Ontario_Archaeology

I'd like to present this Type 98 Near Mint Gunto Koshirae for sale. I am asking 1800 CAD SHIPPED which is less than what I paid for it, however, I am flexible on price. All parts are matching #10, and it includes an imitation general tassel. This item is near mint with a few paint marks on the lower end of the Saya. The Saya length is about 74.5cm , and the Tsuka measures about 24.5cm, total length is 101.8cm. The silver Mon belongs to the Mori Family. All productive comments and offers are welcome.

From another thread I remember reading about a sword dealers experience selling swords to families getting their sons/brothers/fathers ready for war and I can't help thinking that there probably was a market for shorter swords. In that post there is only mention on the quality and the price of the swords being sold, however I believe that there may have been cases where shorter swords were probably bought because they were less cumbersome and maybe more practical. This maybe especially true for individuals who are in paratrooper/tank/submarine units where they maybe more aware that a full length sword may impede their fighting ability. This is however all guess work with no hard evidence to support it.

Unfortunately this looks like a Chinese Fake. Sorry. Japanese ww2 gunto don't have characters along the blade and the fittings are of higher quality. Sorry again for breaking the bad news

Sold for 4,544.80 Canadian

What I have done in the past is link them to items they have successfully shipped in the past and keep being persistent. Eventually they have "tried" and my items have always been sent. Personally I am having an issue right now with Japan Post not shopping ems to Canada and my packages are being held until that service resumes. Hopefully I don't run into the same issue with the shark leather when that resumes. If you keep having issues there maybe someone who lives in Japan on this forum that can help you get your item.

I thought I would bring back this thread, with this interesting gunto. It is absolutely beautiful! I assume it is going to be quite expensive, even if I could bid on it. https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/v789809687

A difference I see is the first post has a thick tsuba where as the other two do not.

Here are a few pictures of my lightweight..

Great thank you everyone. Any recommendations on how often to reapply? Or is once usually good enough.

Hello, I am wondering if there is any recommended product or treatment I should use on some of my leather gunto saya. Thanks, Matt

From an archaeologists perspective I think it is important to have as many confirmed real examples as possible documented for all to see. We can then analyze the patterns, similarities and differences together comparing the rare item to what we have confirmed. The most similar items we have to this zig zag navy tassel are the army general tassels, and even those vary from early - late war models. If we want to be more "scientific" about our analysis of these rare items I think we should have well detailed side by side pictures comparing the multi-coloured general tassels (early - late war variants) with these naval ones, what John has posted is a good start. In this case we have 1 naval example, if we can track down pictures of a few more to see how they compare to one another it would be beneficial to our understanding of them, however we will have to stick with comparing them to general tassels for now. This might be a bit over the top, but if we could try and standardize the background colour and the lighting conditions in which we photograph our tassels / gunto, I think it would make comparisons to other items a lot easier as colour and certain areas of the items will provide more information.

As Dawson states these examples would be early - mid war fittings/ accessories, if they were a "misprint" I would like to believe they would have been scrapped and not passed an inspection. It isn't out of the question for these zig zag patterned naval tassels to be special order for wealthier officers and might not show up in regulations. As Neil stated there are plenty of variants and fittings not described in regulations, and I believe that one could customize their gunto how ever they wanted and play loosely with the regulations as it made the gunto more personalized, compared to something uniform where personal attachment may not be a strong.

And to think I thought I was only missing the railway varient of the officer tassels! That tassel looks great.

Not exactly gunto display but ever since I saw the guide Stegel made in the General tassels thread, I thought it would make a good format for a display.

I replaced the red fabric with the kimonos and I think it looks better, what do you guys think?

Also here are better pictures of my display. I plan on using more "special pattern" propaganda kimonos to backdrop the rest of my collection....

It's been a lot more than a week but here are some extra photos...

And one more that wouldn't fit above

Close up images of the middle tassel, I'm not 100% sure on it. I meant to do this in December but got busy....

The seller yymek has constantly reposted these for over two years. I saw them on buyee when I first joined, I am 99% sure I've never seen an item sell from that seller. Everything I saw a year or two ago is still available.

this might be a stupid question, but is Jauce the same service as buyee. If so is it any better?

What seemed most off to me was the 2552 stamped on the blade as well, I had not seen that before.

This just popped up on the bay, it almost looks put together? https://www.ebay.com/itm/233847137093

A bit ago there was another discussion on the same listing.