Bruce Pennington

and

I cannot speak to the mei, but out of the 10 I have on file, 2 of them were signed on this side, with the Kiku ichi.

A nice leaf mon habaki, posted by @lonely panet on a waki he's selling HERE

Pip, We often see blades made during WWII in civilian fittings, then re-fitted in varying degrees for the military. I've never read, anywhere, an explanation for this. The options are speculative only. But it's likely that civilians were buying swords throughout the war for their own reasons. Then, the military/government comes out with a big public push for sword donations and the sword gets donated and/or sold to the military. Like you suggested, families would sometimes buy a sword for their son, and this could have come anywhere in the range of cheap, to average, to highly upgraded fittings. These style swords sell on ebay roughly in the $1,000 USD range, plus or minus a couple hundred. Final note, the cord on yours is from a sword bag. PS: is that a small stamp above the signature, near or underneath the hand guard? If so, it could give us a probable date range when it was made.

Hi Nick! You have a nice sword there. It is an old family sword refitted for World War II. You might want to post this on the Nihonto forum, they will want photos of the bare, naked blade, a measurement of the cutting edge and a couple of close-up shots of the body of the blade and the blade tip. They should be able to give you a ballpark idea of how old displayed is. https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/3-nihonto/

Yes, it matches all the others I've seen. They appeared to make the blades out of a single steel, probably tempered (?), but no hamon. Which, unfortunately, is the same way the modern fakers have made them, which makes it quite difficult to separate the fakes from the wartime swords made by occupied peoples.

Dang, John, that's pretty conclusive! Thanks for posting this. When I went to file this, I found that I had another one, similar paint job, with a Hidetoshi blade in it. Oddly, it's a different mei. Here's the other one:

FWIW - a 2 kanji mei posted on this Wehrmacht-awards thread. He didn't post blade photos, though.

@Spartan117 Nice example, Alexis, thanks for posting. Definitely the Chinese plum rather than a Japanese sakura (cherry blossom). If you've read this whole thread, then you know as much as we do. Predominant theory is made in occupied areas for collaborating troops.

Jeffrey, Congrats on the great find and welcome to the hobby! Go through Ohmura's great site to learn about WWII swords: WWII Gunto (military sword) Parts and Names You can click on the "Table of Contents" on that page and find all the Army and Navy, officer and NCO swords of the war and how they look.

I would venture, though, that this blade tip shape is not a standard, or commonly seen shape on a sword found from the war - shobu-zukuri. It would have been something older, civil. Or it was simply something manufactured after the war, as stated earlier, for souvenir sales.

Some of these were made from the halves of swords cut in two after the war.

Just adding a link to Thomas' summary of variations:

Just chiming in to thank you guys for this study, really enjoying it! Sorry I can't help, but keep up the good work!

Sam & Thomas, I cannot remember who coined the terms, but in days-of-old there was a recognition of the version 2 and 2a, the difference being the the style of seppa. Is that something in this list? If not, should it be? Version 2 (old terms) Version 2a (old terms)

Thanks, Geraint. He is an interesting one, as he (or one of them?) sometimes uses a kiku with leaves & stem. I have two that way:

Hi guys! I file kiku marked blades. I have a few blades with Yasuhiro mei, various styles as you might expect. Only one with a proposed date range of 1660-70 and one in the 1700s. I can't find a Yasuhiro in Sesko using these kanji. So, my first question is how do we know about this guy at all? Examples: and What drove me to look into this is a current auction of a blade, kiku, Yoshihiro, and the seller claimed the date range to be in the 1300s. PRETTY sure the kiku wasn't being used that early, but then I couldn't find a reference to this kanji use in Sesko at all. Sorry for the extremely NuBee question. But looking to learn.

I see no images on those links, either.

And a special thanks to the anonymous donor!

On the bright side, that's a good price for one of these. Most of them being sold directly from China are around $150.

Sam, I have a copper and a Pattern 5, both back in Colorado (I'm in CA until January). If you don't get the shots you need before then, I'll get some to you. I have some pics on my laptop, but they're not as good as you'd like for your work.

Yes, I was surprised at how much these varied. Here is a monster that I had for a while:

John, I haven't been tracking then (I know, what a shocker! Ha!) Maybe @Kiipu or @BANGBANGSAN What I find very interesting, is the Type 94 with offset chuso (Yes, John @PNSSHOGUN has pointed this out) and the Type 98 with centered chuso:

Hi Eric, I am learning as we go with the kyugunto. Dawson, page 63, says your backstrap pattern is of the Type 19 kyugunto. He also states the second suspension mount was removeable on the 19s. If it is not, then this might be a Type 8. Is the blade signed? Can we get some shots of the nakago (tang)?

After looking it over more, I don't think it is stamped . Appears to be hammer and chiseled.