Nlf Gunto Discussion

[John C]

53 minutes ago, Kiipu said:

Definitely an early souvenir sword.

Thanks for the correction. I had not seen one with just Naval parts.

 

John C.

[Kiipu]

Encircled anchor with black painted 95.

Nice ww2 late war Japanese Naval sword SOLD

[Bruce Pennington]

10 hours ago, Kiipu said:

painted 95.

Interesting to see these making the rounds of dealers.  The Crimson mist page was "last modified" 26 October 23, and I have this sword on file from Smallsword at ebay on 19 September 23.

 

Thanks Thomas!

 

From the smallsword sale.  Same rust pattern around the ana:

 

From Crimson Mist:

 

[Kiipu]

I am on a different computer and did not pick up on this.  Interesting to say the least.  FYI, there is another souvenir sword at that website.  I learned about that site via a link that you posted recently!

[Conway S]

 

12 hours ago, Kiipu said:

Encircled anchor with black painted 95.

Nice ww2 late war Japanese Naval sword SOLD

The seller wasn't lying when they said they have the smallest of profit margins for this sword! Bought from Smallsword and then sold again in Australia after international shipping and taxes. 

 

Conway

[Bruce Pennington]

3 hours ago, Kiipu said:

FYI, there is another souvenir sword at that website.

Thanks Thomas!

 

Painted 43, stamped 353, standard fittings except has a Navy semegane.

 

 

Here's the link while it lasts: Crimson Mist Military Antiques - SWORDS & POLEARMS Japanese - Nice ww2 Japanese Naval Landing forces sword (s349) (cmmilitaryantiques.com)

[Bruce Pennington]

Here's an odd one.  #39, crudely broken off nakago jiri, black "navy" same', in Type 98 fittings, and likely a post war ito wrap.  I personally think the whole set of fittings is likey done post war.

 

Matt is selling his HERE.

 

 

[John C]

Would the pierced tsuba be type 94 or type 98?

From the description:

"This is an original Japanese army officer’s sword in Shin Gunto mountings from World War 2."

 

John C. 

[Bruce Pennington]

Pierced tsuba are found on both models. As to the sellers claim, you just can’t go by that. I’ve seen countless titles for souvenir sales, claiming “immaculate navy kaigunto”, and “World War II army sword with ancestral blade”, when the blade is dated 1943!

[Bruce Pennington]

In case anyone else is tracking these.  A couple more added to the chart:

 

Mumei, large anchor, #44, standard fittings, nice bag, found at this Mileston Auctions page

 

And a duplicate #6, Toyosuke, finished jiri, small anchor, standard fittings, posted by Highpower3006 on this Gunboards Thread.

 

The other "6" is mumei, large anchor, unfinished jiri - so just speculating, but maybe the finished Toyosuke was in the first batch and the unfinished, mumei was in one of the follow-on batches.

[John C]

@Bruce Pennington Not sure if you have these:

 

#61 here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/355626335708?itmmeta=01HWDZ4SM3J35D7WBAK1TN4ZFY&hash=item52ccfb3ddc:g:PbUAAOSwY6FmGDa4&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwGUqlbhW2iGXAVOW0M%2B6%2BLPRYzYfiJ9W1XDD96PQBSCm8vQmlkXKhMb818%2FXpZ0qbEMdFxTZrA76gFeDR869ZA23oPnk1fZFopoVgm5oFlvoC9Vo9%2BB24EEBnhsZGAJM%2BLcWmukBHFvGYur%2F2B1jcndRFjAAMRkZzAMFLFhgG4UcUxRpmKKjrMeY%2BZE85nD6P2ctkMCqNVko3Paqt1fyViiRQEGbMG6TYYXKGo%2FM7PlgvT5F4TbHZ8evJmjykV%2BZrQ%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5Sak7_jYw

 

...and #68 here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126447386646?itmmeta=01HWDZ4SM3JZSCKZA90DXW7KZS&hash=item1d70da0016:g:JIgAAOSwZ4BmKErL&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwNZohbQjHWexkFFHeCFQoifhS0qz%2FFoYCVc0Cj5hlDK9He3P%2B2Fs2q6SdX6Q71IeKdsfl8wEuL1yUCqbkMBxW9fUjd5mddcmjWp8zClx2Wgj52%2F5%2BcvLEqgB9DWr96YGbqOlvi7wZ70dY7qj%2F1Pfiz7C4TuLR5ZnF394pX%2FEhFs21Np8pkkMsSDBYlenYLtDNQlHA291wYBr0kw4%2FlG4evQDcs5FhvqokAndMThqKyUFyqmp8yZdvcp5WH7BTjaSdg%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5Sak7_jYw

 

John C.

[Brian]

When posting eBay links, you can remove everything after the item number, the rest are just cookies etc.
So for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/126447386646

[John C]

Roger that.

 

John C.

[Bruce Pennington]

5 hours ago, John C said:

Not sure if you have these:

I did not, John, thanks!  Both are mumei duplicates of named blades of the same numbers.  Both 61's have no anchor stamps, strangely.

[Jcstroud]

Thank you Bruce very cool.

[Bruce Pennington]

7 hours ago, Jcstroud said:

Thank you Bruce very cool.

Welcome back John!  Hope all is well.

 

I want to post the photos of those last 2 swords before the links go dead

 

61

 

68

[Bruce Pennington]

First "26", found at this Burns Auction.

 

[Jcstroud]

Makes me wonder why some were "signed" but most were not.

[Bruce Pennington]

1 hour ago, Jcstroud said:

Makes me wonder why some were "signed" but most were not.

Good to see you, John!  Yes, a mystery.  I speculate that the signed ones were war surplus, while the unsigned were made post-war.  Another option is that the signed ones were made post war by experienced smiths and the unsigned by the staff of laborers trained by those smiths, similar to what happened with SMR.  They had a couple or 3 actual smiths get the factory going, and trained the SMR team of workers to make blades.  Some were signed by those smiths, while the rest went unsigned.  But I just guessing.

[Bruce Pennington]

Found a second Masanao, Takayama Forge, souvenir #86.  For sale on this ebay page.  Photos don't show the top of the nakago very well, but it doesn't appear to have an anchor stamp.

 

[Bruce Pennington]

I'm going to list this one as a souvenir as it has the date scratched on the blade "24 Dec 50", blade only, being sold on this ebay sale.  I'm calling the painted number "37" unless someone has a better read on it.

 

[John C]

A Christmas present?

 

John C.

[Bruce Pennington]

13 hours ago, John C said:

A Christmas present?

 

John C.

I can PM my address to you, if you get an early start on your Christmas shopping and giving!

[Bruce Pennington]

I did a survey of Takayama forge blades and found 34.  I lightly expected to find more smiths than Mal Cox listed in his Japanese Naval Swords article, but I didn't!  @mecox  I couldn't find a dedicated thread to the forge (4 pages in the search for Takayama-to, but all about individual blades), so I'm discussing it here.  

 

Kanenao - 4 blades

Masahiro - 17

Masanao - 12

Ujifusa - 7

Ujinaga - 4

 

It is interesting (and why I'm posting this on the souvenir thread) that only the "Uji" smiths aren't seen in souvenir fittings.  I haven't looked up their bios to see if they were alive at the end of the war.  I'll do that for all 5 smiths and update, unless someone else (Mal?) beats me to the point.  If any of the 3, Kanenao, Masahiro, or Masanao, were dead before the end of the war, it would tell us that his blades in souvenir fittings were war surplus and not post-war made blades by the smith working for Tenshozan.  If they were all still alive, then we still won't have any evidence to point to one option over the other.

[Bruce Pennington]

Well Harumph!!!  I think @Jcstroud already went down this path (if memory serves).

Sesko has no record of Kanenao nor Masahiro (using these kanji).

He has: 

Masanao - Gifu - born 1943 ??????  That's got to be a typo @Markus It's a list of Japanese swordsmiths.  If he's there because he was making swords by 1958'ish .... Ok?

Ujinaga - Gifu - Born 1922 ... no death date

Ujifusa - Gifu - Born 1912 ... no death date

 

I also re-discovered the only blade on file by Kanenao are in souvenir fittings .... which is what led JC to speculate that the name was a changed art name of one of the other smiths from the war.

 

Frustrating.

[Bruce Pennington]

Just for discussion purposes, concerning the idea that some of the signed blades with finished nakago might have been war surplus:

A quote from Mal Cox' Showa Swordsmiths of Aichi Prefecture (Owari and Mikawa): 

 

"Blades from the Toyokawa Arsenal were typically stainless steel with an anchor in circle stamp and mostly mumei, but occasionally had a mei of a simple signature. The arsenal was largely destroyed by bombing on 7 August, 1945, with around 2,600 killed, including many volunteers (3,256 bombs were dropped by 124 US B29 bombers over a 26-minute period).

 

It makes me wonder just how many blades would have survived such an attack.  I suppose, even if the arsenal was destroyed, a warehouse of blades might have survived.

 

Of course another angle is that the Tenshozan factory was not affected by this as they were located in Kamakura, not Nagoya, and they might have had unused surplus containing these blades.  Yet, Masahiro was listed by Cox as working in the Nagoya area, not Kamakura, and the other 3 were in Gifu.

[John C]

One obvious possibility is that, since the war did not end for another month, any remaining undamaged parts and equipment from Toyokawa could have been moved to Tenshozan to continue war production.

 

John C.

[Bruce Pennington]

6 hours ago, John C said:

any remaining undamaged parts and equipment from Toyokawa could have been moved to Tenshozan to continue war production.

Good one, John!  And as we know, Japan was in the process of moving sword production around that whole last year of the war.  It would have been a natural step to gather up what was left at Toyokawa.

[Kiipu]

In actuality, Toyokawa Naval Arsenal 豊川海軍工廠 had nothing to do with swords.  They did get involved with rifles, but that was a close as they got.  The fable of Toyokawa sword production got started back in the 1980s by F&G.  I have studied this arsenal via wartime Japanese language documents and no mention is made of swords.  Toyokawa used an entirely different marking method on rifles, machine guns, and ammunition.

 

Markings Used by Toyokawa Naval Arsenal

豊川海軍工廠 = stamped or printed on large items such as machine guns, nameplates, etc.

豊 = large caliber cartridge headstamps.

ト = small caliber cartridge headstamps.

Toyokawa anchor mark (see picture below).

 

The encircled anchor stamp that is seen on swords is just a generic naval final inspection mark that does not indicate the location of production.

 

[Bruce Pennington]

15 hours ago, Kiipu said:

Toyokawa Naval Arsenal 豊川海軍工廠 had nothing to do with swords.

Wow, that is earth shaking news.  

 

With the Army, with have a Uniform Regulation that has a chart of Army stamps.  Do we have something similar for the Navy?  If so, is the circled anchor in it?  If not, do you have any thoughts on which arsenal was accepting blades and stamping them?  If they all were, then I could see the circled anchor being used by them all, generically.  If not, if Toyokawa was the only one accepting/inspecting blades, then even if "generic" it would still be tied to the Toyokawa Arsenal, right?

 

The only other naval arsenal I have on file is the Kure Naval Arsenal that stamped a dirk.

 

@mecox - May I ask what your source/sources were for your Toyokawa paragraph in your Naval Swords article?

"Blades from this arsenal were typically stainless steel with an anchor in circle stamp and mostly mumei, but occasion-ally had a simple signature mei. Usually they are well crafted with neat sujikai yasurime. From mid-war most of the stainless steel “anti-rust” blades (industrial steel with a higher chromium content) were of a regulation kaigunto shape and size and made in Seki. Earlier in the war some of these Seki-produced swords were made of Yasuki steel. When finished and signed the blades were sent to the Toyokawa Naval Arsenal for mounting; when received and accepted they were stamped with the “anchor in the circle”. Many of these blades are unsigned and have only a stamp of an anchor in a circle or sakura blossom (above centre and left)."