Gunzoku Sword — Shōwatō signed Kuriki Kanemasa

This is a Japanese sword of the Second World War, of a kind carried not by a line officer but by a gunzoku, a civilian official attached to the armed forces.

The blade is a shōwatō, a wartime sword made at Seki in Gifu. It is signed on the nakago with the mei of the smith Kuriki Kanemasa, and it carries the Seki stamp, the mark of the Seki forges. It is a genuine sword of its period. It sits in its wartime finish with light tarnish, in shinogi-zukuri form, with a single mekugi-ana in the tang, and along the edge it shows a hamon of suguha broken by gunome, a straight temper line with rounded undulations.

The mounting follows the cherry-blossom (sakura) taste of these civilian-style swords. A soft-metal tsuba is worked all over with blossom and edged with a gilt rim, matched by a gilt sakura fuchi and kashira. Small gilt figural menuki sit under a black wrap over genuine white rayskin, and the saya is plain black lacquer with a cord. The blossom runs through the fittings as a single theme.

The gunzoku, the interpreters, engineers and administrators who served alongside the forces, often wore swords in civilian mounts of this sort rather than the regulation army guntō, which makes a coherent, clearly dressed example like this an interesting record of the period. It comes from a private UK collection. Blade length and curvature can be confirmed on request.