What is this marking hidden on my blade?

[Molokai Livin']

So I’m re-handling a bunch of my knives and I noticed this strange marking on the tang of one of them. You can only see it if you remove the handle. It’s a cone-like shape with a lightning bolt looking thing in the center. Below it is the number 38 or 88.

It’s from Sakai Takayuki and Kenji Togashi is the smith.

Can anyone confirm that this is a secret map to a treasure hidden somewhere in Sakai?

 

[M1k3]

I see a stormtrooper.

 

[M1k3]

Maybe a Mandalorian?

 

[Molokai Livin']

If you google "Sakai Japan" you'll find aerial pictures of the city, and it has huge open areas that are kinda similar to the symbol on the tang. Apparently those are tombs. So yep, pretty sure this is a secret map for one of those tombs.

 

[Moooza]

It's the number that represents the smith.

Another example:

 

[refcast]

It's not necessarily the smith but a number that designates a member of Sakai knife making industry. There's info on the Japanese web it about if you Google Sakai knife making in Japanese, but I'm too lazy to find the links again. I think it's related to dentokougeshi, and knife wholesalers are numbered too

 

[simona]

Beehive was going to be my answer, but smith ID number makes more sense.

 

[Ericfg]

I un-scaled an old Henckels recently and found a number 9 stamped on the tang. No clue what it is. Batch #, style #, workshop/worker #?

 

[Delat]

That knife is a rare @KAMON Knives collab. The stamp is a sketch of his junk when he was going through his impressionist phase.

 

[GorillaGrunt]

I always thought that it represented a Tatara, but I just looked it up and that’s not what a Tatara looks like and also beehive furnaces were European. So I dunno

 

[Pie]

I have that on a couple of my knives.. oddly enough they’re both togashi workshop origin. All stamped on the back side instead of the tang. Can’t remember the numbers atm.

Ohhhh damn I have an old usuba with it too. Better check what that thing looks like now lol.

 

[deltaplex]

@refcast Is pretty close from what I remember, it's the stamp indicating it was made by a smith who's gone through the whole process to gain dentokougeshi "traditional craftsman" status within the designated field. For knives it's mostly Sakai-centric, but there are smiths not located in Sakai that have also earned the designation, Nao Yamamoto quickly comes to mind as an example from TKV. You can do a forum search to see previous threads about it.