The Kanji Mei Identifier
Type or paste the characters on your blade and match them against every maker, brand, smith, and blade-mark in our research. Knife people have asked for this tool for years; the answer was always a scattered forum thread. Now it is a database.
Reading the marks like a native
A genuine inscription usually behaves like a sentence with a grammar of its own. The most common pattern is a name followed by 作 ("made by"), sometimes a region in front (堺, 関, 越前), sometimes a steel mark nearby (青紙, 白紙, 銀三), and occasionally a formal suffix like 謹製. So 堺孝行 作 reads "made by Sakai Takayuki," and 越前 黒崎優 作 reads "Yu Kurosaki of Echizen made this."
Fakes and fantasy brands use kanji as texture instead: characters that translate to the marketing copy ("sharp," "finest," "damascus") rather than to anyone's name. That is why this tool has a fourth database: if what you typed matches a marketing word, it will say so in orange, because knowing a mark is NOT a name is half the value. The full tells live in our fake-spotting guide and our kanji reading guide.
What this tool cannot do
- It cannot read photos. You type or paste characters; any phone OCR or dictionary app can lift them from a picture first.
- It cannot authenticate. A matching name means the mark corresponds to a documented maker, not that your blade is genuine; counterfeiters can engrave too. Pair it with the Fake-Listing Checker and the in-hand tests.
- Its coverage is our research. 183 names from our maker, brand, and smith work, plus 51 standard blade-mark words. Japan has more smiths than any database; a miss means "not in our research yet," never "fake." Send unmatched marks to info@okamiblades.com and the database grows.
- Old sword signatures are their own science. For nihonto mei, start with our sword section; attribution there belongs to the NBTHK, not a search box.
Database compiled from our brand crosswalk, maker profiles, and the Smith Lineage Tree research; the vocabulary uses standard readings. It updates as the registry work grows.
Related reading
- Reading a Japanese knife, character by character: the guide behind this tool.
- The brand and maker crosswalk and the OEM Map: where the names lead.
- The Smith Lineage Tree: the smiths behind the signatures.
- The Fake-Listing Checker: when the mark is the least of your doubts.
