Nihonto Club

The name (first picture) reads "Yoshimitsu".
The date (second picture) is February 1943.
One odd thing: The date looks like it was done with stamps (one stamp for each character), instead of chiseled (compare to the Yoshimitsu, where you can see individual chisel marks).
I've never seen WWII blades with dates done this way. It could be legit, but be aware that there are a lot of Chinese-made fake blades these days, and it is common for them to have markings that are stamped (because it is so much easier).
Can you post more pictures, including:
Overall of the whole blade,
Closeup of the last 3-4 inches of the tip,
A view showing the entire tang,
A view of the tsuba (handguard) and other bits.

Pete

New photos added. Thanks for your initial reply....it gives me something to go on! David

Looks OK to me - I don't see any signs of "modern Chinese"...
The stamped date is still unusual (to me). Has anyone else seen that?

Pete

I haven't, and I agree it's odd enough to ring a lot of alarm bells, but I also reserve final judgment because the rest looks ok so far. If it's a fake, it's a bizarrely accurate fake in all other respects (yet not a fake of a really good sword). My instinct is that this might just be one of those weird exceptions.

EDIT: the koshirae being the "late war" type, I can imagine that perhaps instead of nakirishi mei maybe they started to use stamps for nengo. Save even more time, end up more legible, right? Very unusual. Looking again I am pretty sure this is genuine, just outside of the norm.