kotachi

Just found my first gunto at a pawn shop. They were trying to show me all these pos Chinese reproductions and had no idea this was a WW2 sword. I bought it even though it has a bend and I had not taken off the handle yet because I have never come across one in person. Has a lot of activity in the temper and evidence of hada and folding. Once I got it home and the handle off I found signature and date. Might be a last ditch low end war effort sword or a slightly nicer war blade but I need help translating as I am really bad with characters. Forest one looks like it has a sa in it to me? Maybe sa, sada or sane? Date looks like high numbers, maybe made in winter during end of war? Thanks in advance for your time. -Jay G.

Thank you to everyone who spent time on this, your assistance has allowed me to do some additional research. I found an almost identical tsuba with the same bean a leaf pattern here. http://www.users.on.net/~coxm/?page=TsubaIII Their tsuba seems to be a little higher quality as the leaf appears to have slight 3d relief and the leaf on mine is flat. The one pictured has a fancier signature which they explain as it possibly being a custom order. The city name of the town has changed and it was incorporated into a city but the info from the tag was enough to figure out where in Japan the owner of the sword lived when he turned it over. I believe it is from the area around Nagao station in the city of Takeo in Saga prefecture. I showed the tag to a friend of mine and she thought the last character looked similar to the Chinese character Xin, which can me new. It is not a perfect match but the radical on the right side of Xin is suspiciously close. Thanks again to everyone. Next journey will be trying to figure out who made it! -Jay G.

Hi Everyone, I just got a new wakizashi. Its muimei and ubu but upon taking off the handle to inspect the nakago I found the tsuba was signed. There was also a surrender tag that may just be an address and name of the family that turned it in but there is a section writing in the middle line that is in different writing and looks like it could be a signature. I am not sure if these types of tags would have had attributions of the sword maker on them. I am looking for any info that could give me insight into the history of the sword. The blade is out of polish and has some light rust stains and its hard to make out workmanship but the I really liked the shape of it and I do even more so now that I have it it hand. It has a really thick mune (7.3 mm), nice cure that seems to be slightly koshi-sori, and an extended kissaki. One nice spot of original polish under the habaki shows dense ko-itame hada. From what I can see the hamon appears to be thick suguha based but may have very subtle undulations with a ko maru boshi. My first impression is its probably shinshinto period but I am far from an expert. If I ever manage to get it polished I think it will be a real nice piece. Thanks in advance for your time and opinions. -Jay G.

This guy is a total jerk and a very shady seller at that. The only thing he has over most ebay sellers is a return policy but expect to be banned from his auctions if you every use it. This guy sold me a blade with "no forging flaws" in the item description and when it showed up there were 3 kitae-ware one almost 3/4 of an inch long. Since it is a gendaito and I got it for quite a low price they do not bother me but when I complained the item description was not accurate but did not want to return the sword this guy called me up and threatened me, in broken english, to try and force me to return the sword. When I wouldn't return sword he banned me from his auctions despite already having left him good feedback, which I would now like to revise since what I said in feedback was the total opposite of what ended up happening. Blade showed all Showa22's usual tricks as the shirasaya that my blade came in did not fit properly, and there is evidence of acid etching but the price was still right even with problems. Showa22 obviously does amateur work on what he sells and it seems very few if any are unmolested blades. Check out this post were he sold a fake/doctored up yasukuni shirne katana worth maybe 1k-2k blade to some poor guy for 6.5K which is now never gonna be resold at that price. BEWARE! viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18438 -Jay G

I live in Santa Cruz and am within easy driving distance of his "new shop" and the Watsonville courthouse. Eric has had a Kanezane blade of mine for two and a half years now and has ignored my communication for several long stretches of time during that period. I actually confronted him with a police officer at his house in August before he moved but he assured us both the sword would be finished in a month and he had actually done some "work" on it. Like an idiot I let him keep the blade and he gave me a few more bunk deadlines before ignoring me again. I have this week off work and plan on trying to track him down and if not file a small claims suit against him. Any advice from members who have gone through similar situations as I have never had to sue anyone before? Also it may help to try and establish how many peoples items he still has as he told the police officer with me last August he only had three blades to finish polishing and then he was going to just be a dealer not a polisher. -Jay G

I have been watching a few of the auctions from the seller bassy58 and I know the "Sa" blade was already discussed here. I just read the article on mei analysis by Darcy Brockbank and this auction sent up red flags. http://www.ebay.com/itm/171263187843 First off, the seller states, "After taking my swords to a kendo sword club, the sensei told me that these two swords are a set, and after taking the handles off we noticed they both had the same inscriptions. So I am selling these as a set and the winning bidder will receive BOTH of them." What are the chances that the sensei recognized these blades as being from the same smith before taking the handles off? To me the sugata, kissaki and boshi seem to be very different, would there really be this much variation in a single smiths work even between generations, especially a famous smith as the listing states? Secondly, the mei also seem inconsistent from what I read. The strokes have a different style and orientation on many of the characters, one has a fujiwara charecter the other does not, the mekugi ana is not located at the same spot in relation to the second character, the wakizashi mei does not follow the shinogi line and the katana does, the nakago's are close in shape but the nakago-jiri is not. All this points to gimei right? If anyone has any other examples of Tadahiro mei's I would be very interested in seeing if I got it right. Also to me the sap story about inheriting fathers swords, paying for kids education, no return policy and the "famous" smith and the value relate messages he has posted suggest that he might know more then he is letting on and, possibly even that these are gimei, and is just trying to make a buck. Wonder if that why the first winner of this auction didn't pay the 3500$ it went for first time around. I hope I am wrong, as I usually am when it comes to nihonto. Please help this newb understand the finer points of recognizing bunk auctions and fake signatures. -Jay G

more pics

I recently responded to an ebay listing for a sword polishing service from ejroush. I initially wanted him to check out a sword I had bought a while ago. He did and told me it was a shortened yamashiro tachi. I initially got it to mess around with because there was grinder damage to the nakago and I thought that made the sword worthless so I would not feel bad if I messed it up trying to polish it. Upon receiving the news that it might actually worth trying to actually restore I decided to have him polish it and gave it to him last Friday. Sadly I did not do my research before giving him the sword and I have now stumbled on the article listed listed in this forum. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9882 What do you think I should do, try and get it back before he starts polishing it, just let it happen and see how it turns out? If he is a self taught polisher what are the chances he could really mess up the blade? He claimed that he has polished blades that have been papers before so I am tempted to just see what happens as I have already paid him, there is some rust on the blade I do not want to get worse and I was going to mess up the blade anyway and I do not/will not have the resources to send the blade to a master polisher in Japan possibly ever. Please advise and don't be to harsh about my uninformed decisions, this is my first sword so I am new to collecting nihonto as well as the forum.