Kanji help please

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Simonsimon

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My father bought this 20 years ago. Seems like good steel. A little bit abused though. Would realy apriciate help !





 
Do you have a photo of the whole knife? Or at least the handle? The box says nothing but the standard "cooking knife".
The two kanji letters look like 月剣 meaning "moon sword". Maybe it's a worn out 羽剣 "wing sword", neither of which make much sense or are identifiable. What surprises me is the "Japan" stamped into what looks like a wa-bouchou, something that I've never seen before. Cutlery made for export only have that stamp, and I find it hard to believe that there was any market for exporting a single bevel wa-bouchou in the past. Anything on the other side of the blade?
 
Hi Ken Thank you for your answer. My father bought it in The late 70ths. He paid alot for it he Said for that time, i understand that Its hard to identify.
 
Do you have a photo of the whole knife? Or at least the handle? The box says nothing but the standard "cooking knife".
The two kanji letters look like 月剣 meaning "moon sword". Maybe it's a worn out 羽剣 "wing sword", neither of which make much sense or are identifiable. What surprises me is the "Japan" stamped into what looks like a wa-bouchou, something that I've never seen before. Cutlery made for export only have that stamp, and I find it hard to believe that there was any market for exporting a single bevel wa-bouchou in the past. Anything on the other side of the blade?

for what its worth, i've seen a number of wa-bocho with "japan" in romanji on the blade... for whatever reason, romanji were interesting to japanese people back in postwar japan for a while. They also did it for a lot of export only stuff, but it wasnt only that stuff.
 
for what its worth, i've seen a number of wa-bocho with "japan" in romanji on the blade... for whatever reason, romanji were interesting to japanese people back in postwar japan for a while. They also did it for a lot of export only stuff, but it wasnt only that stuff.

That's interesting. I thought the "Japan" stamp only went on export knives. Never would have thought to see the country of origin on a kamagata usuba. Sure would like to know who made this knife back then. Thanks.
 
Yeah... i find it funny too, but i've seen it before... i've even seen the stamps that were used in some of the workshops doing this kind of thing. It cracks me up... i dont get it at all, but they seemed to think it made the knives seem more worldly. It was an interesting timeperiod in Japan for sure.
 
Thanks for The Answers Ken and Jon. Will start to clean her up and give her a new edge. [emoji109]
 
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