Just found this today antiquing got a good deal I think would like to know what it says
If you read Japanese please help
- Thread starter mrlandpirate
- Start date
Just found this today antiquing got a good deal I think would like to know what it says
I don't what it says but if you have a Android smartphone you could try to use the "Lens" feature within the stock camera app to attempt a translation. I visited Yahoo Japan on my computer monitor and the Lens was able to translate some Japanese text about as well as the text translation feature within the Chrome browser. I tried it with the on screen photos you posted here but they were hard to pickup (lighting and large size).
A second option is to try the photo capabilities within the Google Translate app. It was interesting to try this on these photos, especially the third one. Since I had not used the capability before I wasn't exactly sure if I was using it correctly, as it was having a hard time picking up all the characters (in the 3rd photo which I used as a test), it would often skip the first character or highlight multiple characters and the ask me to pick which ones.
A second option is to try the photo capabilities within the Google Translate app. It was interesting to try this on these photos, especially the third one. Since I had not used the capability before I wasn't exactly sure if I was using it correctly, as it was having a hard time picking up all the characters (in the 3rd photo which I used as a test), it would often skip the first character or highlight multiple characters and the ask me to pick which ones.
- The first attempt returned "discord" for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th characters, but it was not reading the 2nd character quite right and was grouping 3 & 4 as if one word.
- A second attempt returned "peace" for those same characters and the Japanese scan looked more correct (Japanese OCR result was closer to the actual characters stamped on your razor).
- Another attempt returned "Izumi Kazuya" but I don't think that is correct as the Japanese scan was a little off.
- Got a few weird ones like "25 pet trade" or something with the number 25 and word trade.
- Thread starter
- #3
thanks for trying , I'll have some time today and will limber up my google-fu
I was playing around some more and after some post processing of one of your images was able to get Google Translate to translate the middle pair of letters from the tang which are also on the scales. It successfully identified it as "Towa". From there found a few example razors on ebay as BIN.
NOS TOWA "AA 東和"Frame back Japanese Straight Razor #452 | eBay
Rare! AA TOWA GEN TAKAHASHI TOKUSEI J*apanese Straight Razor Shaving #D-386 | eBay
The second one had stamps that looked similar to yours. So I tried to Translate it but even then I had some trouble getting the OCR scan to read correctly. Seems that if a stroke or two is missed the meaning will change. Attached one below, where you can see that the OCR was fairly close but it missed the middle line in the second character which surely messed up the translation. But here is the wrong translation for curiosity:
NOS TOWA "AA 東和"Frame back Japanese Straight Razor #452 | eBay
Rare! AA TOWA GEN TAKAHASHI TOKUSEI J*apanese Straight Razor Shaving #D-386 | eBay
The second one had stamps that looked similar to yours. So I tried to Translate it but even then I had some trouble getting the OCR scan to read correctly. Seems that if a stroke or two is missed the meaning will change. Attached one below, where you can see that the OCR was fairly close but it missed the middle line in the second character which surely messed up the translation. But here is the wrong translation for curiosity:
- Thread starter
- #5
It's exactly like the black one
BRAND:
AA TOWA GEN TAKAHASHI TOKUSEI
Company: Towa Razor / TOKYO
Master: Takahashi Gen
Hayashi Diamond was established in Arakawa-Ku, Tokyo. It was the factory of Japan's famous blacksmith Hayashi Ichitaro. In its heyday there were many straight razor blacksmiths working there. The Hayashi Diamond brand mark is similar to the Solingen twins but the Japanese character Hayashi (forest) is engraved on their items. Hayashi Diamond was Towa own brand. In those made under Towa brand you will find the names Takahashi Gen and H.Shinyichi engraved as well.
StillShaving
This was in the text , mystery solved.Thanks a million for the help
I honed it up and took it for a shave WOW this thing takes a great edge
BRAND:
AA TOWA GEN TAKAHASHI TOKUSEI
Company: Towa Razor / TOKYO
Master: Takahashi Gen
Hayashi Diamond was established in Arakawa-Ku, Tokyo. It was the factory of Japan's famous blacksmith Hayashi Ichitaro. In its heyday there were many straight razor blacksmiths working there. The Hayashi Diamond brand mark is similar to the Solingen twins but the Japanese character Hayashi (forest) is engraved on their items. Hayashi Diamond was Towa own brand. In those made under Towa brand you will find the names Takahashi Gen and H.Shinyichi engraved as well.
StillShaving
This was in the text , mystery solved.Thanks a million for the help
I honed it up and took it for a shave WOW this thing takes a great edge
You are welcome @mrlandpirate. I like your razor and enjoyed trying to translate the stamps using the smartphone.
Glad to hear that the razor shaves as well as it looks.
Glad to hear that the razor shaves as well as it looks.
The second characters are not the same.
On the razor, the second character is the character for "east."
