Yellow or Gold Tassels on Gunto

[Jay M]

3 hours ago, Bruce Pennington said:

If you’re trying to stay with an original look, I’d go with a tassel without buckle.

 

Question - never heard of that whistle.  Do you have an example?

I have read it in passing on some post. Not sure where. People want 300-400 for and original leather tassel. I would be ok with a repo. Here are a couple pics I found. Don’t see a whistle. 

[Bruce Pennington]

$400 used to be the going price for a leather tassel. Last couple of years, because of the Covid, slow down, the prices have fallen a little bit, but not much. They are harder to come by because the leather, over 80 years, degrades. 

[robinalexander]

Red tassell from JC Militaria website UK .... notes mention " with non regulation rank tassel (looks old)."

[Bruce Pennington]

Seen a couple of gold cords this week, forgot to post the first one.  Here's one on a Yoshitsugu, large Seki stamp, no date, kaigunto.  It's in a wooden saya with late-war looking metal fittings.

HERE

 

[jeep44]

Here's an oddball one I've had for many years. The seller claimed it was always like that (for whatever that's worth) The photo is rather poor-I haven't had it out of storage for years to take a better pic.  There are two tassels on the ends of the cord wrapped around the saya.

[Bruce Pennington]

20 hours ago, jeep44 said:

an oddball one

Yes, quite unusual!  Even the gunto above it has an unusual brown cord wrapped around the haikan (ashi) on both sides.

 

If you ever get time to pull that out, it would be interesting to see the rest of it.

[Ian B3HR2UH]

This reminds me of one that I purchased from the family of the man who bought it back ( so it is all original ) . As you can see there is a purple sageo tied over the leather cover below the carrying ring and the kurigata . The blue and brown rank tassle has then been tied over the sageo . I guess they didn't want to drill a hole for the sarute through the same.

Ian Brooks

[jeep44]

On 4/7/2023 at 2:50 PM, Bruce Pennington said:

Yes, quite unusual!  Even the gunto above it has an unusual brown cord wrapped around the haikan (ashi) on both sides.

 

If you ever get time to pull that out, it would be interesting to see the rest of it.

That one is an unusual one-another I've had for quite a long time. The mounts are nicely done and of decent quality, but the blade is of poor quality-the nakago is rough and not well-shaped-very similar to another in one of the other threads here. I'll get it out one of these days.

[Bruce Pennington]

This one found by @Minseito1941 HERE.

[Stegel]

On 1/27/2023 at 5:58 AM, Jay M said:

Newbie here. In my research I’ve seen the tassel on a Type 95 to be red leather with a whistle in the tassel.

Hi Jay,

I have been collecting for quite some time and have heard about the whistle in the NCO tassels as well, but have yet to see or find one.

The closest i found was a US 1902 sword tassel that had the whistle built in.

These tassels have twisted leather cords instead of flat straps and normally don't have whistles in the leather barrel knot end.

They have been mistakenly called rare versions of the Japanese NCO tassel in the past, even Ohmura's web page incorrectly shows one

as a rare version, see here (at bottom of his page).

I do have a brass whistle at the end of a leather tassel, it has had the original leather knot removed and the whistle attached in it's place.

It came with a Copper Handled Type 95 i bought years ago.

Here's a picture for you to see.

 

[John C]

5 hours ago, Stegel said:

I do have a brass whistle at the end of a leather tassel

Stegel:

Are the initials on the whistle written in Cyrillic or is it just a stylized RK?

John C.

[Kiipu]

It is an American company.  However, the founder was Ukrainian so maybe your not too far off.

ЯK = ARKAY.

103 Horstmann/Arkay/Spaulding Complex

[Stegel]

12 hours ago, John C said:

Stegel:

Are the initials on the whistle written in Cyrillic or is it just a stylized RK?

John C.

Hi John,

Kippu has beaten everyone to the punch and answered your question with his reply.

I just want to add that if you do look closely, the brass whistle has the IJA Army star cast on the top of it, so perhaps they ordered some from Arkay to be specially made for their use. 

I actually remember my friends in primary school back in the 60's bring them to school to play with, at the time i had no idea of any Japanese connection to them and took no further notice of whistles as such until i got one on the sword.

[Minseito1941]

Is chatgpt a legitimate source of info?

[Bruce Pennington]

I, just yesterday, heard a discussion on the radio of a couple guys who were investigating the threats of AI.  One of them stated that he very clearly caught ChatGPT making stuff up!  

 

It's claim about orange being a color of courage is in direct conflict with Rob's posted quote from a Japanese source saying the same thing about yellow.  Could they both carry the same significance?  Anything's possible I guess, but at least with Rob's search we have a credible source.  With  ChatGPT, we have no idea of it's source.

[Ontario_Archaeology]

Chat gbt is heavily influenced by politics and political leanings of a certain ideology and it often gives misleading or wrong answers. I'm happy academia was able to snub its use quickly. I think it's biggest threat is to make wrong answers seem correct and misinform people who may use it as a quick answer instead of a Google search. 

 

I think when considering these unofficial tassels or cord wraps pictured above we should be comparing them to non gunto examples of the same time period in order to attempt to understand what is from the time period/ done by Japanese and what is not. 

[John C]

Garbage in; garbage out. As long as Chatgbt continues to use the internet as its source, it cannot be accurate. If it had access to refereed journal articles written by professional researchers, that may change. But for now, I wouldn't trust it. In addition, the paragraphs in this case are far too simplistic, grammatically incorrect, and linguistically unsophisticated to be representative of a learned colleague providing advice.

If one of my students had turned something like that in for an assignment, it would have kicked back for a re-write. 

John C.

(Maybe I'm just being too hard on technology).

[Bruce Pennington]

Came across this war trophies photo at this Gunboards thread.  While it's possible the cord was added by one of the G.I.s, it seems unlikely that guys in the field, like this, would have had this kind of gold/yellow cord laying about to stick on a kaigunto.  Its straight-forward appearance presentes the idea that the cord was there when captured.

 

 

[Ontario_Archaeology]

42 minutes ago, Bruce Pennington said:

Came across this war trophies photo at this Gunboards thread.  While it's possible the cord was added by one of the G.I.s, it seems unlikely that guys in the field, like this, would have had this kind of gold/yellow cord laying about to stick on a kaigunto.  Its straight-forward appearance presentes the idea that the cord was there when captured.

 

 

it is a bit hard to tell on that photo, but it looks like that tassel might have came from the bugle that the other gentleman is holding. Many swords I see with off tassels or unofficial ones look like bugle tassels. 

 

Another possibility is that since it is a kai gunto (based on the saya laying against him) it might just be a brown cord that is used to keep the saya on the sword if this model didn't have the locking mechanism. 

The bugle he has is missing the mouth piece as well. I guess it dooted its last doot. 

[Minseito1941]

I have found evidence that the golden tassels were likely just bugle tassels. This tassel on the bugle below is an exact color and material match with my golden tassel on my gunto. While this may not be the case for all it was for mine