Nihonto Club

Hi rabbit indy,

I'm afraid I wasn't able to read the name on the photo. Do you have any ideas yourself how to read the remaining 2 characters? If you are Japanese as your name suggests, you might be more skilled in doing it, and also you can see the sword, not just the photo.

Is there anything visible on the left hand side from the shinogi line on the nakago?

I have run some analysis to find potential matches, which I'll publish later. No luck so far though.

Regards,
Stan

Hello Stan,

Yes I can read two characters. It reads 江州, (Goshu).
Goshu is old name Shiga prefecture in Japan. I check this Mei in Swordsmith Index, there are several swordsmith in there.
I can identify if there are Swordsmith names photos.

Best regards,

rabbit indy

Hi rabbit indy,

That's good. I would have never have guessed it's Goshū based on the photo!

I'll have a look into my books and see if there are any matches.

Regards,
Stan

Hi rabbit indy,

I checked few books and got some idea what to look for. But as there were many smiths who signed Goshū..., I'd like to narrow down the search. Could you please add more photos of the blade to your original post, trying to catch the hamon, boshi and also the overall shape of the blade. It will speed up the process.

Regards,
Stan

Hello Stan,

Thank you for your kind.
I put some new photos of my Wakizashi.
I hope these photo help you.

rabbit indy

Hi rabbit indy,

My theory is that the remaining piece of the signature reads:

I was struggling for a while to see whether the character(s) below GŌ is just SHŪ, or also somthing else. I think both GŌ and SHŪ are 'chopped' from the right, and there's also a top part of SUKE 助 at the very bottom.

Having looked into the books, I found Gōshū Sukenaga and Gōshū Sukemitsu being potential matches. There are examples of signatures of these smiths in Nihonto Koza [1], including a naginata naoshi blade by Sukemitsu. They both cut 'Gōshū' and 'Suke' in a similar way with slanted radical 工 in GŌ. Unfortunately there aren't any images of their work available except nakago rubbings, so I can't compare it with your sword. However, the overall shape seems to match the dates for those smiths. You may find an example of Sukenaga in Fujishiro [2].

I checked other books and there are no more examples available.

This is the best I can do based on the photos. You'll need to show it to a specialist to check whether my theory is correct.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Stan

References