SteveM

窮則独善其身達則兼濟天下 Something like: In times of plenty, the virtuous man strives to help others. In times of need, the virtuous man strives to help/improve himself.

Yes - that's 義 gi/yoshi

The post that I linked to contains some more information, but there was a smith named Yanagawa Shōshin (or Seishin, both pronunciations are possible, and I haven't dug deep enough to figure out which one is correct, or if there is a consensus). There was speculation that the smith later added 右 to his name, thus the new name became 右正心 (Ushōshin, or Useishin). There have been a few swords with this signature on them posted to NMB. Not a great deal of info on this smith, so its all a bit murky.

正心作 = Shōshin-saku Could be this guy. Needs a closer look to tell for sure.

I think they are both 文政, its just that the top picture uses a variation (𭐠) So 文政ニ卯年 and 文政元寅年

Just to clarify the pronunciation of each kanji 源　Minamoto 清　Kiyo 麿　marō

光長 Mitsunaga

The valuation is in the first photo: 代千三百貫　1300 kan.

Yes, George has the correct date. The signature and kao are Hon'ami Kōson. The other side is a valuation.

This one is signed Gotō Hōgen (aka Gotō Ichijo), made at 78 years of age. This would place the date of manufacture around 1868-1869.

Are any of these signed on the back? And, possible to get a clearer shot of this one?

The inscription (or the last 4 characters) reads: "for protection: Samuhara". Samuhara is a word/phrase meant to provide the user/bearer with divine protection. See the following

This sword is making a comeback... https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/52639-help-please-on-mei/#comment-549487 I think there is a 3rd thread on this sword somewhere, where a couple of us suggested to try to reference the smith by looking up all the known smiths who were granted the "Yamato-no-kami" title. Markus has a reference with the titles and the smiths to whom they were granted. I looked at this list and couldn't find a plausible match for the name inscribed on this sword, so I gave up on it.

Top picture 寒山拾得　　Kanzan-Jittoku 鉄　 Tetsu 目貫　 Menuki 壱組 Hito-kumi 濱野政随作 Hamano Shōzui-saku

Yes, 4-artist collaboration. Flying magpie = Tsutsui Resting magpie = Ezoe Bamboo = Baba Plum = Matsumoto (Sugimoto?) Can't quite figure out if its "auspicious day" or "spring".

Interesting. It sure looks like 撿 (or its variant 𢮦), but Japan really doesn't use this kanji. To my mind, it should be 検 (or its old variant 檢), which means "inspected" (i.e. the sword passed a quality control inspection.) So I have no idea why a kanji that isn't used in Japan should be stamped on a sword. Its not very likely that a Japanese sword shop would have a stamp of an unused kanji on it. Possibly it was made in China/Manchuria? Or, maybe there is some other explanation?

濱野矩随　Hamano Noriyuki

Date is Tenshō 4 = 1576 The "double-two" is intended to be a replacement for the character for "four" (四), because the word for four is a homonym for the word for death (shi), and is therefore considered bad luck and is often avoided in inscriptions.

That last one is a much better picture. It could indeed have been Heianjō - Masatoshi. The sword would validate the signature, but the inscription could plausibly be Masatoshi...a bit too degraded to say with confidence.

Very poorly written names, and looks like it was probably written by a westerner. Left side (white stripe) says 長谷川駅？　Hasegawa Station (not sure about Station) Right side (red stripe) says (probably) 西川清　Nishikawa Kiyoshi

I looked at this and I too thought it was a bit of a dead end due to the corrosion, but yes Heianjō (平安城) is plausible for the first three characters. The one after that is... maybe Hiro (廣), or something else. It doesn't look like Masatoshi (正俊).

I think the missing character you refer to is Rai (来), which the 4 generations of Izumi-no-kami Kinmichi smiths used in their name, so the usual mei is Izumi-no-kami Rai Kinmichi, which makes the mei on your sword an outlier. Of the 4 generations, the mei on yours kind of resembles the 3rd generation (late 1600s). I don't know if the lack of "Rai" automatically indicates a fake signature, but...the sword world doesn't much like outliers. Be that as it may, and ignoring the signature, the sword itself looks OK - I mean it looks like a well-made Japanese sword probably from that time period of late 1600s - 1700s.

According to Markus's article, the previous "oldest" text was from 1423 (Kanchi’in Bon Mei Zukushi) which itself was a copy of a now lost text from 1316.

Or 一的製？(made by Itteki)

Ōshima Mitsuyoshi https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/大島光義 Only in Japanese, but Google can probably do a decent job of translating it. I don't know if the letter is actually addressed to Oshima Mitsuyoshi, but as often happens when translating, once a thought enters your mind you kind of fall into a confirmation bias loop from which it is hard to escape. So, that's the long way of saying I could be wrong. In this person's case, 大嶋 = 大島. Both are Ōshima.