Anyone familiar with this sword producer?

[Beater]

I recently saw a sword blade on another forum which had a mei which was translated as follows:

 

謹大華鑛株式会社作之

Respectfully made at the Daika Ore Co. LTD

 

満州国建国十同年記念

10th anniversary of the foundation of Manshuko

 

Manchuria was essentially a Japanese puppet state from 1932, so I'm assuming this dates to 1941/2.

I believe it would not be wrong to refer to this as another type of Mantetsu-to, assuming the company named in the mei is indeed situated in Manchuria. It has a full length bo-hi and, from the photo, appears to be quite a long sword. The mei is neatly cut but the file marks on the nakago are quite crude in comparison.

If you'd be interested in seeing the photos, link provided below. I am interested if anyone has encountered this producer before as it would seem to be evidence of more sword making in Manchuria. I hope you will find this of interest.

 

http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1019245

[SteveM]

A couple of the kanji are wrong/missing

 

謹　大華鑛業株式会社作之

 

Daika Mining Co. (It might have a different name in English...I can't find an exact translation)

 

滿洲国建国十周年記念

 

Nitpicking, but sometimes tiny errors can cause search engines to go astray. In this case, even with the revised kanji I couldn't find many references to this company, and none which referred to sword-making. Assuming the inscription is legitimate (and I think it is) it may be one of a very limited production, or maybe even a sample. 

[Bruce Pennington]

Maybe Thomas can find a reference to them in the war documents he has access to.

 

Very interesting Kevin!

[k morita]

Hi,

 

Please upload the blade and tang pics here.

[Bruce Pennington]

Guy, at Wehrmacht-Awards found this document that has something about the company:

http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_157075997924715&key=371030782602e51f9316b570f87aa6a3&libId=k1lhwhus010009p9000MA1dc7j98y&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.warrelics.eu%2Fforum%2Fshowpost.php&v=1&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.warrelics.eu%2Fforum%2Fnewthread.php%3Fdo%3Dnewthread%26f%3D216&opt=true&out=https%3A%2F%2Frnavi.ndl.go.jp%2Fkensei%2Ftmp%2Findex_kashiwabarahyoutarou.pdf&title=Anyone%20heard%20of%20this%20Ore%20Company%3F&txt=https%3A%2F%2Frnavi.ndl.go.jp%2Fkensei%2Ftmp%2Fi...ahyoutarou.pdf

[Bruce Pennington]

Hi,

 

Please upload the blade and tang pics here.

[ChrisW]

A very handsome blade in my humble opinion, despite its wear.

[Bruce Pennington]

More info from Nick Komiya at Warrelics: "They were a company based in 新京, the capital of Manchuria and even ran a private train service to Dalian. Late in the war there was also a plan for them to open a plant in Akita Prefecture, Japan. President of the company was a Japanese by the name of Ueshima, who after graduating from school in Tokyo, studied in Germany after which he settled in Manchuria."

 

Still trying to find anything documenting their sword production.

[Bruce Pennington]

Ran this by Chris Bowen. He said: “My best guess is that since this was made as a commemorative, it was probably a special, one off, type of thing. They may have had a smith come in to make it, or may have provided some materials to a smith. Lots of this type of thing was going on during the war....”

 

A one-time special for the commemoration makes sense. If we saw more from this company it would change things, but I bet we are into the answer.