I Could Use Some Assistance With This Text

[Jussi Ekholm]

Well I got bit crazy idea yesterday and thought I should do a translation of details of one of the swords in one of the Sano museum books. I felt it could be bit relevant for other topic we have been discussing lately. Like always, me translating by myself is always very slow process and I don't understand everything correctly. I guess the most important thing is learning by doing. I think I got most of it correctly but there are some parts I don't understand. Here is the text and my attempted translation you can see the ?'s within the text.

 

平安時代    愛媛県 大山祇神社蔵

刃長 ７８,２cm  反 １,５cm   元幅 ３,７cm

鎬造、丸棟、身幅広く、 鎬幅が広くほぼ中央に寄り、反り極く浅く、 鰤鋒。

茎は強く反り、先は無造作に栗尻とし

鑢目は 鋤か鑢がけか判然としない

目釘孔二個、鍛えは板目が細かく、流れごころがあり、きれいである。

刃文は単調な匂出来の直刃で大きく焼落し、匂口は沈みごころである。帽子は焼詁。

身幅が広く、反りが少なく、鎬の幅が広く中央に近く、区が深いなど初期日本刀の特色がよく示されている。

 

Heian period, (11th century)     Ehime, Ôyamazumi jinja

Nagasa: 78,2 cm, Sori: 1,5 cm, Motohaba: 3,7 cm

Shinogi-zukuri, maru mune, mihaba wide, shinogihaba very wide it is almost at center of the blade, sori very shallow, kamasu-kissaki.

Nakago has strong sori, nakagosaki is muzôsa? and end kurijiri.

Yasurime is not clear and if it’s made by spade or file? (this part I don’t understand).

2 mekugi ana, kitae is itame that is thin. It’s running and beautiful.

Hamon is monotonous made in nioi deki suguha, big yakiotoshi. Nioikuchi is ?. Boshi is yakizume.

Mihaba is wide, sori is small, shinogi no haba is wide and close to center, machi is deep?.  It shows features of early nihonto?.

[Markus]

茎は強く反り、先は無造作に栗尻とし

鑢目は 鋤か鑢がけか判然としない

Nakago has strong sori, nakagosaki is muzôsa? and end kurijiri.

Yasurime is not clear and if it’s made by spade or file? (this part I don’t understand).

 

Nakago has strong sori and the tip is a simple and unsophisticated kurijiri. [muzôsa means here that the saki was simply rounded off and became so a kurijiri, i.e. the smith didn't have a textbook kurijiri in mind when finishing the tip of the tang]

It is unclear if the tang was finished with a plane or a file. [Lit. "As for the yasurime, it is unclear if they were done with a plane or a file."]

 

I would also rather translate the part 細かく as "itame is fine" (instead of "thin").

 

As for the other parts, the nioiguchi is rather subdued and at the last sentence, the very end refers to the part that comes before. So:

The blade has a wide mihaba, a rather shallow sori, a wide shinogi with the shinogi-ji at about the center of the blade, and deep machi, thus we can see very well the characteristic features of an early Nihonto.

 

BTW: Idea is not crazy. Its the best way to do it, IMHO.   

 

 

[SteveM]

刃文は単調

 

Hamon is monotonous 

"Simple" would be better than monotonous. There is a bit of built-in negativity in the word monotonous that is not intended here, I think.

[k morita]

Nice translation .

 

Pic of the Tachi.

 

[jason_mazzy]

are we saying that an 11th century sword had shinobi ana?

[george trotter]

Nice Heian Jidai Tachi with ubu nakago having Hikae/shinobi ana 

[Jussi Ekholm]

Thanks for the help with translation Markus and Steve. Thank you Morita san for posting the picture of the tachi so everyone can see it.

 

Jason and George guessed what I was looking for. I think this was the oldest sword in my books that had the that feature. Found few other interesting swords too with this feature.