Katana for comment

[AJ1356]

I had bought this sword about 10 years ago when I was in Japan. I expressed interest in a katana and one of the guys I knew back then took me to an antique dealer and I ended up buy this(the only one I could offord and was nice). It does come with a piece of old paper that the dealer said was the certificate for it. He also said the sword was made by the second best swordsmith and an emperial swordsmith which I think he meant of the Mieji era. Other than that I know nothing about it, have never gotten around to taken it to be appraised or properly cleaned/sharpened. Still very sharp and well balanced, no I don't know how many body balde this is .
comments/info is welcomed

[thinreadline]

I had bought this sword about 10 years ago when I was in Japan. I expressed interest in a katana and one of the guys I knew back then took me to an antique dealer and I ended up buy this(the only one I could offord and was nice). It does come with a piece of old paper that the dealer said was the certificate for it. He also said the sword was made by the second best swordsmith and an emperial swordsmith which I think he meant of the Mieji era. Other than that I know nothing about it, have never gotten around to taken it to be appraised or properly cleaned/sharpened. Still very sharp and well balanced, no I don't know how many body balde this is .
comments/info is welcomed

Any pics ?

[AJ1356]

internet is slow , took awhile to upload

[AJ1356]

No comments?? I did not know no one was into Katanas here...

[koto]

WWII Seki smith Yoshiomi 武山 数雄

[Rick]

Rich stops by now and then ..

http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl/nihonto.htm

[laEspadaAncha]

No comments?? I did not know no one was into Katanas here...


I have several nihonto, but am functionally useless when it comes to translating kanji.

Koto on the other hand has translated the mei... the osujikai file marks through me a little, though my hands-on exposure is limited enough that it means relatively little when a feature on a nihonto catches my eye as "odd"...

Nice blade either way. I'm guessing the shirasaya is contemporary... or at least not original to the katana.

[AJ1356]

Kono thanks for the translation, Yoshiomi does sound familiar, I think that is what I was told the maker was.
The shirisaya is much newer than the sword, maybe at most 15 years old. Mybe next time I am home I'll take some pictures of the certificate and then we'll know more.
A quastion to anyone who'd know this. Does any one know of a person who'd be able to properly clean the resharpen this baby? In southern United States??

[laEspadaAncha]

Kono thanks for the translation, Yoshiomi does sound familiar, I think that is what I was told the maker was.
The shirisaya is much newer than the sword, maybe at most 15 years old. Mybe next time I am home I'll take some pictures of the certificate and then we'll know more.
A quastion to anyone who'd know this. Does any one know of a person who'd be able to properly clean the resharpen this baby? In southern United States??


Are you willing to wait the better part of a year? Anyway, given the cost of polishing, I would suggest first researching the value of this smith's work to make sure it would be worth the investment of a professional polish... Here's one that sold in December, signed Yoshiomi and in koshirae:

http://militariawwii.com/ww2-japanese-army-officers-showato-samurai-sword-wsurrender-tag-signed-beauty

This singular example could be a statistical outlier, but from my own (albeit limited) experience, for each nihonto I have owned that is worth the cost of a polish, I have owned at least one that was not.

FWIW, I have had success with Noxon 7. It is a polishing agent, but an individual known to me - who has bought and sold more nihonto than I will ever see - swears by the stuff as the only metal polish that he considers to be safe for nihonto. Gentle-to-moderate pressure* with a soft cloth... I've been able to remove a fair amount of oxidation similar to what appears on your example, and it will enhance the visibility of the hamon assuming there is one.

Either way, a nice gendaito... :)

[sirupate]

Nice bit of info on here, about the Noxon 7, do you have pics with the results?

[laEspadaAncha]

Nice bit of info on here, about the Noxon 7, do you have pics with the results?

As luck would have it, I just happened to post a "before" pic of a Shinshinto katana here in the forum:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11616

I'll make it a point to take an "after" pic of the reverse over the week when time permits and post it. :)

[AJ1356]

I've been searching around the net, trying to find more information about the Seki smith Yoshiomi. All of the ones I have found resemble more to the pic in this post, and none to what I have. Plus all other Seki swords have the stamp which mine does not. Just wondering, what is the deal, could it be that there was another Yoshiomi, or someone else with a similar name who made this, or is it common that the same maker marks different swords differently?

[Rich]

I have three oshigata of Yoshiomi, all Seki smiths, but the signatures look somewhat different. Many Seki factories employed mei carvers, so a blade by a particular smith could have very different looking signatures depending on which mei carver signed it.

http://home.earthlink.net/~ttstein/index.htm

Rich S