Shin-Guntō Koshirae with Leather Combat Cover

This is a wartime shin-guntō koshirae with the original brown leather combat cover still over a wooden saya. No blade is present; a wooden insert fills the saya where the blade once sat.

The fittings on this mount are a tell. Regulation Imperial Japanese Army officer mounts of the Type 94 and Type 98 patterns carry cherry-blossom (sakura) motifs across the kabutogane (the cap of the hilt), fuchi, and seppa. The kabutogane on this mount has no cherry-blossom, which most likely places it among the Gunzoku (軍属) class of fittings: koshirae carried by civilian personnel attached to the Imperial Japanese Army rather than commissioned officers. Gunzoku mounts followed a similar overall shape but omitted some of the regulation motifs.

The saya is wooden with a single hanger and is fully sheathed in the brown leather combat cover. Three brass rivets retain the cover near the koiguchi. Combat covers surviving in this condition are increasingly hard to come by, since most were removed and discarded post-war.

Counted at the tsuba area, there are three seppa: two leather (one of which serves as the retainer for the leather scabbard cover) and one metal seppa. Ito (handle wrap) is brown silk in hineri-maki over the original menuki.

The wooden insert inside the koshirae is the period filler used when a mount was retained without a blade. The koshirae is suitable for an honest gendaitō or shōwatō re-house — please contact us if you have questions about the history of these mounts or the typical sword they would have housed.