Sayagaki Help

[Fudoshinken]

Any help with this sayagaki translation. Thank you in advance

[ROKUJURO]

Brian,

we have a translation forum where you might get a faster reply - in case the SAYAGAKI is at all readable..

[Ray Singer]

It appears that one side may be a zodiac-based date. Possibly 卯亥, however I do not know which year that is. Following that portion, is 11th month. After may read 宗長__代昌. Sorry I cannot give more help here, but perhaps this can help someone else fill in the gaps.

[SteveM]

The other side indicates whose collection it came from, but I can't make out the name. 

I was thinking the family name might be Katsumata (勝又) but my confidence is very low. The final kanji is 蔵 (literally storehouse) and this is used to indicate "collection", as in "from the collection of the Katsumata family".

These are what come to mind, but I only have confidence in the final one: 勝又以祐澤蔵　

 

Ray has the gist of the other side, but as with the above, there are illegible kanji which leave huge gaps in comprehending the thing in its entirety. 

 

囗囗亥十一月宗囗谷口昌代氏

 

Usually the zodiac year comes as a two-kanji set, and that allows us to pinpoint more or less the year. This one only has the one kanji, 亥. The preceding kanji seem to be their own set - so I usually think of things like 摺上 (suriage) or 無銘 (mumei). However this has none of those characteristics. The bit after the date is definitely a name, and Munenaga 宗長 is a good guess. I'm not super sure about 長, so I say that also without much confidence. After that seems to be Taniguchi Masashiro-shi, which is a regular name. In this case I would look in the references to find if any smiths using the name Munenaga had the real name of Taniguchi. Most times smiths used art names, which were different from their birth names (and some changed their art names several times throughout their lives). I just did a quick check and nothing obvious jumped out. So again, more questions than concrete answers. All I can say is that the one side indicates provenance, and the other side indicates the date and probably the smith, or possibly the name of the person for whom the sword was originally made. 

[Fudoshinken]

Thank you very much for the help and trying to translate as this has been a monster for a full understanding of what has been written. I am not sure if the wakizashi it self would lend any help to identification?

[Brian]

Hmmm.....
Soshu nakago with old worn down horimono and signs of real age always make the heart skip a beat or 2. Definitely one that needs serious research.

[Fudoshinken]

So with the wakizashi in hand now I took better pictures of the sayagaki to hopefully find some more answers. Also looking at the nakago in good sun light it appears to have a very worn mei on both sides, faint looks to be date and Masa. Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you all tat have helped and any that will offer more. Regards

[ROKUJURO]

Brian,

I cannot see traces of a MEI on the photos, but if there was one, there is a way to make it visible by a special X-ray method. This is used by the police to track down handguns with a ground-out number. Please ask your friends at the FBI!

[Fudoshinken]

Thank you for your post, lol I work at my County Sheriff Office so maybe that would be possible if I pull some strings in our forensic crime lab.