Rivkin

Signature in faint strokes close to nakago is usually koto, I would have image it is not Oei, but anywhere between 1470 and 1570 is a possibility, personally I would be most comfortable with 1520-1550, but its just a guess. Unfortunately none of this narrows it down to a specific Shigemitsu.

Entire nakago, boshi, etc. etc.

Very poor pictures and problematic setup. Modern cast chinese tsuba. Tsuka looks somewhat better, but again pictures are bad. Very poor yasurime on the sword. Sharp, intense contours of nakago. Two options - circa 1945 production/possibly memento circa 1946, or entirely modern fake.

Modern, koshirae does not even fit in places, married to butchered Muromachi (?) blade, plus shill bidding. Horror.

Nice wall and the signature looks decent enough. I would try to look at books and find a (near) perfect match. However I would also seriously consider shinto Sukesada as an option.

Thank you very much! Very impressive to recognize once again how the field's understanding advanced with digital. The volumes from 1960s and 1970s just don't cover it as modern tables like the ones Jussi produces do.

I can check the literature but I most commonly encountered 1317. Possibly because of the partial date signature blade? Or because Kunihiro starting to date his blades in 1318, the assumption he was a student of Kunimitsu until then and not an independent master? The earliest dated blade (1293?) makes it a plausible 30 year run. But then there are so many blades of his even at TH level, its probably was a larger school. Two generations? Kunihiro and others(?) working under Kunimitsu's patronage?

Its an interesting question and there are a few things to consider. First, Japanese have extensive records on battle casualties from Nanbokucho to late Muromachi, from various sources. In Nanbokucho for example after sometime in service you would write a letter detailing your wounds, lost equipment, kills, tropheys taken. Which today produces many Ph.Ds dealing with these letters. By memory swords in their most effective periods go to like 35% of total casualties, but generally oscillate between 5 and 20%. The rest are bows, later yari etc.. In Nambokucho there is surprising percentage of stones, axes and other tools that are seldom imagined. Also, most surviving swordsmen (i.e. capable of leaving a record) even in Nambokucho would have zero kills, and people with five+ claimed kills would be around 5% of the fighting force. Second, swords overall are not made to survive battles. European sword some people estimate to survives 3 active engagements on average. Japanese are generally much more prone to hagire and catastrophic chipping so it is comparable at best. However, we are dealing with survivors - so either blades which never killed and thus were preserved, or the blades which somehow killed successfully. So Edo period sword obviously probably never killed. Muromachi - we are talking about huge supply of swords, yet 5-10% sword casualty rates and most sword construction being cheap and iffy enough to be smelted if it kills and chips rather than being repolished. Its probably sub 1% chance it killed. Nanbokucho - there is actually a solid chance it did.

What can I say, I also suffer from the temptation to discovery once in a lifetime treasure and it can be hard to accept I miss more often than land a score.

I don't know why they come out as exceptionally low resolution. 40MP image, external link if needed - something we can work with. Unfortunately cell phone lenses also distort a lot so sugata is best photographed with the phone exactly in the middle - as an example sori in the first image and the last are different because the phone positioning is different. In the same way - high res photograph of the <activities>. Otherwise its a guess, especially since its suriage. I think there is yokote and your measurement was probably correct. Can be Muromachi can be something else, with better pictures one can try to estimate.

Unfortunately it is very hard to kantei using just this. It looks like a late Muromachi blade. Possibly Bizen in a poor polish. I would not discover frankly many other things from Fuyuhiro etc.. Its a broad range.

Its a pity kissaki is 2.7cm, would it be 1.5cm there would be a stronger potential. It has a rather graceful koshi-zori and prominent fumbari, so its either early Muromachi or Kamakura, unfortunately first is more likely. There seems to be bo utsuri. suguha hamon with possibly some nie activity. It would be nice to try absolute best to capture the details. If its pure suguha - Mihara, Mino Zenjo-Kaneyoshi, Tegai Kanetoshi can be an option. There is also Nobukuni and Ryokai to consider.

WOW! That's great.

Really bad Japanese images but it is most likely a real shinshinto blade. The rest is a cute story.

I think second kanji is different, but it is Soshu, it can be Meiji/Showa, or it can be like end of Muromachi with a cleaned nakago. Light from above is the worst, usually photography is done in dark room with light on a side.