Translation required please

[carlgustav]

 

Good Evening, I am from Australia and need some help with this translation.

 

I apologise in advance, I know this is hard to read. I have done my best to scribe what I believe the characters might be.

I will attach more photos in the comment section

 

[carlgustav]

[Bruce Pennington]

[xiayang]

The first five characters of the mei are 相模守藤原 (Sagami no Kami Fujiwara).

 

The remaining two are a lot harder to identify [氏?] [廣/房?] – I haven't been able to match them to any of the entries in Markus Sesko's "Swordsmiths of Japan", unfortunately.  Perhaps someone else has a better idea?

[Jussi Ekholm]

I believe Jan is correct with the translation.

 

Now as the last two are bit obscured I cannot say anything for sure but my gut feeling is it would be a false signature of Sagami no Kami Fujiwara Masatsune 相模守藤原政常

 

I would guess the second last character would be 政 and I will link 3 authenticated examples of signatures to show how 政 looks on them.

https://sword-auction.com/ja/product/5698/as21061-薙刀相模守藤原政常/

https://www.touken-world.jp/search/78076/

https://sword-auction.com/ja/product/5766/as17261-脇差相模守政常初代/

 

To me it seems the sword itself would be possibly late Muromachi Bizen sword. As it has that style of nakago, wide and non-tapering nakago were not too common outside late Muromachi Bizen (and few others). Of course all that I wrote in this post is just speculative based on few not too clear pictures.

 

[dkirkpatrick]

Ujifusa?

[mywei]

Could be - but couldn't find an Ujifusa who used the Sagami no kami title

 

the photos are too poor/dark for me to make out much of the last two characters tbh...

[carlgustav]

Thank you Everyone for your input, the bottom half of the characters are quite worn so taking good photos is not easy. Here is another one that might be more useful.

[ROKUJURO]

Carl Gustav,

the signature is chiselled and read vertically with the tip upwards, so please make it easier for us and put the photos in the right orientation.
Concerning the photo quality, it can help to remove the HABAKI and take photos from above (not at an angle) with a dark background and the light coming from the side.

[mywei]

It does look like Ujifusa (氏房)

[Jussi Ekholm]

You guys have good eyes, I think you are correct with Ujifusa. However as Matt wrote I don't think there was ever an Ujifusa who got the title Sagami no Kami. I feel the same as originally that sword would be late Muromachi Bizen work and a signature has been added to it. To me the signature does not seem to be of good quality. Do you have overall pictures of the sword and measurements for it?