NEED ASSISTANCE ON IDENTIFICATION

Hello all,

I have been struggling with this sword for a couple of years now and I give up!

Can anyone give me some clue to what this might be?

Complete picture here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/37236755/IMG_5835.JPG

MOTOHABA-----------30.0mm

MOTOGASANE---------7mm

SAKIHABA-------------21.0mm

KISSAKI---------------3.6cm

NAKAGO---------------21.5cm

NAGASA---------------66.5cm

SORI------------------1.7cm

The yasurimei, nakagogiri, hamon and boshi should give a good clue, but I fail. So far I have only been able to exclude schools.

Perhaps someone has or seen an identical sword signed?

/Martin

Looks showa gendaito.

I think so too....

Early Mino Showa blade "Kane tell the maker" school

Cracking blade though from what I can see.

Thank you all for the feedback.

Do you think that it is the nakago that places this piece into the Showa period?

My guess was late Edo 1800-1880.

/Martin

I doubt it is a MIno showa blade as the hamon is not right. The length is standard for a gunto, the nakago appears to be what one would see in that era as well....After realizing I simply needed to click to enlarge, I would still lean toward showa. The hamon seems to have little activity; I would expect a shinshinto to have more going on in the ji and ha....

With the good polish, nicely cut hi, yasurime and hamon, I would lean towards a Shinshinto rather than Gendaito.

Brian

Brian&Chris,

It is, as noted, a well cut hi and the forging is super tight. So super tight that it is very hard to determine the hada. Which I would say is well forged Masame. The blade was bought in the Koshirae as in the picture. Also, the tsuba has "thumb marks" on it which gives me the impression that this sword has been used on a day to day basis where the samurai rested his hands on both flat ends of the tsuba. Yes, it could be old fittings attached to newer sword.

Now I might be wrong or have misunderstood a previous conversation I had with a dealer when I was i Japan the last time. He said (or words to that effect):

"Martin, here you have a sword that I could sell to you very very cheap, but I will not get neither an export license for it nor a Torokusho for it. Therefore I cannot sell it to you."

What I understood from the conversation was that the sword was not possible to export, due to that this sword was a gendaito/showato.

So, this sword I have now is exported from Japan and had Torokusho and obviously was exported to me.

This is a headscratcher for me.

Do you guys know anything about this?

Showato/Gendaito is thin ice for me.

/Martin