Translation Guidence Pls

[cuttingedge59]

Hi Guys

I have been working at trying to decipher this mei that is on the nakago of a mino katana that i have .

My very limited opinion is that it is poorly carved and after a week or so searching online and trolling the available reference material regarding Kanji used for mei are starting to wonder if it actually means anything.

Just can't find anything that seems to resemble listed kanji,

 

Could someone give me a little direction or pointer as how to move forward with this. i have tried the stroke count option but either i can't count correctly or have been doing it wrong , same thing pretty much.

As much as i would appreciate a translation i would like to still have a go myself , so just a little help please.

 

Can i also say in passing that a couple of years ago I was also a newbie and am still here . Check in most days and throughly enjoy the wisdom , experience and point of view that is posted here .

 

Regards.

Chris nz

 

 

mino 1.pdf

[SteveM]

I hate to say it, but the signature looks suspicious. My guess is that the kanji are supposed to be as follows;

 

 

光明囗吉春

 

 

The reasons I think this signature is suspect are

1. Amateurish (childlike) execution of the kanji.

2. The problematic squiggle in the center. I can't imagine what this is supposed to be.

3. The third identifiable kanji (the one below the squiggle) is an odd kanji that was not in general use prior to the last century. It was considered a "new" kanji in the middle of the last century, but then fell out of use again after kanji were standardized in 1947. Its a bit of a worry.

 

Edit: I just realized the third kanji (the one after the unidentifiable squiggle) is so obscure that it is not displaying properly on the screen. The difference is the uppermost horizontal line is shorter than the second line in the kanji used on your sword. The actual/official way to write it is with the uppermost horizontal line being longer than the second horizontal line. To say this another way, the top of the kanji should be 士 but instead in your sword it is 土.

 

4. Together, the identifiable kanji form a plausible Japanese name, but this name is not found in any reference.

 

Any one of these problems in isolation isn't enough to prove anything. There are lots of signatures which look very amateurish to me, but in reality they are just highly stylized. There are a lot of signatures that look very squiggly. There are also a lot of strange kanji in use on signatures. And lastly, there are surely some signatures which don't appear in any reference materials (in other words, very obscure smiths). However, taken all together, those issues leave me thinking that the signature is a big problem.

 

It is almost unthinkable that a smith, even a novice smith, would create a sword and then muck up the signature on it.

 

But, this is just my own amateur musings on the signature, what really matters is the sword itself.

[ROKUJURO]

Chris

there are some YOSHIHARU in the books. Look and compare, if that might be correct.

[cuttingedge59]

Thanks Steve and  Jean ,

 

I have had misgivings regarding the mei since i started researching it , so went back to the sword . Every thing else seems okay bearing in mind

that my level of knowledge is at novice level . However it is as it should be for a Mino school sword according to the books.

 

regards

Chris

[Shugyosha]

Hi Chris,

 

I've had a quick look at Hawley's which lists a couple of Yoshiharu's using the kanji on your sword: one in Hoki and the other in Yamashiro, so no obvious connection to Mino there also a quick look through Malcolm Cox's book on Mino To doesn't (obviously) reveal any smiths signing with this mei. 

 

As Steve says, the signature does look dodgy but if someone is going to execute a gimei my bet would be that they would pick a famous name rather than one few people have heard of and maybe choose someone who could use a chisel to cut it, so it may be a smith that has escaped the meikan.

 

You could try posting some more pictures of the blade to see if that yields some further information...

 

Best,

John

[cisco-san]

Hi,

 

Even in Markus´s book are just these two smith:

 

YOSHIHARU (吉春), Tenna (天和, 1681-1684), Yamashiro – “Heianjō Yoshiharu” (平安城吉春), “Heianjō-jū Minamoto Yoshiharu” (平安城住源吉春), he also worked in Ōsaka
YOSHIHARU (吉春), Ansei (安政, 1854-1860), Hōki – “Hōki Yonago-jū Yoshiharu” (伯耆米子住吉春), real name “Morita Zenroku” (森田善六), chū-saku