hunting knife with Hamon

[Peter Bleed]

Dear Friends,

Last night, a friend brought over a Japanese knife for assessment. It looks like classic belt hunting knife, cheap pig skin scabbard, solidly built aluminum grip with antler/bone slabs with cross-hatched grinding and a bit of red dye. The small cross guard has something like the flowing stream below a Kikusui and there is a sort of "Fuji-gata habaki". The blade is kammuri-otoshi with hi on one side only but that hi is clearly machined. I saw no hit of hada.

Here's the kicker. The blade clearly had a hamon. It is certainly Post-War. I read it as a 1950s looking rig, but I have never seen one. It does NOT look like those sexy knifes that the current generation is making to beat sword production regulations.

I have two questions.

1) Were swordsmiths making these things in the early post-War era?

2) Are they collectible objects of sword history.

Peter

[drbvac]

Don't happen to have any pictures??

[ROKUJURO]

Peter,

 

difficult to say without pictures, but as far as a feature like HAMON on a blade is concerned, I can say that to my knowledge this was not done in Europe at the production time you see this knife in. I cannot speak for Japan, but I could imagine that a Japanese swordmith without employment or permission to work could have made it after the war, including a HAMON as he was able and used to produce.

 

If a knife is a collectible item will depend on the provenance, I think. In fact you can collect anything, but in this case you will probably only be able to put this knife into a sword context if you can find out the maker. If he happens to have been a swordsmith, then it might be an interesting item in his personal history, but perhaps not NIHONTO related.

[Peter Bleed]

Thanks Brian and Jean,

You are right, I should have grabbed an images. I am pretty sure that this is on the very margins of nippon-to, but I will try to click a pick because it is "on the margins" of this thing we do.

Peter