TOKUJI ?

[Ian B3HR2UH]

Last week I saw an interesting , to me , sword. It was a kai gunto with an old mumei out of polish kanmuri otoshi shaped blade, unfortunately with a large kizu in it .There was an old paper tag typed or printed in English with the owners name Air Commodore Cooper and the former owners name Petty Officer Fukuda on it.

The attached photo shows the name on the kabuto gane which I read as Tokuji . O'Neil says that this is a place name and my quick research shows that it is also  a personal name . Do I have the reading right as Tokuji and is this a surname , personal name , place name or something else ?

Under the fuchi Tokuji is written on the left hand side and Fukuda at the bottom. Do the katakana on the right side read mumei and can anyone make anything of the rest of the characters?

The piece is interesting as it confirms that the names written under the fuchi are those of the owner and not that of the person who bound it or put it together.

Ian Brooks

[Bruce Pennington]

That is a fascinating discovery, Ian!  Thanks for posting this.