Delivery McGee

"my guess on the reading is 雲川住大明京 but the last character especially is pretty dubious. Google turns up this which says 大明京 (read Daimei Kei) is the name of a swordsmith from the Edo period. They read the second character as 州. apparently he had descendants with the same name who were still making swords, here's Daimei Kei III in the 1700s."

That's what one of the guys on the other forum said (with different English transliteration, but same kanji and meaning the same guy).

Some random bits of the hamon. It's rather difficult to make the camera focus on a mirror-polished blade, but I did what I could. Edit: Oh, and there's this little guy on the end of the hilt. Possibly important?

I knew that, I'm not that uneducated. :-p I've always liked cavalry sabers (possibly because of handling this one when I was little), and it's pretty nice (both in condition and aesthetics) for what it is. Don't worry, I know about keeping things oiled, and "don't try to polish it" and "leave the rust on the tang" were among the first things I read when starting research when I got it. Pictures, as requested. Please excuse the wonky color balance, my good camera is with the wife on a business trip, so I'm making do with the cheap fully-automatic point-and-shoot. For reference, the blanket used as a backdrop is powder blue. Full length of the blade with everything off: The whole tang: The bit of paper stuck to it is a bit of English-language newsprint presumably used to tighten the fit in the hilt; a few more pieces fell out when I took it apart. Now the wood has shrunk and it won't go in all the way (I can't get it in far enough for the holes to line up, about 1/16" off, original mekugi is long lost), but it stays together well enough, I'm not planning on swinging it around. Both sides of the point: Sadly, years of storage under my grandparents' bed has allowed the last eight inches or so of the blade to get a bit rusty, but it looks like a professional polishing would save it. The first picture is much more accurate, the poor color balance in the second makes it look worse than it is.

As a young man my grandfather, like many men his age, took an all-expenses-paid tour of the Pacific islands, courtesy of the US government. He brought back a few souvenirs -- a Type 32 saber and an officer's katana. Sadly, he died when I was 10, so I never got to ask him the story behind them, but I always liked looking at them. When my grandmother joined him this past July, I inherited the swords. I posted on another militaria forum I'm a member of, asking if anybody could read/translate the markings on them (my military-history knowledge is mostly Western), and somebody suggested I show you guys. I'm not ever planning to sell them, I just like knowing what all the little marks mean, and wondering whether the katana is handmade. Here's a link to a gallery of all the pictures I've taken of them. Here are the especially relevant pics: The guard of the saber. The character on the lower left is also on the side of the blade ricasso opposite the serial number. I know the middle thing with the circles is an arsenal stamp. The katana is harder to figure out. It definitely looks, to my untrained eye, like a proper katana: But I've read enough on this site and others to know that most of the better factory-made ones had a hamon, and I'm not well-versed enough tell the difference. This is the only marking on the blade of the katana. Nothing on the other side, and no arsenal/factory stamps anywhere. That last character is really faint, unfortunately. Click the picture for a much bigger version. The only other markings on the rest of the assembly are a few things on the tsuba and spacers. Again, click picture for huge. Please forgive me if I've posted in the wrong place; I was going to post this in the military forum, but since I'm mainly asking what the writing means, I thought I'd try here first. Mods, feel free to move it if necessary; to the rest of you, thanks for taking the time to read this.