Acquired a few nice Japanese artifacts, including an aircrewman's wakazashi sized gunto, which I'll share later if I can manufacture more minutes in the day 🙂  But included was a boxed set of Edo period menuki, which are well signed; see the images.  If the Kanji is really well done, most of time I can get out Wilson's Kanji Dictionary and eventually read the signatures (Mei).  But I must be counting the strokes poorly because no matter what do, I can't read the signatures.  Hoping someone the forum is better at reading signature Kanji, PLEASE?

 

Thanks in advance, Allen

This is an interesting item.

 

I think these kanji are "直明" and "柳川".

 

I'm not a sword professional so I don't know what they mean, but they look like names.

 

If they were names, the former would usually be "Na-o-a-ki" or "Ta-da-a-ki", and the latter "Ya-na-ga-wa".