Bruce Pennington

Excellent, thanks! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Dee, Would it be possible to get a full-length photo of that papered example for my files? I also want to put that kakihan in the Stamps doc.

It's simply a case of the Ideal giving way to the real. Oaths and loyalty are beautiful and necessary, but humans are faulty and fallible. One of the most recognized examples is the marriage oath. Swearing before God and Man to be faithful, yet many fail. Swearing "...till death do us part," yet divorce is rampant. Some people, by nature, are idealists. Some simply pragmatic.

Hi Julian! You have quite an interesting sword, there. The all-brown tassel was used by the civilian branch of the military called Gunzuko. You can google that and learn about them, but they did support functions like maintenance, admin., officer training, and many more functions. See Nick Komiya's discussion on the brown tassel here: The All Brown Tassel. But the sword fittings are not war fittings, but for a presentation sword. The style is called "tachi" and was seen during WWII as presentations in various context. My final point is that the signature, or "mei" as it is called, includes a kakihan, or kao, at the end that I have not seen before. There are 6 WWII smiths listed in Sesko's book with the Masatsugu name, but not with this mei. But that is not unusual as Sesko's book does not show 100% of the swordsmiths working during the war. It is possible your sword was the Suishinshi Masatsugu of the 1800's but that would require evaluation of the Nihonto experts. Here is the bio on him: "MASATSUGU (正次), Tenpō (天保, 1830-1844), Musashi – “Kawabe Hokushi Suishinshi Fujiwara Masatsugu” (河部北司水心子藤原正次), “Ushū Yamagata-sh Masatsugu” (羽州山形士正次), “Suishinshi Masatsugu” (水心子正次), “Tatebayashi-shin Kawabe Suishinshi Fujiwara Masatsugu” (館林臣河部水心子藤原正次), “Masatsugu” (正次), “Masatsugu saku” (正次作), real name Kawabe Hokushi (河部北司), gō Suishinshi (水心子), he was the son of the 2nd gen. Suishinshi Masahide and succeeded as 3rd gen. of this lineage but without using the name Masahide, his father died early so he had to finish his apprenticeship under Taikei Naotane (大慶直胤), he also married Naotanes daughter and worked for the Akimoto family (秋元), the daimyō of the Tatebayashi fief (館林藩), but from Edo´s Shitaya-Kachimachi (下谷徒町), he died on the eleventh day of the third month Man´en one (万延, 1860), he was well versed in all traditions and hardened for example a narrow kō-chōji-midare in the Bizen tradition or a chū-suguha- – 573 – hotsure in the Yamashiro tradition, sometimes Honjō Yoshitane (義胤) carved horimono onto his blades, we find also works with a kijimomo-gata nakago, the yasurime are kiri and he mostly signed with a kaō, jō-saku"

Mal, thank you for joining the discussion. My slight modification would be, and strictly just opinion/theory, it was made and sold fully as a civilian sword. Then, a shop or an officer, bought it and had the army fittings swapped in, including leather cover (these quite often never make it to us in this day and age). But that's just my opinion and we all know what those compare to!!! Ha!

Ha! I feel your pain! Been there, done that! I mostly have the terms down now, but will still occasionally have to look one up. It will come. So, others that study nihonto/gendaito (traditionally made blades) will chime in, but I don't see enough details due to the wartime polish and the wear & tear condition to tell if it was traditionally made or not. But then, I'm not very good at that. You have a cool sword, and a significant piece of WWII history. I don't think we've posted care and cleaning tips. Here's a good page: Japanese Sword Care. Google "Japanese sword cleaning kits" and you'll get a plethora of available options, most under $20. There's not many more things more soothing than to sit with your chogi ball and oil rag, cleaning your blade. Seriously, I love it.

@Don sweet I thought Seattle had a Japanese sword club, but I cannot find it. @Scogg Sam, do you know of one? I did find one that meets in Vancouver. You are welcome to find a local sword expert. But we see many of these Damascus blades every year, and it is something used by the Chinese not Japanese sword makers. BTW, the signature on your blade is not Kuneshige. I don't recognize it at all.

Out of 114 souvenirs on file, I have found that 21 of them have sarute. I didn’t do an exact measure of the styles, but they seem to be evenly distributed between high-quality style, plain metal like a type 95, and cloth. No way to know if these were part of the original manufacturer or added later by collectors. Three of them had the all brown tassel.

Good one, Nazar! I didn't have that one. Thanks.

It caught my eye that the company had shops in China. The painted numbering on the nakago looks modern, too.

Hi Jens, Others will know more, but while we wait, the logo on the nakago (tang) is the same as the Nakano Shoten: Nakano Shoten Located in Tokyo. This company was owned by Mr. Nakano. In addition to Tokyo, the company had shops in China. The company provided a full range of koshirae. The tsuka wrap is folded in the Japanese way - alternating fold directions. Chinese work usually folds in one direction. So, that seems legit. However the whole thing appears pretty new. One thing that bothers me is the bohi, or fuller groove on the blade. It starts too far down the blade from the handle and is not well defined, compared to Japanese work. My gut feel is that this is a modern reproduction. I don't know if Nakano is still operating, either.

Following discussion. I'm mostly living with my daughter's family south of Sacramento and am wanting to drop down for a visit some Fri - Sun'ish in the coming months. If you guys get a meeting going, I'll try to make it that weekend. But no worries if it doesn't happen.

Someone else may have a more defined idea of when the program started, but I've always heard late '41 to early '42. So, yeah, a Feb '41 would even predate that estimation. However, as I understand, it's just an estimate. One of the guys that focus on this, @vajo or @Kiipu or @mecox, etc, may fine tune that.

Oops! Sorry, my Stamp-obsession got the best of me! Ha!

Sam, For comparison, SMR/Mantetsu made between 38,000 and 50,000 swords, yet I only have 400 on file (which is not even 1 month's production amount) and I have been tracking them for years. I bet if you started a dedicated survey and searched the web for a few years, you'd find more than you have now.

Marcin, My earliest observed star stamped blade is Feb 1941: STAR Blades 1. 1941, Feb Kochi Akikuni T98 Csymmes, NMB 2. 1941, Jun Gifu Kanetoshi, Murayama T98 Bangbangsan, NMB 3. 1941, Aug Yamagata Akiyoshi, Fujita T98 Stephen V, NMB 4. 1942, Feb Saga Masatsugu Ganko, NMB 5. 1942, Mar Gunma Kanetsugu RS Ganko, NMB 6. 1942, Spring Gifu Kanenobu RS Ganko, NMB 7. 1942, May Yamagata Akiyoshi, Fujita RS Crusader22, NMB 8. 1942, May Ehime Hiromasa Robin McLean, email 9. 1942, June Saga Masatsugu Na Ho on mune Shuriken, NMB 10. 1942, Jun Shimane Okimitsu IJASWORDS, NMB 11. 1942, Aug Akita Chikamitsu 406 Peter(C),NMB 12. 1942, Aug Saga Masatsugu Kapp/Monson,pg82 13. 1942, Aug Fukushima Shigefusa Ho on mune MeCox, NMB 14. 1942, Aug Tokyo Sukehiro 1525 Slough, pg 162 15. 1942, Aug Saga Yoshitada ebay 16. 1942, Sep Saga Kanemoto Na Ho on mune Zentsuji2, NMB 17. 1942, Sep Kumamoto Morinobu 94; Ho Ho mune 18. 1942, Autumn Niwa Kanenobu Slough 19. 1942, Oct Yamagata Akiyoshi 153 RS Worthpoint.ebay RS 20. 1942, Oct Gifu Kanenobu Slough

Marcin, The army bought and collected swords from smiths all over the country, whether they were RJT qualified or not. Also, many private shops were making gunto fittings and selling gunto on the market.

Interesting. Also, the stamped number 26 would normally be seen on the seppa, as well. Well, Sara's dad brought it back, so like many others we've seen, we're left with a couple options. Either he found a sword that needed a tsuba and found a tsuba to put on it, or it was a replacement 'in the field.'

Interesting with the "P Y" stamped in it! The "N" in diamond is an unidentified shop logo.

Nice one, Calabrese!

More of a question for @PNSSHOGUN. I'm usually wrong when talking 94/98 differences.

That's an interesting question, Mal. I have seen these in a wide variety of mixed civil/army fittings, and always have assumed they were carried by regular army officers that had brought their own sword from home to be fitted out for service. Or, I've imagined sword shops buying civil swords and re-fitting them with a variety of military parts to sell to officers. However, I've never actually heard or read who was allowed to carry them. I checked Ohmura's pages for this style. Sounds like he said that both officers and civil employees carried them: "It is checked with record or a photograph of those days, the soldiers of each class attached the suspension mount to the scabbard of a Uchigatana-mounting, and covered by leather, and did the carrying as a Guntō. Army civilian employees were also doing the carrying of such a Guntō. Generally, the color of the army leather cover was brown and the navy leather cover was black." In my survey of Gunzoku swords, I've found an equal number of fully gunto vs civil re-fit with the Gunzoku tassel. Part of the difficulty comes with these civil re-fit ones when they come with standard officer tassels (blue/brown and red/brown), because for years, the Gunzoku were permitted to carry regular officer's gunto with tassels. It was only the Uniform Regulation change of 1940 that assigned them the all-brown tassel.

John is selling a second/removable haikan (belt loop), if you are thinking of adding one

One thing that you learn after hanging around World War II swords is the phrase “never say never, never say always with World War II swords“.

Crimson missed military has some army menugi for sale: Miscellaneous parts