Hello all! Love the site - great resource. Situation: I recently purchased a very rough late edo era tsuka for parts and to disassemble for research purposes. The menuki are not high quality, they look like cast brass. In fact the whole tsuka was pretty poor quality when it was made. I have been doing some cleaning to remove the surface grime but maintain the ageing & patina etc. but have reached a dilemma...

Hi there,
need some help to figure out the smith's signature.
Thanks for helping. Rgds Jacques

I got this from my uncle, who got it from a garage sale a few years ago. The previous owner didn't tell him much about it. I'm guessing it is probably just a replica, but I would really like to know for sure: it will still always be my first sword, regardless of whether or not it's fake.

Thank you,
Regards,
Michael Ronco

Hi, can anyone help in reading the signature on my WW2 sword? I have been told that is probably a Showa blade, thanks.

Shuzando offers Juyo Token Nado Zufu, vol. 1-10: http://www.shuzando.co.jp/book.htm

Here is what I assume is a Seki stamp on the tang of my Ido Hidetoshi named blade. It does not look quite like what I have seen on other Seki blades. Is it,like other militaria I collect, a variation or does it mean something else? Forgive my ignorance but I do not regularly collect anything other than US items.

Thanks in advance for your help, Jerry

I have a WW II officer's sword that I need help with. I have scoured sites and have had no luck. Here are some pictures. Hope ya'll can help.

This is more like a note to myself as I was doing some research and found few links which may be useful in the future. When I started the Swordsmith Index project 4 years ago, I had to use automated tools to cleanse and verify smith records, everything Kanji related in particular, otherwise I would have to go through thousands of records manually. The results were very positive back in 2008-2009: my tools helped to identify numerous errors and gaps in the data (e.g. smith Kanji names) which are now long since been fixed. I didn't apply similar procedure to the signatures because the data was too rough and also I needed an access to a good database of Kanji and a Japanese dictionary. But most of all, my research in this direction has stopped since a lot of my input data was stolen in a burglary (and lost on a hard drive of my old worthless laptop which was taken).

Since then I switched to different activities, with full verification of the whole Index being the most important one. As it's been planned to be completed by the end of the year, I started looking at automated tools again. Unfortunately I won't be able to publish any results as I'm just starting a new job, but I might have some time over Christmas. One of the studies analyses distribution of different Kanji across provinces (it can be done across nengō as well) which shows (no surprises here) that some characters were preferred in particular provinces. Another study (which requires the tools mentioned below) is only in the planning stage and is meant to address different patterns of signatures which may help with signature verification, automated extraction of geographical locations and also with building some sort of comprehensive manual of signature reading.

The dictionaries I was meant to use were:

KANJIDIC2 for Kanji
JMdict/EDICT for Japanese/English vocabulary

Libraries:

JBLite (part of J-Ben, 2 )
JBParse, 2, 3
JMdict-Parser
nihongo.py

I'll keep you informed on any further development. Until then, I have 1750 records left to verify :-)

Regards,
Stan

Zach Luna posted some beautiful photos of Japanese swords in Victoria & Albert Museum in London:

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=23603