SteveM

朧銀地 容彫 無銘水戸 昭和廿九？？ 寒山誌（花押） Oborogin-chi (type of metal) Katachibori (style) Mumei Mito (unsigned - Mito) Showa 29? ?? (1954?) ??　　Not 100% sure of the date, and I can't figure out the final two kanji in that line. Kanzan (Shirusu) Kaō Outside of the box 巳目貫 Snake menuki

Hello George, The article you linked to regarding the law on hairstyles is slightly misleading, and it is a common misconception that this law abolished the topknot. The law actually stated that people were henceforth free to grow their hair in any way they choose. There would have been no rush to studios to get one's picture taken. (If there was a rush, it was just because photography was booming everywhere in the world at that time). Note that merchants, etc.. could also carry knives, such as the tantō in this picture, for protection. They could also have topknots, just in slightly different styles from the samurai. So the presence of these things doesn't preclude the possibility that the subject is from a non-samurai family. I think Uwe's photo above is quite good for showing the likely color scheme. I'm guessing the haori part of the kimono is dyed in ai-zome (藍染) style - indigo, basically. The tantō can be anything from the very garish to the understated. My guess from looking at the clothes is that the tantō would/should be a subtle shade: brown or black, rather than the vermilion or other colors one sometimes sees.

I see no numbers, no Boston, no America. Alas, the writing is too cursive for me to pick out anything anything beyond that. The vertical line on the far right might be construed as 米国 (America), but as Jean above mentioned, America would most likely have been written using different kanji in the 1870s.

Hello Simon, Not ignoring this thread, but you've got the best answer so far from Dojikiri above 後藤囗乗　（花押） I don't know what the 3rd kanji might be. 政 comes to mind, but I don't think this is correct. So many Gotō artists. Maybe someone else can pick it out.

My guess is 四ツ木瓜形.

Hello David, The mei inscribed on this sword is 雲次　- Unji. You should be able to find this name in the swordsmith data base located in one of the links at the top of this page.

Wakayama's reference tells me his real last name was Yamamoto, that he worked in Nagasaki, and that he continued working until the Meiji era. He also signed as Munehide (宗英), and was a student of Tomohide (友英). Nice looking kozuka!

According to the paper, it says 明治三十四年夏清国出軍時 中西軍曹應好作之 Meiji 34, Summer, (on the occasion of) departure for military service in Shinkoku (Qing Dynasty China) Made for Sergeant Nakanishi

For the year and zodiac reading, you have it right: Shōwa Kanoe-tatsu (or Kōshin) refers to 1940.

I don't know about the overall asymmetry of the shape, but my first thought was that the theme was a fishing net, and that the weave was deliberately made to look irregular.

Yes - I too am starving for an explanation!

妙来 (myōrai) or 希妙来 (kimyōrai) I think would be something different from 如来 (Nyōrai). Very possibly related to Dainichi Nyorai (大日如来), but I feel that there must be some specific reason for the use of 妙 that I am not clever enough to sort out. 心外無別法 > I don't think this is a negation of the outside world. Rather, it is negation of the distinction between the outside and the inside. So the maxim 心外無別法 means not that there is nothing outside of your heart. It means: what you think of as two separate things (the outside world and the inner world), are actually both one and the same. Hence, whatever you experience on the outside, is reflected in your heart/mind/soul, and whatever you feel in your heart takes on a manifestation in the outside world as well. When the soul is not well, the outside world is not well (and vice-versa). So that is why I was looking for some contradiction inherent in the kanji 希・妙 but coming up with nothing, My two cents.

Hello Gordon, I think you mean Buddhist priest, no? And, is Markus OK with you posting his comments above? If so, I would make a couple of comments, but I don't want to do it if he didn't intend to his comments to be speculated on by the crowd here.

Hello Bryan, sorry to say I don't know anything about this smith. He seems to be a rather obscure WW2-era smith.

Hello Kevin, The photo tells me the blade has had a hard life. It has lost the yokote and is in terrible need of a polish. (But you probably already knew this). It's impossible for me to see if it has or had a hamon, but it seems if it had one, that too has disappeared through use. The translation for the inside of the lid of the scabbard is located in the thread that Shamsy linked to. The mark on the tsuka is a family crest with the slightly cumbersome name of Maru ni sumitatsu yotsu-me, loosely (and rather obviously) translated as "four squares in a circle". Family crests on the these metal bits of WW2 swords are not uncommon (but may indicate the owner went through some expense to have this part personalized, or perhaps it was personalized on his behalf). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9B%AE%E7%B5%90%E7%B4%8B

Hello Bryan, The mei reads: Naganuma Yoshifusa Another possible reading might be Yoriifusa, as in the thread below. (with thanks to Moriyama-san and Eugene) http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/859-kanji-help/

Agree with all of the above. I think the scabbard with the flap is/was called an Iida scabbard. If original, it could be interesting for collectors. Search for Iida scabbard (or Ida, maybe) on this site and you should get a few more hits. Also more information at the site below http://ohmura-study.net/734.html Close-up pictures of the sword, especially the blade area and the tip, might reveal a bit more about whether it is a mass-produced army sword (guntō), or something older.

While the individual kanji are all relatively common, the phrases themselves do not occur in modern Japanese. I doubt they occurred normally in pre-modern Japanese as well. Putting them into a search engines turns up a whole lot of nothing (or predictable near misses).　 無別法 appears as part of the Buddhist phrase 心外無別法, which means all of the outside world is a manifestation of what lies in the heart/soul/mind. To break it into its components a little bit and reverse-engineer it: there is no distinction (無別) between the inner world (心) and the outer world (外). So from that we can surmise that the 無別法 on your sword also refers to this Buddhist concept of unity and continuity (non-distinction). 希妙来 is a bit more difficult to dissect. 希 = hope, beseech. Also can mean rare, scarce 妙 = strange, odd 来 = come, arrive I think trying to concoct a meaning by stringing any of those options together would produce gibberish, especially when combined with 無別法. If the kanji represented contradictory ideas (say, rigidity and flexibility), it would be easy to guess that the phrase was expressing some realization of the fusion of opposites to form one whole. But I don't sense any basic contradiction. Rather, I think 希 and 妙 have some meaning in esoteric Buddhism that I am not aware of. 妙 probably relates to a concept found in The Lotus Sutra (南無妙法蓮華経) Nammyōhōrengekyo. Depending on your reference, 妙 in this context can mean correct, life, good, beauty, or any of another million things. Perhaps its an idea of making no distinction between this life and the afterlife. Or it could be an expression of living as though you had already attained Buddhahood (satori).

Yep, that's the one that Moriyama-san picked out. 齊清　(齊 is a variation of 齋, 斎, and 斉). (I tossed it from the list of candidates because it didn't appear in my reference ). Meikan more? Edit: I should add that I don't have a clue as to how you would pronounce this. Moriyama-san suggests Narikiyo. 齊 almost invariably appears as part of the name 齋藤 (Saitō) and hardly ever appears anywhere else, at least in everyday conversation.

Hello Again, The FAQ section of this site has a pretty nice selection of books to consider.

Yes - with few exceptions, the mon (and the owner of the sword, really) are irrelevant. Even if the mon were from a prestigious family - say, the Tokugawa - it would still add little to the sword, I'm afraid. It would be an interesting curiosity, but that's about it. If it were a celebrated sword that had meticulous documentation and ended up being used by some distant Tokugawa ancestor in WW2, then it might have value as an historical artifact in addition to the value of the sword (maybe), but in the sword world the comment you often hear is: "buy the sword, not the story". Even non-samurai families (merchants, for example) could have kamon. Just to repeat, think of the furnishings as a frame. A nice frame will make a nice ensemble, but unless the frame itself was made by DaVinci, consider it replaceable.

Gave it the college try, but came up empty-handed. I was thinking along the lines of 家月清, or 斎清, but those were dead-ends. Possible to get another shot of the kanji(s) above 清?

There are quite a few Hiroshige swordsmiths. I don't know which one yours is. (I had trouble loading some of the photos. Maybe they are very high res and my computer is gagging on them?) Regarding the mon, did you see my comment regarding the other sword you posted? Its the same thing with this sword. It is like asking if platinum staples in a wooden frame add anything to the VanGogh painting inside. As a frame, it might be nice to have gold or platinum staples. But the frame is replaceable, the painting is not.* The mon decoration adds and detracts nothing to the value of the sword. You have an Edo period sword in WW2 mountings, and so the mountings are anachronistic for this sword. This is not unusual, as some families re-fitted their heirloom swords with military mounts. But these mounts were more-or-less mass produced, and so their value is not especially high. *Fittings of good quality and in fine condition make the ensemble worth whatever the sword is worth plus the appraisal value of the fittings, with possible a premium for the entire ensemble, especially if it is dai/sho set with matching fittings, or if there is something unique about the fittings. A mon on WW2 mounts is nothing particularly special. But if the mounts are in mint condition they might catch the attention of the military sword buffs.

Hello Sean, The inscription on the tang is 武州住下原廣重 Bushū Shimohara-ju Hiroshige The mon is called umebachi (梅鉢) or plum bowl/pot. http://www.yoroduya.co.jp/kamon/a/umebachi.html

Hello Whitegryphon70, Kinmichi is an "artist's name" that was used by about 24 different swordsmiths (maybe more). There are at least 6 of these who signed it exactly as you have in the sword you posted 「伊賀守金道」 Iga-no-kami Kinmichi. And as Jean points out above, all of the Kinmichi who signed their swords this way worked in the Kyoto area. There is no date inscribed on your sword, so the seller cannot know when it was manufactured (unless he/she radiocarbon-dated the sword!). Seeing as how it has a very shallow sori, my guess from just looking at the sword is that it was forged in the mid-to-late 1600s. As Brian says, it does look like an OK sword - no reproduction. It has a funky circular mark in the hamon (in the second picture), but maybe not a deal-breaker. It looks like it needs a polish, but with all the discussion of the delicate process of polishing going on, I hesitate to even venture into that arena. The shape is one that sword collectors tend to discount. The WWII mountings look fine. Bear in mind this is sort of like talking about how good the frame is on a painting from an old-master. I would question the seller's statement that it is "difficult" to find a blade in this condition. The condition is very average. The interwebz are full of blades in that sort of condition. So, this is sort of a long-winded way of saying, beware of that seller. He's fishing for people who have a weakness for buzzwords like ninja and samurai. If you really just want any old sword from the Edo era, they can be bought for around $1000 (or less if you keep your eyes open). If you have $3000 burning a hole in your pocket, you should set your sights slightly higher and watch this forum for a papered sword from one of the sellers here. Ebay is a dangerous place for people who are just starting to dabble in nihonto.