Trying to find the maker and date of a Japanese Sword -- myArmoury.com

Tim Oliver

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.

Jussi Ekholm · Posted: Wed 19 Feb, 2014 11:39 am Post subject:

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.

Tim Oliver · Posted: Wed 19 Feb, 2014 12:33 pm Post subject:

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

David Cooper · Posted: Wed 19 Feb, 2014 2:56 pm Post subject:

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

X Zhang · Posted: Wed 19 Feb, 2014 6:39 pm Post subject:

Tim Oliver · Posted: Thu 20 Feb, 2014 12:00 am Post subject:

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