I bought a sword quite some time ago and have just got round to looking at it closely and was wondering when it was made.

I bought it from ebay and it was a buy a lot of things and pay for one lot of postage jobs from China, the postage was a lot but I ended up with 7 or 8 items that cost £1 each without postage, it was mostly jewellery.

I took it apart and it has what looks like makers marks but I can only find the "cross", which is Jyu or 10 and the "1 over 11" which is Roku or 6.

I'd be grateful for any help I can get as I have looked through http://japaneseswordindex.com/kanji/nengo.htm and can't find them on it.

Thanks for your time.

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Would be helpful to post couple pictures of rest of the sword. Based on that nakago picture I would say that is unfortunately Chinese copy. And as it was cheap sword from China, it's usually a bad sign.

The mei reads

昭和十六年

Showa Ju Roku Nen - which means 1941.

Here are some more pictures. They are a bit big though. If you want an image of a specific part please let me know. I kind of suspected it might be a fake but it looks good.

http://i.imgur.com/9NxXhrW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/bqAFFaX.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/qwXebf3.jpg

:( I'm sorry, a very cheap Chinese sword, not even a good attempt at a Japanese katana.

Okay, thank you for your help, it's appreciated.