Anybody know Japanese swords?

[Lorenzo Brown]

I recently came acrross a Japanese WWII Katana sword. It is a machine made sword with aluminum tsuka and brass tsuba and fittings. It has all the proper markings and matching serial number on the blade and scabbard throat. It has the original finish.

In my opinion, the sword is 100% authentic...BUT.. notice that the entire finish is gold, both on the sword and the scabbard. It is a finish - not painted on. The handle almost appears to be anodized.
This doesn't fit the description for an NCO sword. The early NCO swords had copper handles and the later one's had copper-colored painted handles with brown scabbards...so I can't figure out where this fits in.

Does anybody know about these?

[JaimeH]

Lorenzo, the sword looks fine, having been manufactured at either the Tokyo or Kokura arsenal. But your questions about the finish might be answered at the forum of www.japanesesword.com. You may need to take the handle off to see if there are other markings on the tang. It looks as if it is screwed on versus the "chop stick" method on mine.

[Thomas Durante]

Hi Lorenzo, I have the exact same sword! The markings are exactly the same, but my number on the blade is 108365. It has an aluminum handle and a steel scabbard, both painted gold. I got it from my grandfather. He died before I got to ask him about it, but my dad said he got it in the philipines, somehow. I have never tried to take the handle off, but will get the guts one of these days.

Tom D.

[Lorenzo Brown]

Hi Tom. OK - I've checked the forums and internet sites. All they refer to is the early copper-handled swords and the later painted aluminum-handled swords. BUT...here's another one I found on Ebay with a very low serial number. It is also unpainted aluminum that appears to have a worn gold finish and the scabbard appears to be gold.

I think that all of the NCO swords were of the same manufacture, with only the handles being different. The swords were serial numbered with the copper-handled being the lowest and the later painted aluminum swords the highest. I've seen aluminum NCO swords wih numbers as high as 190,000. There are very few copper-handled swords, so my sword and this Ebay sword numbered in the 8,000 to 10,000 range would have probably been transitional from when they first switched from the copper to the aluminum handles. But if yours is #100,000, that is still pretty high. Interesting. I'll bet they issued the first aluminum swords in a gold finish before they switched to the painted handles, so they are not common and few people know about them.

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI...tem=1064269625

[Doug See]

Here's what little I know about NCO swords, which I think are an interesting collecting niche due to the number of variations.
The copper die-cast handles were the first issued and made up through around serial number 5,000 or so. Most had brass thick tsubas with the cut out aoi pattern. I have seen ONE copper NCO with a plain iron tsuba. Swords made after this serial range have aluminum alloy handles and the brass tsubas remained the same pattern, but were a little thinner. These all seem to be made by the same subcontractor, the Suya sword company. (Their mark looks a little like a musical lyre). It appears Suya may have had the contract for the first 8,000-15,000 (?) NCO swords, then other subcontractor markings seem to show up. I think there were around 8 or 10 subcontractors, supervised by either the Nagoya or Tokyo arsenals, who also marked them after inspection. From my research (observation and inspection of many, many NCO's, two books by Fuller and Gregory, and one book by Jim Dawson), it's not clear whether the subs made the fittings, or assembled the entire swords, or whether they made all the parts and the arsenals assembled them. I believe production of the aluminum NCo stopped in late 1943 or early 1944 because of meeting demand. (They ran out of NCO's faster than they ran out of NCO swrods). In 1945, a new pattern NCO sword was made (yes, the Model 1945) with wooden handles and cheaply made unfullered blades. Check out "Japanese Military and Civil Swords and Dirks" by Fuller and Gregory or "Swords of Imperial Japan" by Jim Dawson for some great info on these swords.