Please Help With Translation Of My Father Inlaw's Sword

[richardrose9967]

This is the tang of a sword my father inlaw brought back in WW2, late 1944 Shin Gunto fittings. Can someone translate the date and maker. My guess is Nobumitsu is the maker, Showa ? May.? I can 't figure the year.  He was a great American.

[IanB]

Richard, The blade is dated 20th year of Showa (1945) and is signed by a smith called Nobumitsu.

Ian Bottomley

[ZZr1100]

Gday Richard, Im VERY new here, and VERY new to nihonto and VERY new to kanji, so you should probably just ignore my answers. I'm doing it for me more than you:) I'm sure somebody who has YOUR interest in mid will be along before too long.

 

For the date I got Showa, 2, 10, nen(year) (1945) then I'm not sure what he's got going on, is it a sichi(7) that's all over the shop(it was '45 after all) or a 2, although it's nothing like his previous 2. The last charachter should be gatsu(month). Pretty sure it is.

 

I'm with you on 信Nobu光mitsu. Quite similiar to this Mei. found here http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/oshigata/index.htm(number 2)

 

i

 

If you're as new to this as I am, we should both give ourselves a pat on the back...at least until we find out what it REALLY says. A quick google search has come up with a few Nobumitsu showato/gendaito smiths. Some better than others. Unfortunatly I have to head to poker, so I can't troll through them all till later.

 

Good luck with the search.

 

Matt

 

Edited 3 times for grammar:/

Edited May 7, 2015 by YZed426

[ZZr1100]

Took me that long to work that out, that somebody beat me by 30mins...and I'd started 30min before he posted it!! At least we were right :D

[IanB]

Matt, Richard,  These inscriptions are very stereotyped. If you see just the two characters, as on this blade, 10,000:1 it is the maker's name. Very, very rarely it may be the name of the blade or something. Similarly with the date- first two characters are the nengo or year period, next some numerals and then 年 nen meaning year. Don't forget you need to take 1 away from the numerals before adding it to the nengo date. In this case 1926 + (20 -1) = 1945. What then follows is generally meaningless because the Japanese used a lunar calendar and unless you have the right tables their months and days do not correlate with our calendar.

Ian Bottomley

[richardrose9967]

Thanks everyone, My father inlaw was on general MacArthur staff and one of the first U.S military into the Imperial Palace. He got the sword at this time.

[Brian]

Matt,

You did great! Congrats on trying, which is a great step in the right direction.

 

Brian