Two shin gunto (or so it seems) in UK

[MrJones]

Hello there everyone!

 

I work for a small military museum over here in the sunny North of England, and in our collection we have (among many other blades - 31 were on display last time I counted!) a pair of what are, I think, shin gunto, probably both mid- to late-war. All the data we possess on them are, unfortunately, that they were "Japanese Officers' swords" surrendered to a British General at Singapore (we think), upon the surrender of Japan in 1945.

 

When I dug the first of these out of its case for cleaning and general inspection, I did at least have the sense to do some research before going about my business; however, I feel it pertinent to emphasise now that, since this weapon is being displayed in a museum, keeping all of its fittings, etc in a state of good repair and cleanliness comes above the interest of collectors. So, I make no apologies for the shininess of the tsuba, habaki and to some extent the menuki. This weapon is being displayed to the public; in addition, at least to me, it seems the least I can do to commemorate the man who fought with it all those years ago. The war's long over, after all.

 

Anyway, enough philosophy. The sword is generally, from what I can see, in decent shape; to start from the top, the copper kashira is intact and still carries its mounting ring for a tassel, although the tassel itself is missing; the tsuka-ito is somewhat faded, but largely intact, though sadly it has been severed in one place and thus come away, and probably lost its tension as well. The samegawa is all present and correct, and I think white rayskin. Both menuki are also present and correct. (Incidentally, do correct me on terminology if I'm wrong!)

 

The mekugi is, much to my chagrin, missing, although the mekugi-ana is fortunately still accessible; this has enabled me to put a piece of fishing wire through and loop it around the tsuka, albeit loosely so as to avoid putting pressure on the tsuka-ito. When I first tried to pull the sword from its saya, I (showing my youthful ignorance) grasped it by the tsuka and gave it a firm pull - at which point the entire assembly shot off the nagako into my hand! I needed a cigarette after that one...

 

The seppa are all where they should be, as is the habaki. The tsuba appears to be a fairly ordinary piece of cast brass, with four five-petalled flowers (I assume either a rather poor representation of the Imperial chrysanthemum, or perhaps of something else... memory lapse, I had one in mind but it's flown out of my head) at the corners. The blade catch is just about intact, but the tsuka-ito is badly damaged around its upper end and so it is poorly secured; in addition, the saya is so badly worn on the inside that the catch has nothing upon which to grip, making the mechanism non-functional.

 

Now, on to the blade. The blade is around 23-24in long (i.e. near or exactly 2 feet, or 60cm) and has a fairly shallow curve, which seems to be normal. (Again, correction desirable if necessary.) The habaki is around an inch long and looks to be gold. There is a pretty clearly visible hamon (which is what got me excited), which appears to be pretty straight (i.e. its upper edge doesn't undulate very much); there are plenty of random, if smallish, variations in the edge, which made me wonder if it had been hand-made (and thus hand-applied). The grain of the blade is also visible, but lacks that... oddly swirly quality that I have seen in pictures (and examples) of katana and tachi when looking at polished blades. In this case, one can see a clear, straight pattern running longitudinally.

 

The blade lacks any fullers. The mune is as straight as a die all the way along the blade, as are the shinogi on both sides; the blade also has a nice, prominent yokote. The blade does exhibit some damage; the very tip of the blade is slightly bent and compacted, obviously from an impact; just below this there is a nick in the edge of the blade. A quick run alone the mune showed nothing, save for some small specks of black staining of some variety. This staining is also visible on the right-hand side of the blade, around an inch down from the habaki, and I have an unpleasant feeling may be rust as a result of careless handling some years ago (we always use latex gloves!). On the left-hand side, there are various small scuffs and scratches (most of them very small), and a further nick diagonally along the shinogi, about 8.5in from the tip.

 

I realise, of course, that all this guff isn't much use without pictures, and of course that any info on the blade will be a bugger to get without a good pic and/or rubbing of the nagako's inscription. Unfortunately, that will have to come tomorrow - I aim to have the works digicam up and running by early afternoon, so hopefully I'll be able to get you chaps some pictures. In the meanwhile, however, can you tell me anything in particular from that, apart from "it's a sword"?

[John A Stuart]

Hi, If you surf this site by Kim Jinsoo you will find everything you need to know, just about. John

BTW English is on the site as you search around.

http://www.jp-sword.com/

[Grey Doffin]

So, I make no apologies for the shininess of the tsuba, habaki and to some extent the menuki.

I have often said, if you want to destroy a Japanese sword, donate it to a museum. If you don't know what you're doing, and you don't, do not clean or polish any part of the sword. Probably, this time, you have only destroyed the patina on mass produced WWII Miliray sword pieces, which isn't a great shame. Next time you might do much worse. Leave stuff alone if you're not qualified to fix it.

Grey

[MrJones]

It was for precisely this reason that I refrained entirely from doing anything more than running a cloth, very gently, along the sides of the blade itself, or for that matter of so much as touching the nagako. I am, even if only dimly, aware of the need for very special care in dealing with these swords, and especially in caring for their blades. I may be no specialist but I am by no means wholly ignorant.

 

Now, I am also aware that patina is valued, especially by collectors, as evidence of a piece's life, if you will; patina signifies the many years of uncomplaining existence the object has endured, and collectors like patination. Fair enough. What, however, of the aesthetic value of displaying an object in the best condition you can, consistent with preserving its integrity? What is more interesting to the visitor - a gallery filled with tired, dulled objects, or a gallery in which those objects, while preserving their integrity, are at least displayed in the best possible condition consistent with their safety? Unless removal of the patina is going to cause sudden and serious degradation of the brasswork (which would be worrying in a climate-controlled environment regularly watched over by staff), it seems to me that there is equal value in keeping the piece looking its best, and presented in a manner that is interesting to the public.

 

Understand that I am not saying, here, that I am some superior expert; I'm not, which is why (as I said) I left the blade well alone. I am, however, not a collector, and not interested in the value of the piece; it's not going to be for sale any time soon (well, I hope not anyway). What I am interested in is three things: knowing what it is, knowing if possible how old its blade is, and displaying it for the edification of the general public. Now I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong, if I am - but I'd like a reason other than "a good patina helps to give it character", or "it can help determine the age somewhat". One could well say the same thing about a quietly tarnished piece of silver or a dried, almost cracking wooden figure, or a book whose leather is dry from many years of hard wear.

 

(As a minor aside, I am curious as to what the men of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy did with their weapons. Did they leave them to grow a natural patina, or were they made to polish them to perfection?)

 

Please be aware, Grey, that I am not trying to be confrontational. Nor, however, am I a total imbecile, and the implication of your post was not too far short of that mark. I'd appreciate a slightly more useful contribution than what amounts to "you are a moron". I can appreciate why collectors prefer a patina, and I can appreciate that it may have some value in helping to tell you things about the object. I still, nonetheless, am not sure why a non-destructive process performed on many objects throughout the ages is castigated as "destroying" the object in some manner.

[John A Stuart]

The byword for the preservation of weapons and antiques in general is 'stabilisation'. I have had this conversation with museum conservators in the past and preserving them in near to found state was paramount. I had said 'Why not restore some of these pieces?" and it was considered more efficacious from an historical point of view to keep the item as it was found, I didn't mean destroy old accesories either, but, replace missing bits and pieces. I tend to favour this idea now after having seen some old conservatorship in the past actually cause harm decades later as it itself degraded. Who would want Venus de Milo's arms reattached, sort of thing? Even WW II militaria shouldn't be kept in parade polish anymore. My thoughts. John

[Grey Doffin]

Mr. Jones,

So let's say, for instance, that you were in charge of the care of old oil paintings. If you weren't trained to properly fix oil paintings, would your museum tell you to do what made sense with them? How about bronze sculptures? Would you be given free reign to do as you think best? Of course not; you would be instructed to get them to a properly trained conservator. Why should Japanese swords be any different?

My point isn't that Japanese sword parts should never be cleaned, it is that Japanese sword parts, blade and kodogu, if needing a cleaning, should be cleaned by someone who has proper training, which you don't have. I know you don't have proper training because you polished the parts, something someone with proper training would not have done.

The patina on Japanese sword kodogu is somewhat indicative of age but, much more important, it is what the maker of the part chose for it. Shakudo is an alloy of copper & gold, which, with proper patination, is a jet black color. Polish it a bit and it looks like a new copper pipe. The same with shibuichi, yamagane, and all the other great alloys and patinas that kodogu artists used; they are very easily ruined by well meaning amateurs with brillo pads.

I'm not saying that you're wholly ignorant or an imbecile, but you need to understand that if you are given art objects and historical artifacts into your care, you need to know, for sure, how best to care for them. No qualified authority on Japanese swords told you to polish those pieces; you made that up yourself. Please don't do it again.

Grey

[drbvac]

Well said gentlemen - bet he won't be so quick to even ask the next time but it does point out the difference in thinking between some of those that attend to and/or collect militaria and nihinto.

 

Military collectors tend to over clean, polish till they look like the day they were made, (except for Colt revolver collectors who have a fit if you clean the patina off them), But it is a different perspective

[MrJones]

Grey, I can't say I'd ever come across that particular facet of nihonto construction before. With that in mind, the picture becomes quite different; I've no right to damage the work of a skilled artisan, and I seem to have been very lucky, and, as you said above, done damage only to mass-produced fittings manufactured during wartime. At least I had enough sense not to use a Brillo pad, but it seems that's about all the redemption I can hope for. Lesson, unfortunately very belatedly, learned. The worst bit is that I should have enquired here before even thinking about doing anything.

[IanB]

Mr. Jones,

You say your museum is in the North of England. The obvious place to enquire is the Royal Armouries in Leeds. As 'Curator Emeritus' of Oriental Arms and Armour of that establishment, I would be delighted to have a look at your swords and identify the blades. Since I also live near Leeds, I could come to you rather than you bring the items to the Museum.

Ian Bottomley

[MrJones]

Ian, that would be excellent indeed. I'd be honoured to have an expert come and ID our blades; I'm sure they're nothing particularly special, but it would certainly be good to know precisely who made them and where.

 

I'll PM you shortly; thanks very much for the offer.

 

And for that matter, thanks to those of you who've taken the time to look at this thread so far. I'm quite sure that I'll never, ever make the foolish judgement I made in carefully cleaning this particular piece again, and John, that site to which you provided a link is fascinating indeed!

[Grey Doffin]

Mr. Jones,

Thank you.

Grey

[loiner1965]

and may i add....mr bottomley is one of the respected members of this forum and his experience in nihonto is indeed of the highest quarter....ian you are a credit to us all mate...top man

[Brian]

Mr Jones,

I hope we didn't come across to strong, but as you may well imagine..when dealing with antiques, then different rules apply.

When delaing with just about any antique metalwork, an ages patina is valued over a cleaned one. Think of it like rebluing an antique Colt revolver. Value is ruined completely. Some with polishing old brass. Patina looks better than the "fresh out of the factory" look.

As you said, these were WW2 fittings, and you likely haven't ruined them yet..but that is 60 years of age gone now...and in another 50 years, that WW2 katana is an antique too.

 

Anyways, please do continue to participate and we will advise you wherever we can. Ian is eminently qualified to assist, and you are lucky to have him near.

Please keep us updated.

 

Regards,

Brian

[Grey Doffin]

While we're on the subject, the patinas on Japnaese sword kodogu have a practical component as well as aesthetic. In many cases they serve to protect the metal from corrosion. The deep black finish on old iron tsuba is a good example. The tsuba are much less likely to rust in a damp environment with the patina than they are without.

Grey

[MrJones]

Indeed, I appear to have been most fortunate not to have ruined something priceless and utterly irreplacable. And yes, I am supremely lucky to have Ian to assist in improving my minimal-to-non-existent knowledge of these magnificent weapons. I happened to go looking at the ones in the other half of the museum (being extremely careful not even to breathe near them, now!) and spotted another shin gunto that seemed to be quite different from the rest; its rounded tsuba looks like one of iron, but is very dark in colour and appears to have gold fittings on it; having been here, I breathed very deeply and thought, "that could be patina. Thank gawd I didn't try to clean that in a spare moment"!

 

Anyway, I'll await Ian with interest. Hopefully we're all set to meet on Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to learning an awful lot in a short time... and also most interested to learn of the UK token (SP?) association's common meeting-place, apparently a pub with which I'm familiar...

[sensei215]

I think it would be very interesting if you could post Ian's findings. I know I for one am curious and am sure other members will enjoy seeing what you have found.

 

Tim S

[IanB]

Weather permitting, I will be looking at these swords on Tuesday. As requested I will report back to NMB.

Ian Bottomley

[John A Stuart]

This museum, is it the York Castle Museum? Actually a converted debtors prison. John

[loiner1965]

This museum, is it the York Castle Museum? Actually a converted debtors prison. John

if it is then i might pop across myself to have a butchers

[MrJones]

I'm afraid I'm not lucky enough to be at the Castle Museum; ours is the Regimental Museum of the Royal Dragoon Guards, which is near the Castle Museum but on the opposite side of Clifford's Tower. In the same building (indeed, the same room) there is also the Regimental Museum of the Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Yorkshire (now part of the Yorkshire Regiment, along with the Green Howards, Duke of Wellington's Regt. and the Lancs and Yorks Regt. if I recall rightly). I have to confess that these weapons - two in our part, six in theirs - are more part of the regiments' stories than any sort of coherent exhibit on Japanese weapons, however.

 

We're really here to tell the story of our regiments' 325 years of history, rather than to display exclusively this or that, so I'm not sure how much interest it would hold to anyone purely after nihonto. But still, feel free to come along; the more the merrier, and we do have a lot of exhibits from those 325 years. Uniforms, weapons, medals, standards, helmets, trophies, all the usual paraphernalia of a regiment. Oh, and also, a stuffed horse of sorts.

[loiner1965]

I'm afraid I'm not lucky enough to be at the Castle Museum; ours is the Regimental Museum of the Royal Dragoon Guards, which is near the Castle Museum but on the opposite side of Clifford's Tower. In the same building (indeed, the same room) there is also the Regimental Museum of the Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Yorkshire (now part of the Yorkshire Regiment, along with the Green Howards, Duke of Wellington's Regt. and the Lancs and Yorks Regt. if I recall rightly). I have to confess that these weapons - two in our part, six in theirs - are more part of the regiments' stories than any sort of coherent exhibit on Japanese weapons, however.

 

We're really here to tell the story of our regiments' 325 years of history, rather than to display exclusively this or that, so I'm not sure how much interest it would hold to anyone purely after nihonto. But still, feel free to come along; the more the merrier, and we do have a lot of exhibits from those 325 years. Uniforms, weapons, medals, standards, helmets, trophies, all the usual paraphernalia of a regiment. Oh, and also, a stuffed horse of sorts.

i know where you are now mate....only down road in leeds but i do pop into york a fair bit but usually after 6pm for a walk and a bite to eat....but one day hopefully i will pop in

[IanB]

All, I did say I would publish details of the swords in the Regimental Museum. I hope you will forgive the delay in doing so but I felt it only proper to await Mr. Jones' permission to do so.

In all there are 7 swords belonging to the two regiments and, as you would expect, they were all carried by the Japanese military and acquired during WWII. Most were in poor condition with scoured blades that precluded seeing any details.

1. Regular type 94 pattern koshirae with a Showa blade signed by ' .. Kanekuni saku'. This is preceded by the two kanji used for GUN as in Gumma and Sui as in water (Sorry I haven't masters putting kanji in these posts). So far I have failed to determine how these two kanji are pronounced in this context.

2. Sword in Showa civilian mounts with a leather cover over the saya and leather bands protecting the fuchi and kashira. The latter of copper incised with simple parallel lines. The tsuba was of iron, sukashi with radiating gunbai piercings. Blade signed 'Noshu Seki ju Kanenori saku' with a Showa stamp.

3. Sword in standard army mount signed: 'Koa Isshin Mantetsu saku' and dated Showa 13. The date was somewhat odd since the numeral following nen was replaced by the zodiacal character JIN. Since this is used as a jinkan for 49,39,29,19,9 and 59, it would seem to be being used as 19 in this case - 1926 + 19 -1 = 1944.

4. Another similar sword to No. 3 also by Koa Isshin Mantetsu.

5. This sword was in a leather covered saya with a military style hilt and a small iron wakizashi tsuba of poor quality decorated with prunus in gold. The blade was signed katana mei 'Bizen Osafune Kunimitsu'. It is impossible to say just how old this blade might be because of its condition. The tang suggested Sue Osafune, being ubu, rather straight and almost parallel. It deserves further examination.

The two other swords were in a distressed state and could not be really examined because the hilts could not be removed. Both are probably Showa period.

 

Ian Bottomley

[MrJones]

The delay was, I should hasten to add, partially my fault; I wasn't really happy with posting anything myself, in the knowledge that a) I'm ignorant on the subject and b) I might therefore misrepresent what I an had said. Happily, however, all is well.

 

With regard to the remaining two swords, unfortunately one's grip components overlapped completely the mekugi (as I recall; many pints of good ale seem to have done my memory no good), and it was felt best to leave them in place rather than damage the samegawa and tsuka-ito. The other had been wrapped with Ian judged (to my astonishment) to be... masking tape! Many, many years old, it was faded to brown but still seemingly rather sticky and resilient. Erk. As Ian has said here, he felt they were both likely to be Showato, so I was happy to leave them alone. Rather a shame, but such is life.

 

Needless to say, I was rather pleased (not to mention a bit awestruck) to find myself holding what seems to be a blade considerably older than, among other things, either of the regiments in the museum's earliest antecedents!

 

At any rate, I'm supremely grateful to Ian for having come along in his own free time to have a look at our blades, and it was a privilege both to learn so much, and to have him take the time to come to our small organisation.

 

Ian, many thanks indeed.

 

Now, a few questions on my part (for my own curiosity as much as anything).

 

Firstly: Having perused a most interesting page on Showa-era swords (linked from here, at http://ryujinswords.com/shostamp.htm ), I'm curious about the quality, not so much as artistic items but as weapons, of the two Koa-Isshin Mantetsu weapons in our museum. How good, really, were these blades? The above page has led me to suspect better than the conventional wisdom on Showato might decree, but still. A board full of experts is always better than just one source.

 

Secondly: Ian mentioned "scouring" of the blades; I'd observed that they were generally in a fairly battered state (with not a few having many patches of very black, very old rust), but what exactly does this term mean? I can only suppose that the blades, as well as being unpolished, have a literally scoured or scratched appearance when viewed closely. Ian mentioned (in the course of enlightening me on a good many other things!) that the difference between polished and unpolished blade was, to say the least, pronounced. Is this sort of thing part of that difference?

 

Thirdly: Regarding our Bizen blade, which Ian has described as deserving further examination; how would this be possible, if the museum wished?

[IanB]

As far as I could judge, all of the blades in the Museum were stable. Yes, there was old black rust marks on some blades but it isn't going to get any worse. The swords are also in a stable environment so they are best left well alone. By scouring I meant that they have been cleaned in the past with some abrasive such as emery cloth to remove rust. Sadly the only remedy is a Japanese polisher which would be an expensive venture for the Museum. I would offer the usual advice and leave well alone. It might be possible to glean a little more by studying the tang and inscription on the Bizen blade and comparing it with published oshigata of authentic blades, but without a proper Japanese polish, there is almost nothing to be learned from the blade itself.

Ian Bottomley

[Stephen]

http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl/koa.htm

 

a link for Mantetsu learning