Rivkin

That seems to go back to the discussion whether oshigata are some copy-rubbing or primarily drawings. Drawings, and often rather substandard ones.

My read would be: Name on tsuka - most likely real, unusual customization. Signature - strange and best to be considered as gimei or irrelevant at least until more is understood about the work. The blade - likely koto. Has what appears to be weak suguha hamon, possibly bo utsuri, nagare and itame. Can be whole bunch of things, but I would consider the box covering provincial Yamato-related work. Ryokai school, Naminohira etc. etc.. Without seeing much better images who knows. Dating - can be Muromachi, can be earlier, but by default I would fear its Muromachi

The problem is slightly more general. Aside from a handful of shrines and alike, there are no records of collections pre 1500-1550 or so. The named swords in particular often come with a legend or textual description completely disconnected and abstract with respect to any existing objects and on the other hand - specific objects given names with no pre 1500 or even pre 1700 history of them actually being associated with one. There were many cases when meito until Meiji was shared by 2, 3 even more than 10 blades, and then quietly one was selected by the community as "the one". And by means of selection it receives pre 1550 history which it might actually never had.

I would try to get good pictures. I would not focus on the signature (which is as was noted is an interesting one) - but the overall shape with good light, select couple of areas where work is visible and photograph them.

There are two pictures which hint at koto, but otherwise its very difficult to state anything.

Interesting it seems like hitatsura or something. High quality gendaito quite possibly.

Mino, end of Muromachi or shinto - higaki yasurime, periodic gunome mostly in nioi. With nakago like then (iriyamagata) I would suspect Echizen Seki school. I considered jumyo, but their gunome tend to be better defined individually.

You mean these guys? I have not seen later stuff, but the original ones tend to be ugly and they seemed to have very narrow popularity timeline.

Very interesting, I did not know about later iron habaki. Here ofcoarse is an early one.

When I first saw the image, I thought it was 1360s. But then I thought mid Kamakura sugata can be surprisingly diverse and such kodachi with curvature extending into nakago I think can be quite early.

One thing about so called laws of war. They never work. In the field most troops have no supplies or infrastructure to deal with POWs. The ones that survive were either part of organized surrender or they somehow got close enough to the rear where the infrastructure and supervision do exist. Technically every civilian on occupied territories can be charged with abetting the enemy, treason, terrorism etc.. Which does not change the fact they need to somehow eat and work, even if its related to the occupying army. Which is the only institution that keeps the local economy alive. So every Okinawan who gave up a sword or performed any form of labor until the official surrender in theory is liable... but again, war is when laws should be replaced by common sense. Every military will pass laws which make it illegal for occupied population to own a knife or sickle or axe. Not because it wants all farm equipment to be surrendered. Because normal ways to render justice do not work. If a soldier kills a local, if villagers are not scared enough, they'll all testify the soldier was a demon and they have no idea why he killed. It was just random evil. Soldiers will testify they were under assault by the locals. The way such things should be resolved is there is a snitch who always informs about what really happens in the unit. Suppose there is not one. Banning anything sharp means you simply look if there was anything like that on the scene. Sickle? Ok, it means there was an assault and the whole village is hostile. Nothing? Soldiers might have been something weird. I still don't believe US occupation authorities were after every ancestral blade even if the official statement was that all swords are banned. Did they send out armed parties to secure every sword in every village? No? They were not serious. It was just a standard position to make sure they can dispatch any paralimitary weapon-bearing entity at will. Which quickly turned into a great souvenir hunt and Japanese law enforcement being more obedient and more inclined to do things by the letter than most.

Meteorite was a popular theory regarding how the early steel could have been smelted at low temperatures, but under close inspection its very far fetched.

But on the other hand the print quality was average and even for the photos where at least in certain place there was activity well captured, they just used overall shot. This being said, the standard rights disclaimer states that you will not edit images in any way including cropping.

Showa.

Like Nobukuni, can understand intersection with Yamato Shizu, but the first time I see TH explicitly to shodai - not just setsumei or sayagaki. This being said, I probably held twenty plus attributed Nobukuni, so its obviously not a very large selection.