I just obtained an old Japanese sword from WWII - from my grandfather's attic (who passed a while back) it had a bamboo tag on it that looks like an inventory tag? I managed to get the hilt off, but the characters are very dark and hard to get a shot of. I was debating a polish of the hilt to try and make out the characters, but looking at the posts some people might scream at me. Just trying to see if additional research would be a waste of time. I figure the right side of the tag is a year or inventory number and I found the bottom character of the gold on the hilt is a single syllable 'shi?'. If it doesn't look like it is an old Majong tile, I can take a few more photos amd post them - don't want to waste people's time. Thanks for any help I can get.
