unknown gunto/gendaito swordsmith shigekuni

[george trotter]

Hi all, I have been collecting, and interested in, Japanese swords for 40 years and I am particularly interested in Gendaito and good Gunto. I picked up a gendaito/gunto yesterday and the maker is not in any book or site - I wonder if anyone out there has seen him before?

 

Two character signature SHIGEKUNI - this is the same mei as all those Nanki Shigekuni smiths in Hawley.

this is a good handmade blade - NOT Seki gunto. It has kengyo tang and kessho filemarks. Type 94 gunto mounts and silver wrapped habaki and mon on handle. Blade is wide suguba of ko-midare with long ko-maru tip and tight itame.

 

He is too good to be an unknown smith - but I am surprised he is not listed - maybe Shigekuni is the alternative name used by a smith in certain circumstances?

 

Hope someone can help,

George Trotter.

[USMC-LCPL]

Pictures please?

[george trotter]

Dear C. Ascher II, sorry, every time I try to upload the scan (tif) of the mei, it says the file is invalid. The two characters are the most common of SHIGE and KUNI - like all the NANKI Shigekuni's in Hawley.

George T.

[Brian]

Convert the pics to .jpg. The tif is likely way too big to upload, and can't be viewed by everyone.

What are the indicators that it is a Gendai-to and not an earlier blade in gunto mounts? Always possible someone did a good job without needing to drill another ana?

There are however quite a few undocumented smiths still.

 

Brian

[george trotter]

Thanks Brian, when my daughter gets home I will ask her to help with the jpg (I'm a techno-trog).

 

It is definitely a modern blade.

wide suguba of ko-midare, nice nie line, ko-maru boshi of chu to almost o size kissaki.

hada is mostly tight itame with some larger patches in the mono-uchi.

Ubu nakago of kengyo style (almost Kaga style) and kessho yasuri.

Nicely cut two character katanamei immediately below the single ana.

Fittings are standard type 94 WWII with siver wrapped habaki and mon on hilt (missing) so the former owner, a 2nd Lt. Kume of the Kaede Division must have cherished it.

The blade is generally in excellent condition, a couple of spots and the usual scratches etc but in good un-abused condition. I probably won't have it polished as I like the WWII sashi komi style polish.

I have tried all sources I can think of and no info.

Will post a pic as soon as I can.

George T.

[george trotter]

Hi all,

Well I managed to make the pic a jpeg and it was too big. So I cropped it and then it hated my pixels ...so I give up.

Thanks anyway fellas.

george.

[DSweet]

There is no substitute for a good photo editing program. Even when just trying to resize/crop images.

Crap sw = loss of resolution

 

You could always email the photo to someone here on the boards and have them resize it. It would be a 5min, probably less, crop and resize in photoshop.

 

I would gladly help you out after 6pm est. Not much i can do here at work

[Brian]

Yep. Very easy to do in Photoshop or one of the others, but I know not everyone is familiar with them. Just reduce the resolution down to maybe 100 or 120 (that will already make a huge difference, as sometimes they are on 300 dpi)

Then resize the whole image (not just crop) and it should be fine.

But email the pic to one of the guys here, and I am sure they will be glad to post them for you.

Can send to me too, but please not if they are over 1 meg each, as I am still on dial-up

 

Brian

[Stephen]

id be glad to post for you. I use Corel photo house. when you save a pix you have options to save as tif, bmb or jpg...its not hard once you mess around with it.

[Brian]

Hi all,

 

Here is the pic that George emailed me to post. I think it was just the length that was a bit oversize, by a little bit.

I hope someone is able to identify the maker, or he will just have to remain one of the many currently undocumented smiths. Where is Dr T. when we need him? He is an expert on these lesser known smiths I think.

 

Brian

[DSweet]

Wish i could be of some help in determining the smith/school, but i do not have the knowledge or the books.

 

But i am glad to see that you got your picture posted George.

 

GL

 

-Donovan

[george trotter]

Thanks for posting the pic of SHIGEKUNI Brian. From the even rust, some people may be tempted to think the sword is older than SHOWA Jidai, but please be assured, it is definitely not earlier. I should also say that my earlier description of the tang as KENGYO should really be called IRIYAMA GATA.

 

I have been doing some study of the later NANKI SHIGEKUNI smiths, Shinshinto era, and this sword's tang, yasuri and mei characteristics match quite accurately. The blade does match some aspects of later NANKI line hada, boshi and hamon but in shape is typical of SHOWA era Gendai swords made for reliable hand to hand fighting.

 

Thank you all for your interst and help...now I wait for the incredibly knowledgeable DR. T (who is he?)...

 

Regards,

Geo.