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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 6, 2012 1:18:27 GMT
Hello all, a newby to your forum and would like to introduce myself with a plea for information regarding a Katana. First, not my sword but a family friend who's son bought it in for show and tell at my sons school. Being a martial arts person with a small interest in swords i asked him how he come to have such an interesting piece in his possession? The story goes that he got it from his Grandfather who served in ww2 and it has been sitting in the ceiling space..Yadda Yaddadah.. there must be a million stories like this out there but, rest assured, i am only seeking help I know the knock off's are plentiful out there so i have some pictures posted. I started browsing but just got more and more confused. O.K, so the sword has some abnormal things going on, one being the characters on the top of the blade. It does not have a Menuki? and i cannot find the locator on the handle to check the tang. i will do this if i purchase the sword. The handle binding is leather(i think) and it seems to have a coating of some sort underneath. Also the first i have seen with a drag wheel. I will await the more learned of you to respond. A great site by the way. Regards
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Jul 6, 2012 1:50:28 GMT
im no expert but thatlooks nothing like the gunto ive seen. honestly it just looks like a piece of crap sword, the bladelooks unusually thin, no hamon present, and the carving/engraving looks shoddy too. like i said im not an expert and this is just my opinion.
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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 6, 2012 2:08:15 GMT
Thanks Saito, and as stated i am no expert either, not even close. But i would like to get some history as the sword is old and has been in this same family since ww2. It has to have some story whether it is a piece of crap or not. I know a lot of these were mass produced towards the end of the war and a lot of souvenirs or mementos were brought back. There is a story in itself. Anyway, maybe somebody could shed a little more light a little more eloquently.
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Sam H
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Post by Sam H on Jul 6, 2012 2:13:15 GMT
I hope your friend didn't pay much for the sword. I highly doubt that sword was a WWII prize.
I say its a fake.
Japanese officer's swords in WWII came in two types - NCO's swords and CO's swords. NCO swords were made with an aluminum tsuka (hilt) and CO swords were made with more traditional wood, rayskin and cotton cord tsuka. This thing doesn't resemble either.
The tsuba (handguard) and habaki (blade collar) are poorly made and look like they were artificially aged. In fact the whole sword looks like that.
The kanji on the katana are poorly done - something no Japanese officer would permit on his sword. The blade itself is crap - its poorly shaped and screams cheap Chinese junk to me.
To the average looker the sword may look old and antique and even real. To someone who knows even a little bit about katana its easy to see this is a fake. I doubt there's any real history behind it except that someone's pulling the wool over someone's eyes...
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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 6, 2012 2:25:39 GMT
Thanks Sam, This family are personal friends of mine and no money changed hands for it. It was given to a nine year old kid by his grandfather. I think the Grandfather has bought a cheap knockoff after ww2 not knowing or caring about authenticity or anything else. As stated, it has been in this family for a long time so that in itself makes it old. If it were a watch we would be looking at a seiko vs a tag huer. One is crap and one is a rolls royce but they are still both old.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Jul 6, 2012 2:32:40 GMT
i agree, id say the old man bought it as a souvenier. crap or not, it seems legit age wise. its obviousy not a "real" sword, but deff old.
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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 6, 2012 2:44:19 GMT
Thanks Saito i think you have nailed it, and myself, being a Bonsai Nurseryman and Martial Arts Instructor, (not a sword expert) had that suspicion but better to know. The family offered it to me to purchase but maybe the child is better off keeping it as a reminder of grandpa. The family are anti-weapon people so we will see.
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Post by chrisperoni on Jul 6, 2012 2:52:32 GMT
love bonsai! (just sayin' ) give it a bit of time and others who know tons about guntos will chime in. In my totally amateur opinion I think it's a repro as you've figured. Old-ish but not a genuine sword owned/made for a soldier
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Post by Svadilfari on Jul 6, 2012 6:08:04 GMT
Well..like most other's so far..I'm not thinking it's a "genuine" sword..but..there are so many..?unusual? features I'm curious as to just *what* it is ? I'm surmising..if someone back then was trying to make a 'touristy" katana..they'd make it look MORE like a real one..not less ? Just my two cent's worth ??
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2012 6:14:10 GMT
The dragwheel is cool.
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slav
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Post by slav on Jul 6, 2012 6:16:42 GMT
Okay I'm going to go ahead and say that this is FOR SURE a fake. Kbai.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2012 6:50:40 GMT
It is! I've never seen that on a katana before, what would be its purpose?
My first thought on seeing the photos was that perhaps this is not even a Japanese sword, Korean maybe.
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Post by MOK on Jul 8, 2012 9:19:36 GMT
Folks, the way this particular sword is mounted makes it a tachi, not a katana... a fake tachi, but still. Well, some people like ridiculously, tackily, obviously-compensating-for-something large swords; the wheel stops the tip of such an awkwardly long saya from simply dragging on the ground. Actually, historically you often see these on oversized saya housing regular-sized wakizashi, worn by merchants over-compensating for not being allowed to wear an actual daito... the rest tend to be dress swords for courtiers with more pretense than sense. It's basically the same thing as toupees and elevator shoes. (Oh, and in Bleach, Yachiru Kusajishi, the darling Vice-Captain of 11th Squad, has a drag wheel on her sealed soul cutter. It makes sense, too, since she's essentially a gleefully homicidal preschooler and the fairly regular-sized sword is taller than she herself. )
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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 8, 2012 11:23:41 GMT
Thanks Mok for sharing your knowledge with us. I thought the drag wheel would be for Short A@#%d people but also thought it was for crawling on the ground, sneaking up type of thing. Thanks Sxxx. Never thought of Korean but maybe Mok has answered the question for us. Thanks all for your input and expertise. What a great site. I belong to an Aussie site called Aus Bonsai and it is an awesome site but this one equals it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2012 14:16:21 GMT
Heh, I'm a fan of Bleach, but I've never noticed that before, thanks for pointing it out!
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on Jul 8, 2012 17:08:36 GMT
Unfortunately this seems to be very bad Chinese reproduction of gunto. If it weren't the slight resemblance to gunto fittings I would have gone for Chinese made replica of Korean sword guess. First the blade is very cruedly shaped hira-zukuri. Unfortunately I cannot match those kanji to anything on my books, so I can't help with the inscription. No Japanese sword made for WWII was hira-zukuri as far as I know, the only very rare possibility would have been older blade (long hira-zukuri blades are very rare and having one of those mounted as gunto, can't recall ever seeing one). Fittings have tiny parts that resemble gunto, like tsuba and the locking mechanism (although it's horribly executed). It has single ashi as did many types of gunto. Kabuto-gane kashira,sarute, kojiri etc. yet all are very crude imitations of originals. Allthough that dragwheel is just plain stupidity in my book. Saya seems to have leather covering, yet it's wrongly executed. I think this could be from 70's/80's, I don't really know when these Chinese fakes started to make their appearance, might even be bit older but I think WWII might be bit stretching it. If you have intrest in Japanese military swords, here is the best online resource on them that I am aware of: www.h4.dion.ne.jp/~t-ohmura/gunto_002.htm
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Post by Bodhidharma on Jul 11, 2012 0:26:09 GMT
Thanks for all that info Jussi. It is glaringly obvious that the sword is a bad imitation but the knowledge i have acquired finding out and researching is invaluable. Plus it has been fun. Regards.
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