SteveM

The one I thought was 国 could maybe conceivably be 図. 〰図鐔 makes sense as the first line of a hakogaki, but I'm still at a loss for what 田守 is. It's not really a common word. I thought it might be a poetic word for a flower... I guess the theme of this tsuba is plum. But 田守 doesn't seem to be a poetic word or euphemism for anything. And, I don't really think that third kanji is 図. I'm sort of making wild guesses now.

Looks like 田守国鐔　　　　　But I'm not finding anything online or in Wakayama. Last kanji ought to be 鐔 (tsuba), but I'm not 100% sure of this. In any event, I couldn't find 田守 or 田　国守 anywhere. Not even sure if its an artist or somehow related to the theme? Unusual for a name, but perhaps I'm misreading one/two kanji and have got stuck in a dead end. 鉄地丸形高町象嵌　I would expect 高彫 or something, but it looks like 町 to me. Unsure. 会津正阿弥 Aizu-Shōami 特別貴重認定　　　Tokubetsu Kichō nintei. the last one I can't get; maybe 済 (meaning "already received" the tokubetsu kicho designation.) 高肉？高打？

Interesting. Looks recent, but it is in WW2 mounts. Nothing listed anywhere for this smith, and the blade looks like it is signed in tachi-mei style. Very curious. The writing looks quite competently inscribed. No date on the opposite side, I guess?

The attribution is Fuyuhiro (冬広), not Hisahiro as stated in the post.

法信 Norinobu would be my somewhat unsatisfying guess. EDIT: Another unsatisfying guess would be 江信 (Kōshin), and apparently there is a netsuke artist by this name. So maybe its not so unsatisfying after all.

I think this is a cast replica, and it's best not to dwell too much on errant or missing strokes. If you look at authenticated (papered) works of Nobuyoshi, you can see how his true signature should look. The meanings of the characters themselves aren't so important. Sometimes artists pick the characters for the sound, and sometimes they pick them for the meaning, and sometimes they might be given to them by a mentor or relative. Characters might even be picked because of some superstitious reason (eg. the number of strokes in the kanji character is deemed lucky). I wouldn't rely too much on AI to parse these kinds of historical topics. Sometimes its good, but sometimes it just leads you down pointless dead ends, as its done here.

This is a topic that comes up fairly regularly here on NMB. Every year it seems the number of wartime blades (arsenal blades) that are able to be registered increases. If the sword has a registration card, the authenticating bodies will usually shrug and let the sword through their authentication process. There has been no change in the law, but the rigor with which the registering authorities (varies from prefecture to prefecture) reject arsenal blades seems to be fading with each passing year. There may be some discussion going on at higher levels which allows wartime blades to be viewed as historical and having some artistic merit. It is often hard to tell if the steel used in the sword is tamahagane or commercial steel. The kanteisho for this sword, for example, says the sword has ko-itame grain with jinie, so its possible that the registering body let it pass, the hot-stamp notwithstanding. I think this is a legacy from the post-War occupation that is due for an official reconsideration. The need to distinguish between "art sword" and "weapon" has all but evaporated. These swords are now approaching 100 years of age, so it feels ridiculous and arbitrary to ignore them, or to create an atmosphere where their mere existence is problematic from a legal and commercial standpoint. The market can decide how valuable they are

Kanekado is correct. There are several ways to write each kanji, some forms use abbreviated strokes, or "calligraphic" reductions of kanji. Also, with these wartime blades the blades are often signed by people working under the supervision of a smith, so you see a lot of variation. And the collecting world doesn't really micro-analyze these differences with the wartime smiths, because the quality of the work is kind of homogeneous, with the exception of some individual smiths (or, blades that feature some unique kind of steel). For the majority of wartime blades, the work is optimized for volume production in factory-like conditions, and the swords are oil-quenched to reduce the possibility of breaking. The steel is often industrial, mass-produced steel, rather than tamahagane. So collectors tend not to fret too much over the precise stroke angle/depth/construction for the individual kanji characters on the names of these wartime smiths. The hot stamp is a stylized representation of a Buddhist "ken" (a sword used by the Buddhist figure of Fudō-Myō-ō). If you look in Bruce Pennington's sword stamp survey, you can find another example of it. (Should be a link to that survey at the top banner of this site.) adding the link. Look around page 28, 29.

Looks like 播磨住秀綱守　　Harima-jū Hidetsuna Mori (or mamoru) Harima is a place name in Japan (corresponds to present-day Hyogo Prefecture). "Jū" just means resident of. I'm not 100% sure of the following three characters. Normally one might expect it to be the name of the smith. But in this case it looks like its engraved on the blade part, which is unorthodox for a smith, and the syntax makes me think its a dedication to protect the owner. So I think the last three mean "for the protection of Hidetsuna". (Hidetsuna being the personal name of the owner, presumably).

The writing on the saya is probably a post-war addition, written by a GI who copied some Japanese letters from a book. From top カタナ = Katana (sword) 三五 = 3, 5 (or maybe meant to be "35", who knows?) three stars and two bars... presumably some US military meaning. 一九四五　=　1945 (a date not likely written by a Japanese person) 勇気 = bravery (again, a random word not likely written by a native Japanese-speaking person) It very much looks like an attempt to "japanize" the scabbard.

兼武　Kanetake

We can't see the bottom part of the mei, so for now the swordsmith remains a small mystery. For what it's worth, the bit after "Mutō" looks to me, too, like 宗右, so it's kind of easy to imagine this is the first part of a given name (or zokumei/zokumyo) of Sōemon (宗右衛門), which is a common enough name. Mutō Sōemon doesn't ring any bells as far as swordsmiths go. Could be part of a dedication or the name of the person who ordered the blade. Hard to parse exactly without knowing what the full inscription was. There was a Mutō Sōemon who was a retainer of Oda Nobunaga, but you wouldn't want to make any claim of connection without some solid provenance. For now, its just a partial name that is intriguing, but that's about all we can say. And yes, Joe and Uwe are right about the other bit, 以地鉄. (motte jigane*). This is just like the sword that was posted to NMB a month or so ago by @Mark S., which if I'm not mistake was a Terukado sword, which had something like 関以地金下 inscribed on it, meaning "Made from oroshigane", implying the smith used steel that was smelted by his own hand, perhaps using some unique iron items in the process. *My guess is that it originally said 以地鉄下, or possibly 以地鉄降 (the meaning would be the same). The blade posted earlier used 地金, whereas this one here uses 地鉄 - a minor variation, but the meaning/intent is the same. I'm not 100% if the reading should be "motte jigane wo orosu" or if it should be "motte oroshigane". I tend to think the latter, but I'm unsure. Ignoring the actual blade and what that might tell us, the inscription uses the same construction/language as Terukado, so could be a Terukado blade, or someone in his close orbit, or someone trying to fake a Terukado signature.

Reinhard, no one is arguing that text wasn't read right to left, or even that it wasn't the main form of writing horizontally. I am merely pushing back on your statement that kanji HAD to be written right to left. This is false, and there are examples of where it was written left to right. Here is a copy of a mathematic textbook from 1939 written left to right Here is a copy of an advertisement from 1919, again, left to right.

Is there anything on the kozuka to indicate it being attributed to "Tokujo"?

Actually there was no law that determined the direction that Japanese had to be written. Writing from left to right was not forbidden, or unheard of, and there were official publications as well as commercial publications that wrote left to write. The Ministry of Education and the Army promoted a left-to-right writing standard in the middle of the war, in 1942, but ultra-nationalist elements of the military, as well as the newspapers, never got on board. But the army as an entity was not hostile to the idea. And, just to throw this out there, Tamachi (田町) is also an acceptable Japanese family name, though Machida is much more common.