Swords japanese dating
DATE INSCRIPTIONS - NENGO
Japanese swords have been made for over a thousand years. Many swords are inscribed with the date they were made. Swords with date inscriptions prior to 1200 C.E. are extremely rare; therefore those nengo have not been included. The inscriptions normally read from the top down, nengo (period); nen (number of years into the period); gatsu (month) and hi (day). A typical date inscription would read: "18th year of Showa, 2nd month, 8th day". To arrive at the corresponding Westernized calendar year, add the number of years into the period to the starting year of the period. During much of the 1300's, the Japanese Imperial Court was politically divided into the Southern Court and Northern Court. Most swords will have dates using the nengo of the Southern Court, but occasionally one will be encountered where the Northern Court nengo are used. There are other methods of writing dates, but the use of nengo is by far the most common. During the W
JAPANESE SWORD IDENTIFICATION - Is it old? Is it real? Japanese Methods of Representing Dates - 1 Nengô (Reign Periods) This is the dating system which is most commonly encountered on the nakago of Japanese swords. In modern times as .
Daishō
Pair of Japanese sabres, typically comprising a katana and a wakisashi, or a tashi and a tantō
Not to be confused with Taishō.
The daishō (大小, daishō)—"large and small"[1]—is a Japanese term for a matched pair of traditionally made Japanese swords(nihonto) worn by the samurai class in feudal Japan.
The etymology of the word daishō becomes apparent when the terms daitō, meaning long sword, and shōtō, meaning short sword, are used; daitō + shōtō = daishō.[2] A daishō is typically depicted as a katana and wakizashi (or a tantō) mounted in matching koshirae, but originally the daishō was the wearing of any long and short katana together.[3] The katana/wakizashi pairing is not the only daishō combination as generally any longer sword paired with a tantō is considered to be a daishō. Daishō eventually came to mean two swords having a matched set of fittings. A daishō could also have match
Site Guide - When reading basic dates on Japanese swords, usually the easiest way to achieve this point is by the following. Example: Showa (昭和) Ju (十) Hachi (八) Nen (年) - 18th year of Showa .
JAPANESE SWORD - Zodiacal Dating System Japanese sword information for the non-collector with aids in determining if a Japanese sword is a reproduction or an antique sword.
DATE INSCRIPTIONS - ZODIACAL
1930 - 1945
During the World War II period, some swords were dated using the archaic cyclical zodiacal system. This system involves a 60 year repeating cycle. Below are the Kanji with their translation and the equivalent date for the years 1930 to 1945, the time period when this method was most used. It was used almost exclusively on swords bearing the Koa Isshin mantetsu and mantetsu signatures. This dating method may also be found on other swords of the period.
The first Kanji in the date inscription of Koa Isshin and mantetsu blades will be (Showa), the name of the nengo (era) beginning in 1926, followed by the zodiacal year. The last Kanji in the date inscription of mantetsu blades is normally (haru), meaning "spring" - the most auspicious time for forging swords. Thus, the date inscription below reads "Showa Mizunoto Hitsuji Haru" or spring of 1943.