Tanto - New find

[dnmmilo]

G'day Guys, I recently acquired a group of 3 showa period shin gunto (one fitted with Type 98 mounts and the the other two with Type 3) but along with those was also given a tanto. I know very little about these weapons, and this one was labelled with a tag that indicated it might at some time have been part of a collection. I've attached some photo's and wondered if anyone was able to tell me a little more about what I have here (genuine or not, period etc etc). Grateful for any information or advice. Cheers David

[Grey Doffin]

Hi David,

I think you have the tip end of a broken sword cobbled together with some lower end misc. fittings to sell to a tourist in Japan either in Meiji or after WWII.

Grey

[dnmmilo]

Cheers Grey, Thanks for your info, I really appreciate it. I wonder was this common practice during the Meiji period and does this sort of blade have a common designation? Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. Those novices amongst us are always grateful to you guys when you are able to share. Cheers David

[Grey Doffin]

Hi David,

My understanding (others might know more) is that during Meiji, after sword wearing had been banned and during an influx of western tourists eager to plunder the art of a newly opened country, many low end (and some high end) Nihonto left Japan. Tourists wanted trinkets and merchants were more than happy to provide them. After WWII, during the occupation, again there were many westerners who didn't know Nihonto but wanted some. There were also a lot of broken swords available. The nakago on your tanto is so crudely made and not what you'd expect to find on a real tanto; I think it likely was made in Hurry from a sword fragment. Your fittings are low end; again to be expected if I'm correct about what you have.

Question for everyone: Has there ever been a high quality shinogi zukuri tanto?

Grey

[angkorwat]

Good morning, Gentlemen,

 

What makes the fittings low-end? May you provide some basics and directions.

 

Thank you,

 

Leroy U.

[Alex A]

Hi Leroy, check out the Nanako features in this thread. A good Tsuba, and a really good tsuba.

 

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17413&p=154223&hilit=ALEX+NANAKO#p154223

[angkorwat]

Totally see it now.

 

Leroy U.

[Darcy]

Hi David,

Question for everyone: Has there ever been a high quality shinogi zukuri tanto?

Grey

 

I haven't. I asked Bob Benson about this too and he gave the thumbs down.

 

Any tanto with a shinogi that is acceptable seems to be either moroha-zukuri, osoraku-zukuri or some other derivative. The yokote is bad news on a tanto. It's a curious thing about why it's so abhorrent. But it just looks like sin on its face. Since form follows function it would appear then to make the argument for the tanto as primarily a stabbing weapon, and that the yokote exists to manufacture a kissaki, which exists to top off a cutting instrument. Which is not of course breaking new ground for anyone here, but just interesting that it logically follows from something so simple.

 

So the converse would appear to be the cheese knife effect.

 

Taking a nice wide kitchen knife and trying to cut through a block of cheddar is going to make you an unhappy kitchen samurai. I've put forward an analogy to the niku on a katana being like the prow of a boat, both need to be shaped correctly in order to part the material they are cutting and have it flow around them efficiently. So ending this bar-with-niku requires coming to a point, and if most of your cutting is at the monouchi, a gradual taper to the point will ruin your niku. The solution to that problem is a yokote and a special purpose kissaki which flattens the niku and brings the ha to the mune for an intersection of the four surfaces of the blade.

 

The rapid widening of a typical kissaki is not efficient at all for stabbing and penetration when compared to a narrow tanto, and the more rounded you make the niku on a tanto, then the more work it has to do for pushing material aside, which equates to less penetration. So the shape of the tanto is a tradeoff between enough strength to not break during penetration, and slender enough to penetrate efficiently.

 

Shinogi zukuri then just ruins your day if you are a tanto.

 

Osoraku-zukuri gets around that by making the kissaki the majority part of the tanto, so there is no rapid blowing up from point to nearly full width in the tanto. So it would penetrate just fine though having a yokote and a shinogi. It is an end-run around the rules.

 

Moroha-zukuri also seeks to improve by turning the blade into a diamond shape. It's not clear to me, but I think it probably would show less friction as a thick mune may at some point be like trying to pound a wedge between two blocks and at some point it may become an extraction problem.

 

This engineering of shapes is very interesting to me, and it would be very interesting to put those though actual engineering tests. I don't think the shapes come out of nowhere, I think they are always intentions to solve some kind of problem presented by existing solutions. Conservative shapes always represent the tried-and-true methods. It worked for my granddad, and it worked for my dad, so it will work for me. And then the outliers represent novel methods meant to try to gain an edge (ack), with some failing, some working, but maybe having unforeseen drawbacks.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Interesting analysis, Darcy - thanks! I have wondered for a long time why osoraku-zukuri & moroha-zukuri shapes had evolved - lots of extra work for the smith without a lot of obvious advantages.

 

I'll see if I can figure out a way to put all three shapes through a finite-element analysis program to determine friction. The only problem is creating the correct & precise shapes in my 3D AutoCAD program, so if anyone happens to have any or all those blade shapes already created, please let me know.

 

Ken