Type 32 Cavalry Sword - blackened

[bestmsdt]

Saw this at a show on Sunday, and ended up getting it. It's in pretty good condition, with a nice blade. It's the longer cavalry (Kō 甲) version. In my previous post there was mention of an example I saw at a fair where the sword was blackened, but the scabbard was non-matching and was not. This example is matching, so is a complete example.

The wood of the grip is in exceptional condition, but there are plenty of usage/wear signs on the blackened finish.

There is no sign of a hole for the leather finger loop rivet. I also cannot see a date on the hilt, just the cannonballs and inspection stamps. Of the latter, there are 3, 2 being kanji, but there is a katakana ki (キ) below these.

So, as this is a later example, 65421, was this a finish applied at the arsenal, or later???

The previous post on Type 32's:
Type 32 Cavalry Sword

Cheers,
Tony

[Bruce Pennington]

That's a nice Ko, Tony!

We don't know for sure about the black paint. You can read our discussion of the issue on this NMB thread:
Type 95 Black Saya - Military Swords of Japan - Nihonto Message Board

We've seen it on every version of Japanese military sword. To me, they appear to be blackened after purchase, as most of them black is applied after there are wear & tear chips in the original paint, and the black is applied right over the chips.

[bestmsdt]

Hi Bruce,

Had a quick scan through the Nihonto post, and as I got to the end thought "wow, that's like mine", then realised it was mine!

Much of the post is about Type 95's where the black has been applied over the green paint. There are also several references to many 32's having black paint. I wonder if the Type 32's should be treated separately.

Am I correct in that Type 32's were originally issued in the white (is this phrase used in the US?), that is the steel scabbard and hilt were not painted? If so, I can see that there thus could be a reason to paint the scabbard for field use in modern warfare. Why black rather than green though? The quality of the finish on my new example is very good, not a rough job over existing imperfections. I remember that the example I saw a few months ago (in the unpainted non-matching scabbard) also had a high standard of finish on the handguard. I wish now that I had noted the serial number, as that could be useful. Were the last of the 32's turned out in black? Or were they refinished somewhere?

I did buy this one as I thought it could be useful for this debate, being matching and all!!!

Cheers,
Tony

[Bruce Pennington]

The two we have on the NMB discussion are "5730" and your "65421". Dawson observed one, "70830", and had some in white with later numbers. So, it doesn't seem to fit a particular number group. Dawson described the black as "black paint and what looks like a black oxide coating". So, to me, that would imply it was done at the factory/arsenal. I doubt troops in the field had the ability to finish a self-paint job with 'black oxide'.

[bestmsdt]

Thanks, Bruce, interesting. Had a good look at the wood grips, there is no sign of paint, so the black finish must have been done with the sword dismantled. It looks like an arsenal job to me, too.
Cheers,
Tony

[Bruce Pennington]

Have to add #68325 to the list of black painted. I missed that in reading the Dawson discussion.

To your original question about how the swords came originally, Dawson also reviewed a few that were blued, but said they were "arsenal reworked swords." One had a Nagoya inspector stamp in addition to the the Tokyo Arsenal stamp, and he speculates that the blue might have been done at Nagoya on a rework trip.

[bestmsdt]

Some (very) speculative thoughts:

If the black finish on the Type 32's was done at a particular arsenal, from the serial numbers above, it would appear to have been done late on. Some time in the 30's, or even the 40's???

If Type 32's were coming out of an arsenal blackened, could this have lead to field repairs on Type 95's, where a chipped or worn coat of green on the scabbard was tidied up with a coat of black paint???

Cheers,
Tony