Kamakura Type 97 Kai Gunto

[Michaelr]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to share a recent purchase. I believe it is a Type 97 Kai Gunto, with a large anchor stamp without the circle which I believe is for the Kamakura arsenal. It also looks like it is dated December 1942. Please feel free to comment and I hope you enjoy.  MikeR

[Michaelr]

A couple more pictures

[Bruce Pennington]

Yes Michael, Type 97 kaigunto, and a quite gorgeous one at that.  Quite unusual to have an Army company grade tassel.  The wear & tear on it seems to match the wear on the kaigunto, but there's no way to know if it's original or added later.

 

The anchor is the Navy inspector for the Tenshozan forge that made blades for the Toyokawa Naval Arsenal.  The mei says "Tenshozan Tanrenjo Saku" or Tenshozan Forging Workshop made.  The were in Kamakura, as I understand it.

 

Intriguing use of the modified Roman numerals on the nakago jiri.  If you hadn't posted photos of the seppa, I would never have guessed the number they had tried to depict.  "\" was "5", so "\\" could be "10" or "55", but the "=" or "2" after could be "552" or "102"; but from the seppa we can see they meant "20" and the 4 hash marks at the end are the 4 of 24.  Much more complicated than it needed to be.

 

Nice custom fittings.

[Michaelr]

Thank you Bruce. Are blades stamped with the anchor from the Tenshozan Forge more common or less common than other anchor stamped blades? With a 42 date that seems early on.   MikeR

[Bruce Pennington]

The tenshozan blades are less common.  I have 48 Toyokawa anchor-stamped blades on file and only 27 Tenshozan.  It would make sense as I'm sure Toyokawa Naval Arsenal had more shops/forges making blades for them than just Tenshozan.

 

'42-'43 were the prime years for this stamp.  I have a single blade with it in each year of 1939 - 1941, but several blades in the '42-'43 years.   I also have several without dates, and they could be in the '44-'45 range, but there's no way to know.

[mecox]

More info:  

 

[Michaelr]

Bruce and Mal, thank you very much for the information and your time.    MikeR