Iwami’s claim on Masamune. Naotsuna is counted — with caveats the connoisseurs still argue — among the Masamune jittetsu, the ten great disciples; his work lays unmistakable Sōshū fire over a provincial Yamato base. The line ran through the Nanbokuchō period in the far western mountains, a long way from any other great school.
The The Iwami Naotsuna School (直綱), active 1300–1430 in Iwami Province across 8 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 0 Jūbun, 5 Jūbi, 2 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 81 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Iwami Naotsuna School (直綱) · 1300 – 1430
Naotsuna (直綱) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Naotsuna worked in Iwami, the western province the swordbooks call Sekishu, during the Nanbokucho period, signing his blades with the residence Sekishu-ju or Sekishu Dewa-ju. The old tradition counts him among the Masamune-jittetsu, the ten noted disciples of Sagami Masamune, and the published sources have transmitted that account from the Edo period onward. They do not accept it on its face. Of the first generation they write that he 'is counted among the so-called Masamune Jittetsu, yet seen in terms of chronology a direct connection seems somewhat forced, and the question must await further careful study', for no extant work bears a date earlier than the Eiwa era. What can be fixed is the manner: this is the Soshu tradition carried west to Iwami, and the published sources read its current as running together with Shizu and Samonji.
His hand is read from workmanship rather than from signature, because signed Naotsuna are scarce. The published record notes plainly that 'signed works by Naotsuna are comparatively few', and most of what survives is o-suriage and mumei, so the few signed tachi carry a weight beyond their number. The tell the judges name is a temper of squared-off, lined-up *gunome*, the angular teeth running in step with one another, mixed with small *gunome*, small *notare* and pointed *togariba*. Over a well-nie'd *midare* he lays vigorous *sunagashi* and frequent *kinsuji*, with *ashi* and *yo* entering often. The published commentary draws the whole picture together on one shortened blade: the *jigane* of flowing *itame* with *ji-nie* and *chikei*, worked with 'a distinctive linked *gunome* and *togariba*, with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, is the characteristic point of interest of Sekishu Naotsuna'. That sentence is the heart of his kantei.
The *jigane* is the constant beneath the temper. It is an *itame* that flows and stands, mixed with *mokume*, the hada open rather than packed, with *ji-nie* adhering and *chikei* entering well, and a steel tone that runs darkish, at times with a slight whitish cast. Over that *jigane* the activity belongs wholly to Soshu: *nie* gathers thickly, *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki* drift into the upper half, and on some blades a *nijuba*-like line doubles the habuchi while the *nioiguchi* tends to sink. The *boshi* answers the *midare* below, running in irregular and swept with *hakikake*, pointed on one face and small-round on the other, often closing in a *yakizume*-like sweep. Most of the katana carry a *bo-hi* cut through both sides, now and then with a *soe-hi* beside it.
The record divides cleanly into two registers of the one hand. The first is the small body of signed tachi, several of them judged the work of the first generation and prized for being signed at all. The keystone is the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi inscribed Naotsuna in two large characters, which the published sources call 'appraised as the work of the first generation and, being signed, exceedingly valuable', and whose *notare*-based temper with pointed elements they liken to Shizu and Samonji. The second register, far the larger, is the o-suriage mumei katana attributed to Sekishu Naotsuna from the workmanship alone. A second Tokubetsu Juyo, a shortened katana bearing a long *gaku-mei*, shows the angular *gunome* lined up across the blade with that characteristic Soshu activity. Across these the signatures themselves differ from blade to blade, which is one reason the swordbooks have never fixed which pieces are first generation and which second, placing the generations variously at Kenmu, Eiwa and Oei.
Within the Soshu tradition his work is set beside Shizu Kaneuji and Samonji, the published sources holding that his temper 'shares an underlying current with Shizu and Samonji of the Soshu-den'. What separates him is not borrowed but his own: the lined-up angular *gunome* and the abundant *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* over a dark, flowing *itame* are the features by which an unsigned blade is judged his, where a Sagami Soshu hand would show a more refined *jigane* and a Bizen smith a bright packed *ji* with *utsuri*. He stands as the figure who took the Soshu manner out to Iwami and gave it a recognizable provincial accent, the linked *gunome* his signature where the cut signature is missing.
For the collector he is a smith met almost entirely through attribution. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through two pieces at the Tokubetsu Juyo rank, some sixty-nine at the Juyo, and three prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin recording signed tachi and a tanto, several from named houses. His blades are held in institutions and long-standing collections grounded in their own provenance, among them the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Tokyo Fuji Museum, with documented owners reaching back to the Tokugawa and Uesugi families, the Takatsukasa house, Ikeda Toshitaka and Tachibana Tadazane. Most designated blades, in private hands as in public, are held rather than traded, and a signed Naotsuna is rarer still than the count of designations suggests, since so little of his work is signed. An o-suriage mumei katana carrying his linked *gunome* comes to a private collector from time to time and with patience; an ubu, signed tachi judged the first generation is among the scarcer things one could hope to encounter, and a quiet document of how the Soshu tradition travelled to the far west.
Masatsuna (正綱) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Jūbi. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Suesada (末貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūbi. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. A signed tantō in the fiftieth Jūyō session carries a large six-character inscription, Sekishū Dewa Sadatsuna, cut across the second mekugi-ana, and it is this rare full signature that anchors the smith. Sadatsuna worked at Izuha in Iwami Province in the late Nanbokuchō period, and the published sources transmit him as a son of the first-generation Naotsuna, the Sekishū master counted among the pupils of Masamune who carried the Sōshū tradition into the provinces of the San'in coast. The reference works record the name across three or even four generations descending into the Muromachi period, the first placed about the Shōhei era, the later hands in Meitoku, Ōei and Kōshō. Because signed pieces survive almost only from after the entry into Muromachi, and examples dated to the Nanbokuchō are scarcely encountered, his earliest work is read on the evidence of the ji and ha rather than from an inscription, which is why so much of his designated body is mumei tachi and katana appraised to his hand.
The recurring verdict across his blades is that Sadatsuna resembles Naotsuna while tempering a gunome smaller in scale. His hamon is fundamentally a gunome-midare, present on every one of his designated blades, that runs in linked sequences across the ha, mixed with togariba and angular kaku-gunome, and at times a round-headed gunome and a slight chōji-gokoro. Ashi enter, the nioi runs deep, and the nie adheres strongly, coarsening here and there into rough crystals. Through this temper kinsuji and sunagashi work vigorously, with yubashiri drifting in places, so that the activity within the ha is conspicuous rather than quiet. The single clearest tell sits in the bōshi, which brushes into hakikake on most of his blades, sometimes burning out in a yakitsume manner, sometimes turning back in ko-maru with a pointed tendency and a long kaeri. It is in the point that the Sōshū inheritance shows most plainly, the swept nie carrying the temper past the yokote.
The jigane is a standing itame mixed with mokume and a flowing nagare-hada, the grain opening rather than closing, so that the published sources reach for the word zanguri to describe its loose, granular surface. Over it ji-nie adheres well and often dust-fine, chikei enter, and the steel takes on a kana-iro tone darkened toward black, a provincial Iwami jigane that distinguishes the school from the tighter, brighter ji of the Sagami masters it imitates. On the tantō a jifu-like mottling gathers toward the lower half, and the ji-nie thickens to a fine dense cover. The whitish shirake cast that marks much wakimono work appears on one early tachi but is not his rule; more typical is the dark, active ji against which the kinsuji and sunagashi of the ha stand out.
The published sources draw his work into two registers. They state plainly that he is seen both in a gunome-based manner and in a ko-notare-based manner, and that in either case the nie adheres well and the sunagashi is applied vigorously. The gunome manner is the principal one, the linked midare with its angular and pointed elements and its strong, sometimes coarse nie. The ko-notare manner runs a shallow notare or small notare into the gunome, the nioiguchi tending to sink toward a subdued shizumi, the kinsuji and sunagashi drawn out long, and it is carried above all by his hira-zukuri tantō, broad and slightly sun-nobi with thick kasane and very shallow sori. Form follows the late date: the suriage katana run to standing itame in a blackish steel, while the one slender, deep-curved, ko-kissaki tachi with its two-character signature keeps a classical Kamakura silhouette that the published commentary calls archaic in feeling even as the nie-laden temper marks it as Naotsuna's circle.
What places him is the line itself. The published sources name his manner as that of the Sekishū Naotsuna group expressing the Sōshū-den, and an appraisal to Sadatsuna as a follower within Naotsuna's circle is one they say can be accepted for exactly these reasons. Of the first designated tachi they write that strong nie, frequent sunagashi and intermixed yubashiri mean 「相州伝が認められ、直綱に通じるものがある」, that the Sōshū tradition is recognized and there are points in common with Naotsuna. The smith-level characterization repeated almost verbatim across his blades is 「直綱に似て、互の目調のものと小のたれ調のものを見る」, that he resembles Naotsuna and is seen in gunome and ko-notare manners alike. He is the school's hand at one remove from its founder, faithful to the Sōshū idiom but working it smaller, darker and more provincial than the Sagami originals, and standing above the Nagahama smiths, Shōmatsu, Shōsada and Rinshō, who are counted as his subsequent line.
Sadatsuna is rated Jō-saku in the Fujishiro ranking, and eight of his blades hold the rank of Jūyō-Tōken, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them; his record is that of a sound provincial master, not a great name. A signed tantō of his is called by the published sources 「貞綱の見どころがよくあらわれている」, a piece in which Sadatsuna's points of interest are well brought out, and a fine and forceful example among his works. One of his katana descends with an origami written by Hon'ami Kōjō and dated Enpō 7, the year 1679, which attributes it to Sadatsuna and which the modern commentary affirms on the strength of the blackish itame and the linked gunome of well-adhering ko-nie. Provenance is otherwise thin, with no daimyō houses or museums recorded among his blades, so the honest account is of a body held quietly in private hands. For a collector his work is among the more attainable of the Sōshū-influenced provincial masters: most of his designated blades sit in the Jūyō tier rather than locked away as patrimony, and a signed example, fixing the name with certainty, is the rarer and more desirable encounter, coming to light only from time to time and with patience.
Kanetsuna (兼綱) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Other smiths
Naoshige (直重) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Naotsuna (直綱) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Live·Naotsuna lineage
直綱
The Iwami Naotsuna School
Iwami’s claim on Masamune. Naotsuna is counted — with caveats the connoisseurs still argue — among the Masamune jittetsu, the ten great disciples; his work lays unmistakable Sōshū fire over a provincial Yamato base. The line ran through the Nanbokuchō period in the far western mountains, a long way from any other great school.
The The Iwami Naotsuna School (直綱), active 1300–1430 in Iwami Province across 8 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 0 Jūbun, 5 Jūbi, 2 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 81 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Iwami Naotsuna School (直綱) · 1300 – 1430
Naotsuna (直綱) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Naotsuna worked in Iwami, the western province the swordbooks call Sekishu, during the Nanbokucho period, signing his blades with the residence Sekishu-ju or Sekishu Dewa-ju. The old tradition counts him among the Masamune-jittetsu, the ten noted disciples of Sagami Masamune, and the published sources have transmitted that account from the Edo period onward. They do not accept it on its face. Of the first generation they write that he 'is counted among the so-called Masamune Jittetsu, yet seen in terms of chronology a direct connection seems somewhat forced, and the question must await further careful study', for no extant work bears a date earlier than the Eiwa era. What can be fixed is the manner: this is the Soshu tradition carried west to Iwami, and the published sources read its current as running together with Shizu and Samonji.
His hand is read from workmanship rather than from signature, because signed Naotsuna are scarce. The published record notes plainly that 'signed works by Naotsuna are comparatively few', and most of what survives is o-suriage and mumei, so the few signed tachi carry a weight beyond their number. The tell the judges name is a temper of squared-off, lined-up *gunome*, the angular teeth running in step with one another, mixed with small *gunome*, small *notare* and pointed *togariba*. Over a well-nie'd *midare* he lays vigorous *sunagashi* and frequent *kinsuji*, with *ashi* and *yo* entering often. The published commentary draws the whole picture together on one shortened blade: the *jigane* of flowing *itame* with *ji-nie* and *chikei*, worked with 'a distinctive linked *gunome* and *togariba*, with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, is the characteristic point of interest of Sekishu Naotsuna'. That sentence is the heart of his kantei.
The *jigane* is the constant beneath the temper. It is an *itame* that flows and stands, mixed with *mokume*, the hada open rather than packed, with *ji-nie* adhering and *chikei* entering well, and a steel tone that runs darkish, at times with a slight whitish cast. Over that *jigane* the activity belongs wholly to Soshu: *nie* gathers thickly, *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki* drift into the upper half, and on some blades a *nijuba*-like line doubles the habuchi while the *nioiguchi* tends to sink. The *boshi* answers the *midare* below, running in irregular and swept with *hakikake*, pointed on one face and small-round on the other, often closing in a *yakizume*-like sweep. Most of the katana carry a *bo-hi* cut through both sides, now and then with a *soe-hi* beside it.
The record divides cleanly into two registers of the one hand. The first is the small body of signed tachi, several of them judged the work of the first generation and prized for being signed at all. The keystone is the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi inscribed Naotsuna in two large characters, which the published sources call 'appraised as the work of the first generation and, being signed, exceedingly valuable', and whose *notare*-based temper with pointed elements they liken to Shizu and Samonji. The second register, far the larger, is the o-suriage mumei katana attributed to Sekishu Naotsuna from the workmanship alone. A second Tokubetsu Juyo, a shortened katana bearing a long *gaku-mei*, shows the angular *gunome* lined up across the blade with that characteristic Soshu activity. Across these the signatures themselves differ from blade to blade, which is one reason the swordbooks have never fixed which pieces are first generation and which second, placing the generations variously at Kenmu, Eiwa and Oei.
Within the Soshu tradition his work is set beside Shizu Kaneuji and Samonji, the published sources holding that his temper 'shares an underlying current with Shizu and Samonji of the Soshu-den'. What separates him is not borrowed but his own: the lined-up angular *gunome* and the abundant *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* over a dark, flowing *itame* are the features by which an unsigned blade is judged his, where a Sagami Soshu hand would show a more refined *jigane* and a Bizen smith a bright packed *ji* with *utsuri*. He stands as the figure who took the Soshu manner out to Iwami and gave it a recognizable provincial accent, the linked *gunome* his signature where the cut signature is missing.
For the collector he is a smith met almost entirely through attribution. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through two pieces at the Tokubetsu Juyo rank, some sixty-nine at the Juyo, and three prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin recording signed tachi and a tanto, several from named houses. His blades are held in institutions and long-standing collections grounded in their own provenance, among them the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Tokyo Fuji Museum, with documented owners reaching back to the Tokugawa and Uesugi families, the Takatsukasa house, Ikeda Toshitaka and Tachibana Tadazane. Most designated blades, in private hands as in public, are held rather than traded, and a signed Naotsuna is rarer still than the count of designations suggests, since so little of his work is signed. An o-suriage mumei katana carrying his linked *gunome* comes to a private collector from time to time and with patience; an ubu, signed tachi judged the first generation is among the scarcer things one could hope to encounter, and a quiet document of how the Soshu tradition travelled to the far west.
Masatsuna (正綱) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Jūbi. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Suesada (末貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūbi. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. A signed tantō in the fiftieth Jūyō session carries a large six-character inscription, Sekishū Dewa Sadatsuna, cut across the second mekugi-ana, and it is this rare full signature that anchors the smith. Sadatsuna worked at Izuha in Iwami Province in the late Nanbokuchō period, and the published sources transmit him as a son of the first-generation Naotsuna, the Sekishū master counted among the pupils of Masamune who carried the Sōshū tradition into the provinces of the San'in coast. The reference works record the name across three or even four generations descending into the Muromachi period, the first placed about the Shōhei era, the later hands in Meitoku, Ōei and Kōshō. Because signed pieces survive almost only from after the entry into Muromachi, and examples dated to the Nanbokuchō are scarcely encountered, his earliest work is read on the evidence of the ji and ha rather than from an inscription, which is why so much of his designated body is mumei tachi and katana appraised to his hand.
The recurring verdict across his blades is that Sadatsuna resembles Naotsuna while tempering a gunome smaller in scale. His hamon is fundamentally a gunome-midare, present on every one of his designated blades, that runs in linked sequences across the ha, mixed with togariba and angular kaku-gunome, and at times a round-headed gunome and a slight chōji-gokoro. Ashi enter, the nioi runs deep, and the nie adheres strongly, coarsening here and there into rough crystals. Through this temper kinsuji and sunagashi work vigorously, with yubashiri drifting in places, so that the activity within the ha is conspicuous rather than quiet. The single clearest tell sits in the bōshi, which brushes into hakikake on most of his blades, sometimes burning out in a yakitsume manner, sometimes turning back in ko-maru with a pointed tendency and a long kaeri. It is in the point that the Sōshū inheritance shows most plainly, the swept nie carrying the temper past the yokote.
The jigane is a standing itame mixed with mokume and a flowing nagare-hada, the grain opening rather than closing, so that the published sources reach for the word zanguri to describe its loose, granular surface. Over it ji-nie adheres well and often dust-fine, chikei enter, and the steel takes on a kana-iro tone darkened toward black, a provincial Iwami jigane that distinguishes the school from the tighter, brighter ji of the Sagami masters it imitates. On the tantō a jifu-like mottling gathers toward the lower half, and the ji-nie thickens to a fine dense cover. The whitish shirake cast that marks much wakimono work appears on one early tachi but is not his rule; more typical is the dark, active ji against which the kinsuji and sunagashi of the ha stand out.
The published sources draw his work into two registers. They state plainly that he is seen both in a gunome-based manner and in a ko-notare-based manner, and that in either case the nie adheres well and the sunagashi is applied vigorously. The gunome manner is the principal one, the linked midare with its angular and pointed elements and its strong, sometimes coarse nie. The ko-notare manner runs a shallow notare or small notare into the gunome, the nioiguchi tending to sink toward a subdued shizumi, the kinsuji and sunagashi drawn out long, and it is carried above all by his hira-zukuri tantō, broad and slightly sun-nobi with thick kasane and very shallow sori. Form follows the late date: the suriage katana run to standing itame in a blackish steel, while the one slender, deep-curved, ko-kissaki tachi with its two-character signature keeps a classical Kamakura silhouette that the published commentary calls archaic in feeling even as the nie-laden temper marks it as Naotsuna's circle.
What places him is the line itself. The published sources name his manner as that of the Sekishū Naotsuna group expressing the Sōshū-den, and an appraisal to Sadatsuna as a follower within Naotsuna's circle is one they say can be accepted for exactly these reasons. Of the first designated tachi they write that strong nie, frequent sunagashi and intermixed yubashiri mean 「相州伝が認められ、直綱に通じるものがある」, that the Sōshū tradition is recognized and there are points in common with Naotsuna. The smith-level characterization repeated almost verbatim across his blades is 「直綱に似て、互の目調のものと小のたれ調のものを見る」, that he resembles Naotsuna and is seen in gunome and ko-notare manners alike. He is the school's hand at one remove from its founder, faithful to the Sōshū idiom but working it smaller, darker and more provincial than the Sagami originals, and standing above the Nagahama smiths, Shōmatsu, Shōsada and Rinshō, who are counted as his subsequent line.
Sadatsuna is rated Jō-saku in the Fujishiro ranking, and eight of his blades hold the rank of Jūyō-Tōken, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them; his record is that of a sound provincial master, not a great name. A signed tantō of his is called by the published sources 「貞綱の見どころがよくあらわれている」, a piece in which Sadatsuna's points of interest are well brought out, and a fine and forceful example among his works. One of his katana descends with an origami written by Hon'ami Kōjō and dated Enpō 7, the year 1679, which attributes it to Sadatsuna and which the modern commentary affirms on the strength of the blackish itame and the linked gunome of well-adhering ko-nie. Provenance is otherwise thin, with no daimyō houses or museums recorded among his blades, so the honest account is of a body held quietly in private hands. For a collector his work is among the more attainable of the Sōshū-influenced provincial masters: most of his designated blades sit in the Jūyō tier rather than locked away as patrimony, and a signed example, fixing the name with certainty, is the rarer and more desirable encounter, coming to light only from time to time and with patience.
Kanetsuna (兼綱) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Other smiths
Naoshige (直重) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.
Naotsuna (直綱) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Iwami Naotsuna School.