Japanese Swords Made In China During World War II

[IJASWORDS]

I would like to take this discussion back to topic, away from French Fries and Belgium waffles. 

In December (winter) 1938, the Chinese Manchurian Railway Factory (Dairen), who a year earlier in 1937, made the first MANTETSU TO blades, set up a sword polishing, sword mounts manufacture, and sword assembly factory in their FUTABA Kindergarten building.

Blades made until March 23, 1939, were branded with the Manchurian Railway stamp (a rail in an "M"), after this date are engraved Koa Isshin. 

Here is one such Winter 1938 fully Manchurian made and assembled with original 1938 mounts. 

These enigmatic and rare swords (only a handful exist in collections) are never seen in surrender photos (particularly in the Pacific), and it is my belief that the Imperial Japanese Army used them exclusively in the Manchurian campaign. 

This sword has an alfa/numeric mune stamp, N156, and is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) stamp on record. (Bruce, can you comment?). 

Of note is a very visible HADA HABUCHI, and HATARAKI, which to my mind, make it a great example of a Chinese "Japanese Sword".  

[Bruce Pennington]

Excellent presentation, Neil, and you make a strong case for the MRS fittings being early, and SMR in origin, especially considering they are only seen on Mantetsu blades.  On the serial number, there are 10 earlier than yours on file, but out of 327 Mantetsu blades, that puts yours right near the top!

 

Until your '38 came out, we had only seen this style fittings on '44 blades (9 of these on file), which is why Fuller described it as a late-war model.  So yours was a bit of a shake-up on our thinking.  By all appearances, yours are original to the blade, but when I first saw it, I thought it must be a remount later in the war, since it seemed to be an SMR, or Manchurian, version of the Rinji seishiki.  The orders diagramming the RS came out in '38, so it is still possible that SMR engineers saw this and made their own version.  Or, it's possible that SMR reps were a part of the original team being tasked to come up with the simplified, cheaper model of the 98.  Who knows?

 

To your original point, though, SMR was the ultimate example of a Japanese sword being made in China.  They were the biggest operation over there.  Like all businesses, where there is money to be made, there are sure to be smaller competitors vying for a piece of the market!

[Kiipu]

19 hours ago, IJASWORDS said:

Here is one such Winter 1938 fully Manchurian made and assembled with original 1938 mounts.

 

Based upon the sword linked to below, I would say the fittings were that of Nan-Man Army Arsenal.  These fittings were introduced by Nan-Man Army Arsenal starting in the spring of 1944.  As to why an older Mantetsu blade was fitted out as a Type 100 variant, I have no idea.

WWII Japanese Sword

[Bruce Pennington]

Adding a link to this discussion: