help with tang signatures for translation, For Stan

Hi Stan,

Im sending the pictures of the swords the first two pictures are of the yari, I tried to consult someone he just mentioned yamato no kami? but thats all. the suceding is the 2 short sword picsist is with 2 character signature and the next is with 5 characters, followed with a tanto with 2 charcter signature. lastly would you be kind enough to interpret a sinature on a tsuba my last picture. Well I hope you could shed some light on this I really dont know who to turn to? Thanks be waiting for your reply.

Regards,
jo

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Hi Jo, I'll have a look

Hi Jo,

I'll have a look tonight.

Regards,
Stan

P.S. I'll move this thread to Nihonto section of the Discussion Board.

Hi Stan

Hi Stan,

Thanks in advance, I Had the items for years and I still do not know what I have. Hopefully you could me info so I could appreciate my blades more....

I really appreciate your looking into it.

Sincerely,
Jo

Bitchū no Kami Tachibana Yasuhiro

Hi Jo,

Here are the first results.

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備中守橘康廣
bitchū no kami tachibana yasuhiro

There were 3 smiths called Yasuhiro who signed this way. They were active between 1661 and 1736. See YAS804, YAS805, YAS806.

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金高
kanetaka

See the list of potential matches here.

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Sorry, the photo is too small. If you attach a large image of the signature I'll try reading.

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大和守平國綱
yamato no kami taira kunitsuna

(Not sure about TSUNA.) Yamato no Kami - title, Taira - clan, Kunitsuna - name.

It may be Kunitsuna KUN1586 from Bungo, around 1658 (I don't have him in the Swordsmith Index).

I can't read the signature on the tsuba (sorry, I'm no good at fittings).

Regards,
Stan

JUMYO?

For the "3511" picture, I'm going to guess Jumyo.
(Without my wife's help, so I could easily be wrong).

Pete

3505

In 3505, I don't see how it could be TSUNA.
But, I can't find anything close. The left-half of the last kanji looks like KAI as in KAISHA, but I can't find any kanji with KAI on the left side...

That kanji could *possibly* be an old form of TSU/ZU, as in AIZU (old Nelson #2543).

Pete

Tsuna

Hi Pete,

saipan59 wrote:
In 3505, I don't see how it could be TSUNA.

Me neither, without considerable help of imagination. Better close up photo would shed more light too! I wrote TSUNA in a 'book' form, but it may be a variation, e.g. 紼. I looked at different ways of writing TSUNA, and when they aren't completely clear, they can look weird. Also, I thought yari would have very limited real estate for a wide character and it nearly appears to be incomplete on the right hand side as it's too close to the edge. Anyway, it was more of an educated guess on my part because pretty much everything else in the signature has that Bungo feeling ('Yamato no Kami', 'Taira'). I looked at different Bungo smiths with 國 as the first character and TSUNA sounded the most plausible. And, like yourself, I couldn't find any other Kanji with exact match, even without any connection to sword books.

saipan59 wrote:
The left-half of the last kanji looks like KAI as in KAISHA, but I can't find any kanji with KAI on the left side...

Yep, it really does look like KAI on the photo.

Regards,
Stan