SteveM

The inscription is 濃州関住後藤兼廣作 Nōshū Seki-jū Gotō Kanehiro saku (Made by Gotō Kanehiro from Seki in Noshu province) Don't worry about restoration or polishing or sharpening. The potential to ruin the sword is too great, and there will be no value added to the ensemble by making anything shiny. Beware of hucksters and self-taught polishing enthusiasts with a YouTube channel, who try to convince you that polishing swords is totally doable with ordinary household tools and products you can get from Home Depot. Maybe you can clean up a leather-covered scabbard, or very gently get some dirt out of the crevices of the tsuka and the fittings, but, honestly, I would leave the whole thing alone and resist the temptation to do anything. WW2 militaria is best left looking like it was from WW2. Swords require specialist knowledge and materials. Arsenal blades are a different subject, but I would still refrain from doing anything other than oiling them. Not sure about Hoppes #9. I'm sure there are a few on here who can comment on that.

As they say; It's a marathon, not a sprint. The journey comes with a never-ending series of revelations about just how little you know, and how much remains to be mastered. So, "fluency" is one of those words whose definition seems always just out of reach. Memorize hiragana and katakana. Usually in that order, because that is the way Japanese kids learn written Japanese, and that usually provides the best foundation. But some people choose to learn katakana first because they feel that will give them more immediate benefits if/when they visit Japan. Either is fine, as long as you learn both and don't get lazy, and recognize that hiragana gives better gas mileage than katakana. There are only 46 characters in each alphabet, and some are similar, so its not such a daunting task. Start to memorize the fundamentals of kanji when you've got hiragana and katakana more or less mastered. Stroke order, stroke direction, construction, balance, etc... You don't need to memorize all 2000 at one go. University students will know upwards of 8000-10000, but many of those are single-use kanji, or specific to a particular branch of the sciences, and not particularly useful in everyday life. The point is, learn them as you go, and don't worry that you only know 50 or 100 or 200...you'll pick more up as you go along. Start speaking as soon as you are able. Get a tutor or a mentor or an online partner, or youtube tutorials, anything. Speaking is a different beast than reading and writing, but each supports the others. Before long you realize that things like hierarchy and politeness are hard-coded into Japanese in a way that they are not hard-coded into English. It isn't necessary to nail down all of these nuances right away, so don't waste too many brain cycles trying to complete all of these side-missions. It's enough to be aware that the language has politeness levels imbedded into it, and as you become more proficient in Japanese, you can start to get better at using the correct/appropriate language for the audience. If you try to figure out everything all at once, you won't get anywhere. The language of the sword/fittings world is a specialized field. Don't expect the average Japanese person to understand the vocabulary of the sword world. Its full of jargon and rarely-used kanji and specialized readings...etc. It adds a complication to your Japanese studies. It's like a beginning English student trying to understand the language of nuclear physics. It just doesn't happen overnight, or without a lot of specialized study. Took me one year to become marginally conversational. Took me five years to become barely literate. Took me twenty years to become "fluent-ish". I started diving deeper into Japanese sword/fittings vocabulary after about 25 years, and realized I didn't know diddly squat. From there, each incremental bit of knowledge added to my ability, and made me slightly more fluent. I have N1 and a translator's certificate. I got these fairly quickly, after about 10 years of living in Japan. But really, its only after I got these things that I realized how much I had yet to learn. Still running the marathon...

My impression was that the whole thing was the single kanji 製 (manufacture), scrawled on the tiny real estate of that locking clip. The wayward strokes are just the slip of the utensil used to do the scratching. No idea of the significance, but feels unlikely (to me) that it would be a name.

The artist is Sumiyoshi Naiki Hirosada (1793-1863) (aka Hirotsura). The theme looks like the God/Myth/Legendary figure Takeuchi-no-sukune holding the baby Emperor Ōjin.

Well, I'm not very capable. These haiku (and waka, etc) are relatively easy because most of them are on the internet somewhere, so I just have to identify a few words or phrases and the search engine will do the heavy lifting. Also, I lived in Japan for 30 years, so that gives me a pretty good base to jump from. If its just a page of medieval script with no context, it can be tough, and sometimes impossible, for me to decipher.

I had not known of her before this thread was started, so for me it is a new discovery also.

吹け吹けと　花によくなし　鳳巾 Fukefuke to Hana ni yokunashi Ikanobori When the wind blows It is good for kite-flying But not so good for flowers

@Iaido dude I saw this one from Tesshu on your other thread, and I'm sorry to say it completely defeated me. I wish I were a kuzushi-ji expert, but I'm just a beginner: a toddler just dangling my feet in the wading pool. Tough to find a kuzushi-ji mentor here in the states.

@Charlie CI'm reasonably sure this one is 留主.

I think the top one is 名月や留主の人にも丸ながら Meigetsu ya Rusu no hito ni mo Maru nagara The autumn moon, Even for those who are not near to us, Is still full

I asked the All-Japan Swordsmith Association whether swords (didn't specify length) were required to be dated, and they told me it was managed on a prefecture-by-prefecture basis, and that there was no nationwide requirement to date swords.

@LastSamurai I think you are getting a little bit stuck in the weeds. The NBTHK has already attributed it to Kanetomo (note this is a different smith than Kanemoto, who Rivkin mentioned, and also note there are several smiths called Kanetomo who use a different kanji for "tomo", so if you are looking at English sources only it can become confusing). Your smith is Kanetomo (兼付) who was active in the early 1500s, and I guess if he had 2 or 3 successors who used the same name, they would also be early-to-mid 1500s. Anyway, the smith worked at the end of the Koto period. Often the only thing known about these smiths is where and when they worked, and sometimes their personal name (rather than their swordsmith name). The other bits have to be inferred from the work they left.

Yes, that's right. He is the swordsmith. There are two main databases for swordsmiths available in English. One is called Index of Japanese Swordsmiths, by Markus Sesko, (researcher, author, and sometimes contributor to this site). The other is an out of print English translation of Fujishiro's Index of swordsmiths (I think its called Nihon Toko Jiten) and consists of two volumes: Koto and Shinto. I think Markus Sesko's set would be more complete, accurate, and user-friendly. But, as I say, there may not be a great deal of information concerning this particular smith, as he apparently didn't leave a great body of work. The name Daiminkyō may also be read as Daiminkin. It's just one of the quirks of the Japanese language - kanji have multiple readings, and occasionally you come across names that have multiple valid readings. Presumably the smith himself had a preferred reading/pronunciation of his name, but there is no record of it as far as I know. So, some sources spell it as Daiminkyō, and other spell it as Daiminkin. He worked circa 1661.

Yes, I think you are talking about the character 明. It's the 5th character from the top. As I say, it is part of the smith's name 雲州住大明京　Unshū-jū Daiminkyō It means, "Daiminkyō, resident of Unshū" Unshū is a location name in Japan. It corresponds more or less with present-day Shimane Prefecture. The next kanji, 住, means "resident of". Daiminkyō (大明京) is the swordsmith's name. It's an unusual name, and I haven't looked in the books to find out why he chose such an unusual name for his professional name. And, that very last kanji can't be seen on the tang on your sword because it has been abraded and rusted away, as I mentioned earlier. (No need to worry about being offensive. If you have any more questions, ask away!)

↑　Yes, I think that's right. Takahashi Ihachi. For the sword, there should be one more character on the mei, but it is completely lost due to abrasion and rust. It's not a very significant detail. We can still surmise what the full mei would have been, and the details of the sword will validate who the maker is (or ought to be). Unshū-jū Daiminkyō　　with that last bit lost. I don't think he was a very prodigious smith. I don't know much about him, other than what I can find on an internet search.

Mumei, Kyō-sukashi. (無銘　京透) No further detail regarding the maker/era. The rest of the certificate describes the tsuba's features: design, style, etc. Edit: A few of the lines describe the tsuba's features. The rest is boilerplate, except for the date of issue.

I don't think Akira is the correct translation for Mr. Takahashi's given name. There are two characters used for the given name, and the second character is 八 (hachi), so the name is going to be 勘八 (Kanpachi) or something like. Can't make out the preceding character. A closer shot of that one section might help. Swordsmith's signature is 雲州住大明京 (the last character is either cut off, or obliterated). Plenty of fakes around, so there is no guarantee your signature isn't a forgery.

Posting as a spoiler for those wanting to try on their own. Lid (which is fairly legible, and doesn't need to be put as a spoiler) says 与四郎　Yoshirō The one in red is kind of iffy, but from the context it feels like this is the only possibility. If the tsuba is hira-zōgan, then there is no question.

Maybe trying to be 経家 (Tsuneie).

Hi Steven, Yes, we are still meeting. Usually we meet on the first Friday of every month, 7:00pm - 9:00pm at the address I gave above. This month we didn't meet because everyone was basically present at the SF sword show, so I think the next meeting will be on September 5th. Notices are usually posted on Facebook. (You can also contact the club via Facebook DM, or you can contact me through the private message feature here on this site.) https://www.facebook.com/NankaTokenKaiSoCal Steve

The first number is the era year, the following four are the western calendar year, and the last number is the month of the shinsa session. This one is Heisei 9 (1997), March. Starting with the Reiwa era, they added a "0" before any single-digit era year, so nowadays an era year of 9 would be listed as "09". I don't know why the month is expressed in three digits (i.e. "003" for March). This style changed to just a two-digit style from 1998.

Kozuka and fuchi/kashira are signed by Ryūchiken Teruyuki (龍池軒英随). Tsuba is signed by Koreyoshi (之芳). Interesting that the poem should be completed by fittings from two different artists.

The writing on the fittings is from a 4-lined poem by the classical Chinese poet Wang Wei (王維). Each fitting has a different verse. On the tsuba 弾琴復長嘯　 On the kozuka 深林人不知　 On the fuchi/kashira 明月来相照　 The first verse (独坐幽篁裏) is missing. Maybe it is supposed to be inferred from the other bits. Or maybe it was on a fitting that got lost. Anyway, the translation is Alone in the bamboo grove, I strum my lute (koto) and sit and sing, with only the light of the moon as my companion. 琴 in Japanese is the stringed instrument called the koto. In the poem it actually refers to a Chinese zither. In Japan, the poem represents a sort of Zen aesthetic (solitude, nature, contemplation).

Yes, the one on top is Hatakeda Moriie, the one on the bottom is Kunihiro.

千代治作 = Chiyoharu-saku. Location could be Koga (Ibaraki), or it could be Furukawa (Fukushima, also Hyogo), both readings are possible. I don't have my Wakayama reference with me (I'm here in SF enjoying the sword show ) so I don't know which one it is. Deep side note, I used to live in Koga, Ibaraki. It's where I bought my first sword.