JAPANESE SWORD INSCRIPTIONS - Japanese Provinces

JAPANESE PROVINCES

Japanese swords were made in most geographical regions of Japan; however, in Koto times there were five major areas of sword production: Yamashiro, Yamato, Mino, Bizen and Soshu. The Kanji for these and other Japanese provinces are listed below. These will commonly be the first two characters in a swordsmith's signature (mei).

Feel free to print and/or save these Kanji pages for personal, offline use.
Attempting to decipher a mei by matching Kanji takes a lot of time!!

[ Kanji A-G ] [ Kanji H-M ] [ Kanji M-T ] [ Kanji T-Z ] [ Date Kanji ]