New Kai Gunto

[Bencld]

Hi all. Picked this up today for A$1300. Leather bound saya, looks to be original tassel, and a family mon. The blade is an older one with bohi and a folded over mei the correct term escapes me. It is signed SUKESADA. Blade is waki size at 55.5cm.

It has a pierced tsuba with a leather retainer strap. Has anyone seen this before ?

any guesses on possible age ?

[PNSSHOGUN]

Great find! Was this a local listing? Interesting old blade, the mon, leather cover and tassel make for a very nice sword.

[DTM72]

Really jealous of you right now...Great find.

 

ORIKAESHI MEI - 折返し 銘 - folded signature

[Bencld]

Hi John. No, a little antique shop close to me that i check out every so often and he had this today. It looks all original and has not been messed with. For the price, I thought it wasn’t too bad.

[Bruce Pennington]

Not common, but seen all that.  You'll find some guys on this military forum that can help with dating, but most of them hang out on the Nihonto forum.

 

If you are asking about whether we've seen civil/older blades in kaigunto fittings, yes, again not as common.  I own one myself.  If you are asking about the leather covered saya on a kai, yes that is seen too.  Yours appears to have the plain, wooden saya built to be covered with leather.  Those TEND to be late-war, but it could have been done any year of the war as there were a considerable number of naval forces serving land-duty on several islands and the "combat" saya is a logical fitting for "grunt work."

[ChrisAWilson]

Very nice, and a good price, I'm jealous of you guys that are able to find stuff like this in local shops, There is nothing where I live that has any type of militaria. The larger gun shows once in a blue moon and there is a militaria show once a year here that always has something but my pickings are very slim. I wouldn't have half my collection if it wasn't for this site and the internet. 

Chris Wilson

[DRDave]

Nice.  How about some close-ups of that blade?

[Geraint]

Dear Chris.

 

I would be thrilled to bits if I had found this!  Time to go carefully with this one.  If you look at the orikaeshi mei you can, I think, see the small gap under the fold where the original mei was carefully thinned, folded over and inlaid on the other side of the nakago.  This looks right.  Just on the edge of the fold I think I can see what is left of the original mekugi ana.  If so then with a bit of approximation you should be able to work out what the original nagasa of this blade was, that's going to matter for a time period.

If you can take a better photo of the mei and move it to the Nihonto section I'm sure you will get a ton off feedback.  Looks like Sukesada to me.

 

Just for starters we seem to have a rather short katana with narrow shinogi and an o kissaki, the hi run past the yokote, all of which suggest a Koto blade.  If I am seeing straight, (more of a challenge than I care to admit!) this was signed as a katana and depending on the length might indicate late Koto.  The other, slightly less likely from my point of view is Nambokucho but the rest of the sugata and the mei, combined with the modest length tends to rule this last idea out.

 

Oh, and the leather retainer through the tsuba is not uncommon, especially for swords which were originally intended to have a combat cover..

 

Looking forward to where this is going!

 

All the best.

 

P.S. I just converted that price into Sterling, can you hear the sound of groaning from where you are?

[vajo]

Thats an old blade i guess late muromachi. With folded mei. Great find and an incredible price. 

Would like to see better pictures from the blade in good light. 

Well done.

 

 

Bishu Osafune Sukesada - looks similar.

[Bencld]

Thanks for the comments guys. I’m trying without much success to get some better closer shots of the blade. There is a little surface rust and it’s very hard to see any hada or hamon but they are there. I had just been wiping with a tissue and machine oil to stop any more corrosion.
 

Geraint. There is what looks like the remains of the mekugi ana and if i measure from there to the northern most one near the machi it adds about 10 cm making the blade approx 64 - 65 cm putting into to length of katateuchi ? That dates it around early/mid 1500’s? 
 

 

[PNSSHOGUN]

Considering the condition of the blade, going over it a number of times a day with Uchiko over a week or two may produce some good results.

[Bencld]

Hi John. Thanks for that. We shifted house about 18 months ago and I’m still trying to find my Uchiko ball. If not, Andrew Ickeringill may have one, he is close to where I live.

 

Chris.