Hi people!
I recently bought a katana sword and I want to find some info abot it. The tang was signed but I don't understand what it says. I bought this sword from a local antique shop. He sayd he bought it from Germany at a military fair. I cleaned the tang a bit to see the kanji radicals more clearly. It was all covered in rust. I only cleaned the area where the radicals are. I didn't touch nothing else. The main thing i'm concerned about is that the blade isn't sharp like a shinken should be. That and the serial number which makes it a mass-produced blade in my opinion.
If you have some spare time then you could visit this site: http://web.zone.ee/oldkatana I have some closeup pics there. Read the "Katana README" first. After some research I found out that on the one side of the tang says "first year of Shouwa". But the other side and the tsuba are still a untranslated.. all the info i have right now is in the katana readme.
I found this article http://www.jssus.org/nkp/fake_japanese_swords.html and there is a exact tsuba under fake tsubas.
I hope i get some help from here couse i don't know where to go with my problem anymore.
