Translation please

[Foletta]

Can someone please translate this

[YourBabyBjornBorg]

Hi! This looks like 善定正統武藤宗右...(cutted off from here, perhaps 衛門?) 於美濃國関以地鉄...((cutted off from here), Zenjou Seitou Mutou Soe...(mon), Mino no Kuni Seki (ni) Oite Jigane (wo) Motte...

 

roughly "Orthodox Zenjou school, Mutou Soe...(mon), in Seki, Mino no Kuni, (something) with Jigane..."

 

This is signed by Tanpa no Kami Terukado if the signature is genuine.

 

A similarly signed sword is shown below.

 

[Mikaveli]

Doesn't appear to be a Terukado sword, if the mei reads:

 

善定正統武藤原右

 

It's 善定 school, and 藤原 (fujiwara) - but the next characters would be 照門 (or 兼門), not 右

 

Maybe it's something like 藤原友行 (tomoyuki)?

 

Do you have a picture of the whole sword?

[uwe]

…以地鉄…(oroshigane)??

Can’t see Fujiwara, Michael  and I think Joe is referring to the book page with Terukado…
 

 

[Bruce Pennington]

2 hours ago, Mikaveli said:

照門

So, is this Terukado?  I'd like to add the kakihan to my Stamps doc.  Is there a date or time frame, if not?

[SteveM]

We can't see the bottom part of the mei, so for now the swordsmith remains a small mystery. For what it's worth, the bit after "Mutō" looks to me, too, like 宗右, so it's kind of easy to imagine this is the first part of a given name (or zokumei/zokumyo) of Sōemon (宗右衛門), which is a common enough name. 

 

Mutō Sōemon doesn't ring any bells as far as swordsmiths go. Could be part of a dedication or the name of the person who ordered the blade. Hard to parse exactly without knowing what the full inscription was. 

 

There was a Mutō Sōemon who was a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, but you wouldn't want to make any claim of connection without some solid provenance. For now, its just a partial name that is intriguing, but that's about all we can say. 

 

And yes, Joe and Uwe are right about the other bit, 以地鉄. (motte jigane*). This is just like the sword that was posted to NMB a month or so ago by @Mark S., which if I'm not mistake was a Terukado sword, which had something like 関以地金下 inscribed on it, meaning "Made from oroshigane", implying the smith used steel that was smelted by his own hand, perhaps using some unique iron items in the process.

 

*My guess is that it originally said 以地鉄下, or possibly 以地鉄降 (the meaning would be the same). The blade posted earlier used 地金, whereas this one here uses 地鉄 - a minor variation, but the meaning/intent is the same. I'm not 100% if the reading should be "motte jigane wo orosu" or if it should be "motte oroshigane". I tend to think the latter, but I'm unsure. 

 

Ignoring the actual blade and what that might tell us, the inscription uses the same construction/language as Terukado, so could be a Terukado blade, or someone in his close orbit, or someone trying to fake a Terukado signature. 

[YourBabyBjornBorg]

Wow! Glad to see this old but difficult topic being discussed further.

 

In retrospect, I did jump to the conclusion that this sword was Terukado without concrete evidence.

 

In my defence, there is some circumstantial evidence, like (I think) the only smith we know using the prefix 善定正統 (Orthodox Zenjou school) is Terukado,

 

and the overall style of Mei is quite similar to some of the Terukado we see (especially the way of writing 美 in 美濃/Mino), and the fixation of emphasizing using Jigane-Oroshi in Mino. Very few smiths do this, and one is Terukado.

 

So if I were a gambling person (which I am not), I would say that Terukado of all smiths is the most likely one. 

Of course this could also be someone very close to Terukado, or someone's impression of Terukado, like Mr. Steve just pointed out.

 

That Muto Soemon might remain a mystery......

 

Wait, I think I just found something.

[YourBabyBjornBorg]

 

I was looking for Terukado's real name (which is 武藤宗九郎/Muto Sokuro for all generations), and I saw this, a shrine sword (Honoto) in Haruhi Shrine from Minoto Daikan,

 

signed "Zenjou Fujiwara Terukado,  temple petitioner (like donating to a shrine to pray for good things to happen or protection) Muto Sozaro Yoshikado". (善定藤原照門 願主武藤宗三良嘉門)

 

Eh, it's probably nothing.

 

Also, the most famous 武藤宗右衛門 is Muto Kiyohide, a lord under Nobunaga, but he died in 1579.