Polaria

I am afraid the blade is a bit of a horrorshow. Possibly a victim of an ill-advised "restoration" or some such thing. I tried to take some pictures of it under what passes for daylight at this time in Finland.

What on earth have they done? How do you even get that done?

Just checking, is this really "sufficient for single hand grip" and not "two hand grip"?

Standard army officer sword (shin gunto). The blade looks to be in quite a good condition, which is good. Keep the blade lightly oiled and don't touch it with bare hands. All the other parts seem to be there. Did you find the sword tassel somewhere with the sword or maybe tucked away in your grandfathers other stuff? If you find a tassel, even a broken one, it's likely from this sword and you want to keep it with the sword. Also, tassel colors can tell what was the rank of the officer that carried this gunto.

If the seller got the tang free of the handle I am sure you can do it too. It's not that hard, just get a hammer with wooden, rubber or plastic head and a little piece of wood to work with and take your time. These things were made as weapons, survive the rigors of battle and still be able to cut so it isn't that easy to break them as longs as you don't do silly things like stick it into a vice-grip or use pliers.

The traditional method of loosening a stuck grip is to lay the blade down on pillow so both the blade and handle are off the ground. Then tap the tsuba like Bruce told above. Use a little piece of wood and put it as close to habaki as possible, that way you spare the inside of the tsuba from jamming to the steel of nakago. When blade is not held by anything its inertia will still eventually loosen the fit. It is slower, but on the up side when the sword can move you cannot accidentally bend anything and make it stuck worse even if you used a bit too much power.

The hanger looks like a variation of this type. I have seen a couple of these before, though never with the markings.

I don't have a measuring tape in inches, but conversion table says 63,5 cm is almost exactly 25 inches.

A bit better pictures of the nakago and mei.

This is the best picture I could take of the mei and the nakago kissaki.

I live in Finland so at this time of the year any "natural light" is a hard to come by. I tried the best I could, so here goes nothing... The length of the nakago is just over 12 cm and the blade (measured from habaki to kissaki) is 63 cm.

I agree that the mei or the general state of nakago doesn't match with these. Found a bunch of mei examples form earlier Kaneyoshi. All of them were located on the side of the mekugi-ana like this blade has, but so far no mei I have found matches this one. Mostly the difference is the way the first character is written. My current theory is that the blade might predate WW2 era and be originally made / shortened for 1871, 1873 or 1877 pattern sword which had short one-hand handles.

I would guess the screws holding the sarute are a field replacement or repair by unit level armorer when the original have been broken or lost.

Here are full photos of the nakago on both side in case it is of use.

This blade was found inside a frankenstein gunto with what is likely genuine handle and fake saya. I was told the mei reads "Kaneyoshi", but the sword nakago is unusually (should I say unnecessaryly?) short and has three mekugi-ana of which only the one nearest to blade is in use right now. Any idea what this blade might be?

I approached the seller suggesting that the saya might be a fake. He said it was likely not the original saya of this sword, but denied strongly that it would be fake. This is a reputable antique seller so I am willing to give him the benefit of doubt. However I do not consider the discussion over yet, so here are some better pictures of the kochi-gane, ashi and shibabiki. You can see the mouth of the saya and the ishizuke in my previous posts. Are there any clear indications one way or another that you can see? I would really much want the saya to be genuine, but I am worried about so many little details just not quite matching what I've seen in other gunto sayas.

Now that is very strange. As for the blade I found two Kaneyoshi: https://nihontoclub.com/smiths/KAN2998 and https://nihontoclub.com/smiths/KAN3072

I took it apart again and found markings on the seppa. It also matches the tsuba and kind of doesn't. I am thinking there is at least a few washers missing here.

The saya is fitted to the type locking mechanism, but missing a seppa and on the blade side and thus a bit loose. I'll have to see if it was incorrectly put together. I wish I could take a better picture of the blade as there is a clear hamon line, but this is the best I got for now.

The tsuba seems to be just brass. Here are the pictures of the saya cap on both sides.

It is steel and unpainted. I don't know if it was never painted at all or if someone has purposefully stripped the paint from it. There is a little bit of what might have been gold colored coating in the saya near the chape.

Here are the pictures of the tang. Unfortunately I don't have the camera or the setup to take pictures of the blade that would be much of use.

So, I juts got this piece and can't really make up my mind about what I've got. There are a few things that puzzle me. Tsuba and kabuto-gane look well cast but still somehow "rough". Nakago is short and has three mekugi-ana, two are slightly larger than the one used in current handle. The blade is a horror show, it has a hamon that is clearly visible under good light, but it has been (re)sharpened with what looks like hand-file messing up the blade badly. Now it could be a fake, but it has the look and feel or age in all parts so I doubt it's quite recent.

My notes: "Damascus" blade. Big red flag. Tsuka-ito wrapped in style I've seen before only in modern chinese replicas. Another big red flag. Tsuba seems to be very rough and not very good cast. Markings in habaki look out of place.

Thanks for the better photos. All the fittings look absolutely correct for officer shin gunto and seem to be a quite good condition, too. Congratulations on a good find!