Mon on Showato?

[PNSSHOGUN]

On fine early Type 94 as well, is it oil tempered or hard to discern?

[IJASWORDS]

It's an oily. 

[Austus]

I bet the owners were just as proud of their blades as the owners of what we now call Gendaito blades.  And they may have worked as well, too.

[george trotter]

  On 1/29/2020 at 2:28 PM, Austus said:

I bet the owners were just as proud of their blades as the owners of what we now call Gendaito blades.  And they may have worked as well, too.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I think those "mon bearing" showato were indeed the pride of their owners. When a showato cost about 70-80 yen (about a month's salary?) and the owner had it mounted in pierced tsuba and say 6 seppa with mon (another 50 yen?), it is fair to say that they loved their sword. Of course the "better off" class could afford an RJT of other gendaito (maybe double the cost?) and then of course there were those who could afford a Yasukuni sword, blade only was about 180 yen.

So, while there are those among we collectors who only collect gendai gunto, it does not mean showato are held in contempt by us...we just collect what we collect. Even ME...I still regret selling a showato (seki stamped blade by Okada Kanesada) with a fantastic large hako-midare hamon that went from the habaki up to midway on the blade and then changed to chu-suguba for the rest (like koto Tomonari). Yes a seki showato, but I should have kept it.

 

About showato with mon having pierced tsuba, I can't answer that, that is for the showato owners to reply to.

 

So, there is no doubt showato have mon...now for RJT (I think yes) and Rinji Seishiki mounts (don't know).

Regards,

[PNSSHOGUN]

The Rinji seem to be the only ones we haven't seen any legitimate Mon extant. Perhaps due to the nature of the mounts being focused on practicality and austerity a silver Mon would seem out of place.

[Yukihiro]

As I have made it a habit of reviving older threads, here is my personal addition to this one: an Amahide daimei blade with a prominent Seki stamp. The mountings must have had eight seppa originally and have a clasped hands sarute together with a mon on the kabuto-gane, so there is every reason to believe that the WW2 owner of this gunto was willing to spend money on his koshirae to make his sword look the thing. There is always the possibility that the mon is a later addition to this showato, though.

 

[Yukihiro]

On another note, out of the 25 gendaito in Army shin-gunto mounts recorded in Leon and Hiroko Kapp & Leo Monson's book Modern Japanese swords: the beginning of the gendaito era, only 9 (36%) had a family mon, 4 of them with a general's tassel, 4 with a field grade tassel and only 1 with a company grade tassel.

 

My understanding of how tassels were bestowed upon these swords is that mon-bearing swords are generally felt to be those of higher ranking officers. To be sure, some of them may have been original to their swords

[Bruce Pennington]

I haven't followed the issue of fake mon, but the swords brought to this forum have always seemed legit.

 

There may be previous discussions of mon use out there that I am not aware of, but I've always found it interesting that in the early years of Westernization, kyu gunto quite often had mon.  I'd bet a slight majority of them did.  But it is less common on shingunto.  Just brainstorming, but maybe there were a higher percentage of officers in the pre-WWI days that had samurai lineage?  Then in WWI & WWII, a great number of "common" people entered the ranks without family mon?

[Yukihiro]

Someone on this thread mentioned the fact that there had been WW2 mon on sale for those who wished to pimp up their gunto, hence the possibility of having a fake mon on a sword.

 

Your theory on "commoners" getting access to officer status during WW2 does make sense and might account for mon-bearing shingunto being the exception rather than the rule during that time

 

Maybe this is a bit off topic, but there is a similar trend in the French army with gold signet rings adorned with family coat of arms: logically, they should only be worn by French officers of noble descent in the legitimate male line only, but, in reality, lots (if not most) of signet ring bearers are not noblemen in the true (and very restrictive) sense of the term.