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Is it possible that the different anchor stamps could indicate different sources of production? Such as  Takayama,Seki,Tenshozan ? My reasoning is if you notice Masanao,Kanenao,and Toyosuke seem to have the same 8mm stamp in the same location if my memory serves me correctly. PS hey guys been a while hope you are all well.  JOHN 

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Nice to see you again, too, John!

 

Your idea is possible.  I had the vague theory that the large was from post-war Tenshozan, while the small was from wartime Toyokawa.

However, we (and I mean @Kiipu, @BANGBANGSAN, and @mecox) are trying to research the challenging idea that Toyokawa was not involved in making kaigunto at all and the circled anchor was a broad-based Navy stamp used by other/all Naval Arsenals.

 

So, much work to be done on the Navy side of the stamping house.

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Perhaps by grouping swords by stamp size,and also by swordsmiths known locations.In combination with physical traits such as paint color could help pin down location of fabrication.Such as Takayama for example.Well thats my 2 cents worth for now.

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20 minutes ago, Jcstroud said:

Perhaps by grouping swords by stamp size,and also by swordsmiths known locations.In combination with physical traits such as paint color could help pin down location of fabrication.Such as Takayama for example.Well thats my 2 cents worth for now.

I'll have a look through my files, John.  Been needing a project to chase.  I haven't spent much time on the kaigunto.  There's just not as many to sample, and they are mostly undated, so data is harder to build.  But I'll have a look.

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11 hours ago, Bruce Pennington said:

There's just not as many to sample,

Not to sound morbid, but is that because they "went down with the ship" or because there were simply fewer Naval officers?

 

John C.

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12 hours ago, John C said:

is that because

Checking Wikipedia, they estimate that at the end of the war the Navy had 1.66 million personnel (don't know the percentage of officers) vs 5.4 million for the Army.  So right away, you can see there would be four times as many army gunto as navy.  Then, like you say, every ship that went down carried it's officers and kaigunto with it.

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On 10/31/2024 at 2:23 PM, Jcstroud said:

? My reasoning is if you notice Masanao,Kanenao,and Toyosuke seem to have the same 8mm stamp in the same location if

I reread my notes and it was the4mm stamp that was used predominantly

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I am going to go out on a limb on this comment: the souvenir swords with a  sheared off flat cut nakago were likely from Takayama forge and were originally longer training swords for Toyama training camp and were made to takayamas specifications then later cut under the direction of Kazuiichi Hattori.

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