Jonas Ne

During the appreciation of nihonto this is true. However there are many kenjutsu kata that practice touching the blade in some way with you hands. Maybe a samurai using one of these techniques died and a blade was scavenged?

On the note of fingerprints etching stains into the steel. I suppose it would be hard to know, but has anyone ever found a nihonto with an ancient person's fingerprints on the blade?

I'm a super amateur at this so what I'm saying may be completely incorrect but imma give it a shot. When looking very closely at the blade under magnification and the naked eye, towards the HA (which appears more in polish) I see swirls and almost circular traits that resemble an Itame hada. I read that Itame is a mixture between masame and mokume. Am I observing incorrectly? If not what would that mean for the blade? It appears very prominent in the correct lighting and doesn't seem to be lifted from the steel as an oil stain I imagine would be.

Today I received the Tanto purchased from Mark that he posted in a previous thread. Here are some of the better pictures that I could take of the blade. I plan on submitting the blade to the upcoming NTHK shinsa. There is some surface rust along the corner of the mune and the signature is really hard for me to see unless in perfect lighting which I tried to capture here. I havent done any measuring yet but will update the thread as soon as I do so. On another note, is this blade in a good enough polish to submit to a shinsa? I have never submitting a blade before and am not familiar with the process. In the meantime I will be doing As much research into the blade as I can in my freetime.

Yep, it came in Shira-saya with a wooden habaki attached to the shira-saya. As you said the nakago seems poorly shapen and the file marks also seem almost random (where they can be seen).

I recently purchased this tanto at a garage sale. The seller is the son of a WWII medic and his father told him the story of how he obtained it. I took this with a grain of salt but nonetheless interesting. During an air attack on US ships a Japanese pilot was shot down and crashed onto the deck of US ship. The pilot was still alive when found with the tanto in his stomach. He later died of the injuries and the sellers dad took this home. It looked authentic (was covered in thick old oil) so i bought it for 100$ took it home and here it is cleaned up.

Correct 😂, I did mean inches not cm thank you.

There are no openings or blisters on the KISSAKI, it is just the manner in which I took the photo that makes it appear as such combined with the surface scratches. I am aware the blade is somewhat tired and just wanted a sword that was of modern papers to research and admire until I can afford to move on to more prestigious blades. The only reason I commented on the length is that I could not find a single blade to have been shortened to that extent from this school. Most were around 26cm or longer which I thought to be somewhat strange. I paid only 1200 for the blade.

My first Hozon papered Katana. I thought it was very interesting how short the blade is and how shallow the sori is. The sori is only 2.1cm and the blade happens to only be 62.4 cm long. When looking into the blade I found that most blades attributed to Naminohira were munch longer than this, so this is a rather short katana. It has some minor flaws along the blade and is out of polish, but none the less I think a great first papered sword.

I purchased this tanto purely for the blade. But it had a mei and I was wondering if the mei was authentic or not. I tried researching the smith which appears to be Nobuyoshi. But I couldnt find any signatures on tanto. I searched the sword smith index for Nobuyoshi and found a few smiths that signed Nobuyoshi but no photo examples. Anyways, wondering if you all had any opinions on its authenticity! Thanks so much again.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have an opinion on if the signature is gimei? I tried researching the signature to not much avail. I believe the signature is Nuboyoshi?

My first tanto! It has a bit of ware along the mune. It was only 300$ so I would not be surprised if the signature was inauthentic. Nonetheless, happy I got my first tanto.

Can someone please translate this Mei for me, thank you!

May I ask who Komonjo is? I see that name/term thrown around every once in a while and it never seems to be in a positive light.