[Unknown (possibly Japanese)- English] Had these two for several years. Haven’t been able to find any translation. Not sure of the origin of the writing either.

Search results on r/translator for "今古有神奉志士":

[? to English] What does this sword say? (2014-03-24)

Comment by u/AquaConvolution (+3):

I think there was a post in here around a year ago and I had to translate the same sword haha. Lemme go find my post.

今古有神奉志士， roughly means: Gods have always been on the side of those with courage and ambition. Seeing that it came from Tom Cruise's movie "The Last Samurai", I think it's suppose to be Japanese.

However, I don't think this phrase is actually used in Japan, and the letters looks more like Chinese...(It's not used by Chinese either, there are people posting questions in China asking if this is a Japanese phrase..) I think this sword is just a imitation by Westerners that's mimicking the Japanese. Especially because it's also made up by Hollywood...

Edit: Apparently Tom Cruise said the words meant "I belong to the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new." Doesn't really make sense in my mind though, maybe more abstract...

Hope this helps!

Comment by u/kungming2 (+1):

今古有神奉志士

Online sources make it seem to be a fairly common slogan on katana. One translation I found was "Now and in ancient times, a patriot is one observant of the divine." Hopefully Japanese-speaking redditors can shed light on this.

[Japanese? > English] writing on a katana blade (2017-10-03)

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Comment by u/etalasi (+2):

[今古有神奉志士] "What about this sword with seven characters on it?"

If it's 今古有神奉志士, you likely have a copy of the famous Japanese samurai Tom Cruise's sword from the movie The Last Samurai. The creators of the movie apparently intended it to mean "I belong to the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new" but that is actually a completely inaccurate translation.

It's pseudo-Classical Chinese/Old Japanese gibberish and doesn't really make any sense nor does it have any actual historical significance. A tortured rendition - allowing for a tremendous amount of creative interpretation - would be "Now and in ancient times, there are gods that serve ambitious warriors." See these examples here.

zh

Thank you, I tried searching and since I couldn’t type the kanji it wasn’t going very well. I even tried downloading Yomiwa but since some of it is apparently pseudo-Chinese that would explain the app being unable to translate it. I haven’t seen TLS in so long I didn’t even recognize the characters. With these two not even being katana the possibility didn’t even register.