Kodachi Mei?

[harvg]

 

Hi all, just picked up this sword, wondering if it would be a Kodachi?? The mei would seem to support this, but just guessing. Sword has a cutting blade length of 14 1/4" and a nakago of 5 1/2". Any help in translating the mei of either side would be greatly appreciated!

 

harvg

[harvg]

 

Sorry, here is the other side of tang....

 

harvg

[Thierry BERNARD]

http://www.jssus.org/nkp/koto.html

[sanjuro]

harvg.

 

Just on the basis of a very cursury glance, the nakago appears to be signed katana mei. A kodachi would be signed tachi mei would it not?

[Thierry BERNARD]

備州長船祐定

[Stephen]

all very basic nihonto kanji, break out the books....lol

[harvg]

Okay, looks like Katana mei, and so far I think I have translation of: Bishu Naga .....still working on finding the rest. No clue on the other side....lol

 

Harvg

[Jussi Ekholm]

 

  Reveal hidden contents

This is what I think I see on the ura side.

 

天正三年八月日

 

 

Added tags so you can try it yourself.

[Gabriel L]

Hi Harvg. With practice this particular mei (maybe the most common mei of all?) will become an instant recognition pattern for your.

 

For now, I recommend you check out this page and note that the "naga" character 長 has another reading when it's part of a certain town name… the biggest production center for Japanese swords in history. A good thing to learn!

 

Then the last two characters are part of the smith name. Check out here: http://jssus.org/nkp/kanji_for_mei.html

 

As to the reverse side, it's a date. The first two characters are in the link Thierry sent you. The following characters are a mix of numbers and time units, if you check out the common characters page again (http://jssus.org/nkp/common_kanji.html) you should find them.

 

Good luck!

[Jean]

For the date

 

http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/kanji/nengo.htm

 

Gabriel, I tried for an hour to add something to your post but it was exhaustive..... :D

[harvg]

Great tutorial guys! Think I have a mei of Bishu Osafune Sukesada. Gonna take me a lot longer to do the date...

 

harvg

[Jean]

Harvey,

 

Try the link I provided.

 

- when did Sukesada worked?

 

Find in the table provided the era. After you have the year and the month.

[harvg]

Okay...crude date reading...?? Tensho/3/year/8/month/day......with Tensho being 1573. This would make the smith SUK848, with a Hawley rating of 90.......so probably gimei...lol

 

harvg

[Peter Bleed]

And before you even begin "reading" anything, the shape and size of the nakago will tell you what the first characters have to say.

Peter

[harvg]

Sword pics to go with mei....

 

harvg

[ROKUJURO]

Harvey,

 

are there traces of heavy grinding on the KISSAKI? Looks as if a piece of the tip was broken off and tried to 'repair' with an angle-grinder. Not one of the traditional methods.....

[Gabriel L]

Good job on the mei Harvey. It does indeed read 備州長船祐定 Bishū Osafune Sukesada, 天正三年八月日 Tensho sannen hachigatsu bi. That would translate to Sukesada of Osafune, Bizen province / a day in the eighth month, third year of Tensho era. 1573 was Tensho 1, so Tensho 3 (two years later) is 1575. That may seem trivial to say but when starting out a lot of people make a calendar addition error via an accidental "year zero" assumption.

 

Now that you've done this mei, the next time you will probably find it slightly easier… "oh look, another date, well I can recognize year and month…" that sort of thing. Every time gets more and more natural.

 

BTW, please remember that the NMB rules include signing your name at the bottom of each post (you can set it as your signature in your profile options).

[harvg]

Thank you for all your help! Mei translated, now the harder task of determining if it is gimei. Big name smith with a Hawley rating of 90, so these days, that pretty much assures that it is gimei.......

 

harvg