Roland

Well, the patina thing. I have thought about the possibility if the blade could be a Shinshinto copy of a late Nanbokucho sukata. On the other hand the steel of the blade looks really old. Hm, Yamoto influence is indeed a possibility too. The best will be to take some more pictures especially of the nakago and the mei. Close-ups perhaps. The colors and contrasts of the pics above is really sub-par... Thanx a lot for sharing Your ideas and insights. I'm curious about further comments!

No hagire, Mark! Just bad lighting. There were several marks from sandpaper, and also some kitae-ware. But no fatal flaws. It took some time to inspect both sides of the blade. A hagire, even one which may have been a result of a battle, not of a bad forging, would have been obvious for my old eyes. Well, I hope so :-)

Well. At this point I am not able to make further conclusions. The next step would be to study hamon, hada, boshi etc. to come to a theory which school or even which swordsmith as made this blade. I have to clean the blade the traditional way and try to shoot some better lighted photos Sorry by the way for the poor quality yet :-) Will there be a solution which includes all insights from the research of sugata, mon, mei and the story the steel itself is able to tell? I now add some detail shots of the blade... I feel a little bit like Sherlock Holmes without Dr. Watson in my investigations, trying to use deductive logics And with each and every new detail I am finding I question what I have observed. I'm still learning. So, what do You guys think? What's the true story behind this Tachi/Katana? Is it really a Koto blade, mounted in a Shion-gunto? Has it a o-suriake nakago? Does the nakago look like blade-steel? Lots of questions. If You like to do a kantei, just comment my amateurish investigations. Thanks in advance, I welcome Your presumptions.

Based on Mei… Though I assume that the mei which I identified as SUKENAGA is gimei – for my amateur's eye it looks quite sketchy and too "new" to be true – it may be interesting to have a look for swordsmiths wearing this name. Mainly because it is not one of the "big guns" which normally are preferred for later falsifications. After investigating afuresearch, Sho Shin, the Nihonto Knowlege Base etc., I was able to identify several SUKENAGA as possible candidates: SUKENAGA KO-AN 1278 Bizen no kuni (Koan), Fukuoka ichi, SUK330, working in the style of the Ichimonji school, Bizen, mid Kamakura. BUT: the blade's sugata doesn't fit his style! SUKENAGA RYAKU-O 1338: Working in the style of the Amato-Shikkage Noriaga school of Yamato Den: early to late Nanbukocho. BETTER, BUT: the blade's sugata doesn't completely fit this style. SUKENAGA O-EI 1394: Also working in the style of the Amato-Shikkage Noriaga school of Yamato Den: late Nanbukocho. BETTER: the blade's sugata does fit this style! SUKENAGA SHO-CHO 1428 (f: NAGAIYE) [sUK1032]: CHIKUGO province; worked to BUN-AN. Running ITAME. KO-NIE SUGU, KO-NOTARE or GUNOME-MIDARE with SUNAGASHI. Some in HITATSURA. HORIMONO are seen: early to mid Muromachi: BETTER: the blade's sugata does fit this style! SUKENAGA CHO-KYO 1487 (= MEI-O 1492?): OMI province, SUK347, working in the style of OMI - RAI MITSUKANE school of Yamashiro Den; ISHIDO Founder at GAMO-GORI ISHIDO-JI Temple. ICHIMONJI SUKEMUNE descendant from BIZEN. He followed ASHIKAGA YOSHIHISA for the siege of SASAKI ROKKAKU TAKAYORI with SAKYOnoSHIN MUNEMITSU students. One was KATSUMITSU of AKAMATSU MASANORI's HARIMA. SUKENAGA aided BIZEN influence in OMI with drawn MOKUME HADA and KO-CHOJI MIDARE BA, ICHIMONJI-style. Result: OMI offers BIZEN style to the SENGOKU; MEI: GOSHU GAMO JU SUKENAGA SAKU; late Muromachi: BUT: the blade's sugata doesn't fit this style! SUKENAGA TEN-MON 1532 (br: IYENAGA): working in the style of the Oishi-Sa school Running SHIRA-KE "White" ITAME with MASAME has JI-NIE. GUNOME-MIDARE or SUGUHA with ASHI. Some HITATSURA. HORIMONO seen: late Muromachi: BUT: the blade's sugata doesn't fit this style!

Based on family crest (Mon)… Two possibilities: 1.) After some research in f.e. the SamuraiWiki it seems to be the Mon of the Atagi samurai clan, during the 16th century Miyoshi and later Oda retainers, living on Awaji-shima – the biggest island of the Seto sea. May be the Nihonto has been handed down from generation to generation until WWII, when a son of the Atagi family went to war, and the blade was therefore mounted in a Shin-gunto and marked with the Atagi mon on the kabuto-gane. By the way: Because the mon is still on its place the owner of the blade has never officially surrendered (In this case he would have removed the family crest!). So he isn't alive. 2.) The Nihon Moncho of 1906 lists a quite similar family crest as the mon of the Hayashi family. The Hayashi clan has been a cadet branch of the Kono clan and served as important advisors to the Tokugawa shoguns. Over the centuries there have been lots of notable clan members from Hayashi Hachirozaemon to Count Hayashi Tadasu (1850-1913), a famous diplomat and statesman in Meiji period Japan who became resident minister to Great Britain in London, brought about the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 and found his final resting place in Tokyo's Aoyama Cemetery. Has the last owner of the blade been a grandson of Hayashi Tadasu?

Because of the special and quite individual features of the Katana/Tachi – length, family crest on kabuto-gane, Shin-gunto spacers rivited (!) to old iron tsuba, two characters gimei/mei – I try to approach the history behind from three directions… Based on Sugata… The long, elegant and slim blade with shallow sori, thin mune and not much Hiraniku, the longish chu-kissaki and a nakago which follows the sori of the nagasa reminds me of a koto tachi from the late Nanbukocho or early to mid Muromachi, which possibly has been shortened without loosing its torii-sori.

Dear Nihonto MB members, Before I start telling a story, loading up some pics and trying to initiate a kind of kantei please let me involve myself... Being a new member of this fascinating board I am not exaktly new to the Nihonto virus. Could be that my personal fascination for Nihonto goes a little bit further than the usual technical and esthetical considerations and the mere admiration of the perfection of the mastery of forging. I love it to investigate the history behind a blade! And I like it when some of this history has left it's marks on the steel (though: no hagire please!) Since several weeks I'm looking for some new objects of my desire (sorry, Larry, please have a little bit patience, I'm considering your blade too Recently I came across a quite interesting Shin-gunto blade, not in best condition perhaps. Especially the tsuka has to be restored. Several sandpaper marks show a lack of respect for the blade's history. What from the beginning on sparked my interest in it was the very elegant sugata and a small silver mon on the kabuto-gane. Yes, it seemed to be one of these quite rare ancestral blades put into service for WWII. So this long ancestral Koto (?) Tachi in Shin-gunto mounting of type 94 or 98, with family-crest on the kabuto-gane will be my first thread on this board. Please forgive me, when my considerations and observations about this blade are completely "off the mark". I am a newbie and just in an eternal learning mode... The blades characteristics: Blade type: Katana (suriage or o-suriage Tachi?) Length over all: 89.2 cm / 35-1/8 inches Blade length (nagasa): 71,4 cm / 28-1/8 inches Blade shape (sugata): (slim) Shinogi-zukuri Thickness mune-machi: 0.6 cm / 0.24 inches Width mune-machi: 2.9 cm / 1.14 inches Thickness yokote: 0.4 cm / 0.16 inches Width yokote: 1.6 cm / 0.63 inches Curvature (sori): Torii-sori 1.4 cm / 0.55 inches Mune type: Ihori (gentle oroshi) Grain structure (jihada): Masame-itame Temper line (hamon): Ko-midare / Ko-midare based on suguha Kissaki type: (longish) Chu-Kissaki Kissaki length: 2.7 cm / 1.06 inches Yokote: 1,0 cm / 0.39 inches Boshi type: Ichimonji kaeri or Jizo or Notare komi or kaeri-yoru Activities (hataraki): Sunagashi, Ko-nie, Ji-nie, a lot of fine chikei Tang type (nakago): futsu; ubu (possibly suriage or even o-suriage re-shaped, looks like blade-steel) Nakago length: 17,8 cm / 7 inches Nakago-jiri: Haagari Yasurime: Katte-sagari (not exactly, reshaped?) Mekugi-ana #: 3 (2 punched, 1 drilled) Mei: SUKENAGA (Gimei!?) Period: late Nanbukocho ? Koshirae: Shin-gunto 39 Pattern (?), Atagi-Mon on Kabuto-gane