Military Family mount -Moto Yoshisada-Fujiwara ?

[Dogditcher]

 All input welcomed

 

 Here are my observation

 Military with family mount fittings  25" He has it listed as *MOTO YOSHISADA -FUJIWARA MINA*

 Tsuka and Fuchi have an design i cant make out

  No Identification on the spine of the nakago.

 Habaki appears to be silver

 Hamon is pretty interesting to my eyes  

 Nakago has pretty long inscription (please translate )

 Showa stamp makes me believe an early blade traditionally  made ?

 

*(years ago I believe Louis Mills read these swords and my Father in law probably just 

wrote down what he thought he heard )*

 

Thanks for looking -Enjoy

  Steve

 

 

[Dogditcher]

 

 

[Dogditcher]

 

 

[SteveM]

Hello Steve,

 

The smith/signature is the same one as in this thread below.

 

 

[Bruce Pennington]

Reposing translation from other thread: 
Seki ju Fujiwara Yoshinao saku kore.

 

Interesting in that I have another Yoshinao on file with near identical fittings.  Don't have full photos, but the one showing the menugi, is clearly different although similar.  He must have been selling blades to a particular shop that fitted them out with this style.

 

As to the Showa stamp.  If you haven't already, I recommend reading the first couple pages of the Stamps of the Japanese Sword.  It's a free download here at NMB.  There are those on both sides of the issue, but I believe the Seki Cutlery Manufacturers Association, whose stamp this was, was only inspecting and stamping showato.  I personally feel the majority of blades I see with the stamp are good/high quality with nice hamon.  If you research further, you will find there have been a couple blades pass Shinsa that had been Showa stamped, which supports those who believe the stamp was used on both showato and gendaito.  It is my guess, though, that those blades were likely hand-made, water quenched, but with other steel than tamahagane.

[Dogditcher]

Thanks Bruce and Steve

I have looked at Stamp article-very interesting 

I guess my lingering question is are all stamped swords non traditional made or were some 

 old blades that were just inspected and stamped for service if so

did they still do traditional hardening for temper -this sword to me has an unique Hamon

 

Also this sword appears to have more writing than the one that was posted -curious of what would be the additional info

 

Thanks Steve

 

 

[Brian]

The exceptions are so rare as to make it fairly reasonable to assume that swords stamped this way are not fully traditionally made. This isn't an old blade, and it can be assumed reliably that it is a wartime "Showato" that is most likely oil quenched.

[Brian]

20 hours ago, Bruce Pennington said:

If you research further, you will find there have been a couple blades pass Shinsa that had been Showa stamped, which supports those who believe the stamp was used on both showato and gendaito.  It is my guess, though, that those blades were likely hand-made, water quenched, but with other steel than tamahagane.

No, it is more reasonable to deduce that favours and leniency allowed these blades to pass shinsa. I'm betting the vast majority are oil quenched, and that the ones that passed shinsa would not have passed without some exception being made for various reasons.

[Bruce Pennington]

3 hours ago, Dogditcher said:

I guess my lingering question is are all stamped swords non traditional made or were some 

 old blades that were just inspected and stamped for service if so

did they still do traditional hardening for temper -this sword to me has an unique Hamon

 

Also this sword appears to have more writing than the one that was posted -curious of what would be the additional info

We have not seen any old blades with stamps.  We know that area collectors would gather swords from smiths on a regular basis and ship them off to arsenals, where they were inspected and stamped.  Separately, there were ongoing programs to buy or get donations of old family swords for the war effort.  These swords were often simply fitted with leather covers, and refitted with a varying degree of military parts.  None of the examples I have seen had been stamped.  So, while we don't have documents that clearly delineate stamping requirements & practices, I've seen no evidence to support the idea that older blades were stamped when accepted.

 

As to the more extensive mei, we have never read nor heard a reason some smiths varied their mei wordage, but there were several that had quite a bit of variation in length of mei.

[Dogditcher]

Thanks everyone for your input

 

Next up a Marine sword -its a tank !