and she has no idea nor does her family, even the 90+year old uncle who owns several katana. 

If anyone could tell me something about the smith who made it that would be great too.

Thanks

Stu.

 

[Nobody]

慶應二年八月日 – Keio 2^nd year (1866), 8^th month

 

阿州住安喜▢▢源佐▢ - Ashu ju Aki, ▢▢ Minamoto Suke+something

(The letter in blue might be wrong.)

[Bugyotsuji]

阿州住安喜 虎源佐 重作?

In the Nihonto Meikan. 日本刀銘鑑

[ROKUJURO]

Stuart,

you should not have cleaned the NAKAGO! That is a heavy damage now and a considerable loss of value!

The blade is an interesting item from the last days of the SAMURAI era. An expert should have a close look at it. Perhaps you find an NMB member nearby? 

[Stu Payne]

Thanks for the help, I will upload a better picture of the last part of the mei. I am very new here and have no access to the recommended texts, I would  appreciate a translation in romanji or english. (Even my Japanese wife was unable to understand the kanji provided) Also any information available on the smith who made it. 

I know that I shouldn't have touched the nakago, but I was a young teenager living in a country town in Australia and had no idea. I originally thought it was just a mass produced WW2 blade. At least I didn't use any machines just fine wet and dry sandpaper and oil.

 

[Stu Payne]

[Bugyotsuji]

Don't get your hopes up too high, Stu. Although we may have found a record of your smith, it is likely that there is no other information known about him. By the same token it is unlikely to be a gimei (fake signature) as what would be the point of faking someone not really famous? 

 

There is an entry in the Nihonto Meikan as I mentioned above, which seems to fit well with how your smith signed, (except for the extra middle name ending in -tora/-ko 虎 which is not necessarily a problem. There is an entry in the Miyoshi records, a town in the north-east of the island of Shikoku, but they too couldn't read the problem Kanji.

 

So we can say he was a Shikoku smith from the middle of the Edo Period, who signed Minamoto (title) Sukeshige (name), living in Aki in the Province of Awa. The way he signed was a kind of fashionable artistic squiggle of the time. Perhaps he learned smithing from someone famous?

 

 

[SteveM]

錊之 ？

[Stu Payne]

Thank you so much everyone for the information, especially Piers.

This is about as much information as I would expect to get. I'm very pleased to find out when, where and who made this blade. As I said before I have owned this for 36years and all I knew was that the antiques dealer I bought it from had originally acquired it at an auction in a country town in Queensland,  Australia. I assumed that a returned serviceman had taken it back to the farm as a souvenir of war.

Thanks very much. 

Stu.