Help with Gunto Identification

[outlier48]

A friend with a WWII NCO Gunto sent me a photo of just the serial number stamped on the blade - 19420 東. I saw this sword a while ago and it appeared to me to be a very common machine made blade. Interestingly (to me) this sword is not in standard war issue hardware but in more traditional hardware, all of which is quite ordinary. He would like some info. I believe this was manufactured at Tokyo Kokura Arsenal based on the "To" stamp. Can anyone confirm if this and whether the number sequence is valid? I recall reading that a leading "0" would indicate a fake, but I have nothing to go on besides that. I will try to get the owner to remove the tsuka. Will removal of the tsuka likely reveal any additional information such as the sword name of the smith?

 

Charlie B

[Mark]

based on that one picture it looks genuine, but machine made NCO blades are not the NMB area or expertise

[cabowen]

Tokyo arsenal was in Ishikawa, not Kokura, which is in Kyushu....

[Weidas]

if admins of NMB permit(considering that NCO swords are not nihonto), you need to post pictures of whole sword with close ups on tsuka, fuchi, kissaki, drag of scabbard and number on scabbard. There is no need to remove tsuka - it is fixed with bolt and you can easily damage bolt or tsuka itself. There were several private companies who produced NCO swords under supervision of Kokura arsenal. Their stamps must be on fuchi, together with arsenal inspection stamp.

[Brian]

This section was created to assist with all the military swords...so feel free to continue. Keeps the non-Nihonto out of the other sections.

 

Brian

[outlier48]

My humble thanks to the info provided. I will pass it along. I do not possess the sword but will try to get photos from the owner. I have seen it and can say for certain that the tsuka, F&K and saya are NOT the traditional military hardware that would have originally come with this sword (eg type 95, I think). Those have, unfortunately, been removed and lost. The current tsuka, F&K and saya appear to be modern creations of average to low quality. I'm guessing whoever brought this back from WWII made the changes to the mounts. So, it should be relatively easy to remove the tsuka. If so, I will also include photos of the nakago. I'll post photos when I get them along with any historical info about the tsuka, etc the current owner may have.

 

Sincerely,

 

Charlie B