Pet Dragon Solves Faux Roman Numeral Mystery!

[BruceP]

A while back, I discovered what seemed to be Roman Numerals on the edge of a habaki on my kaigunto with a Shinto blade. The "XXX I" matched the "31" on the seppa. But later, someone showed up with a similar habaki marked with "I I I I", and we all know that "IV" is Roman for 4. (BTW, if the guy with this habaki reads this PLEASE let me know, I'd love to post the pics!)

So, a bit of mystery. UNTIL NOW! Dave (Pet Dragon at NMB) has recently posted a Type 94 with fittings, and nakago marked with "/II IIII" and "74" on the seppa. The latch had "七 IIII". When I showed my habaki to Dave, he realized the "/" was HALF of "X"!

Whoever made these fittings modified the Roman Numeral system (or just didn't know it well enough) and was marking the items with their own system.

I'd appreciate it if anyone else has fittings marked in this manner to post them. What I would really like to see is some company identification on the fittings that would tie this numbering system to a company.

[BruceP]

Dave's fittings:

[BruceP]

and 2 more:

[BruceP]

Just got pics from Thomas Appel Nilsson at Military Swords of Imperial Japan (Shin gunto) facebook page. Both are from kaigunto (with mine, that makes 3), and both are from the Toyokawa Naval Arsenal, though, both are from 2 different contractors.

Since they are from different contractors, I'm starting to think the roman style stamping is happening at the arsenal assembly process. It WOULD have been convinient if this was just happening at the Toyokawa aresenal, but since 2 of the examples now are from Army shingunto, the practice must have been widerspread than I imagined.