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About the school

Taima School当麻派

At Taima-dera in Yamato Province, the temple from which the school takes its name, a body of swordsmiths gathered in the late Kamakura period under Kuniyuki, who is transmitted as the founder of the line. The Taima group is counted among the five schools of the *Yamato-den*, the others being Tegai, Senjuin, Shikkake, and Hosho, and like its siblings it grew out of a monastic milieu in which the smiths worked in dependence upon the temple. That dependent standing is itself a fact of the record, for the published sources tie the scarcity of signed Taima work directly to it; the smiths, attached to the temple, naturally left few signatures, so that the line comes down largely as unsigned pieces fixed by appraisal. Only a small number of signed blades survive, chiefly by Kuniyuki and by Aritoshi, whose dated *tachi* of Einin 6 (1298) fixes the antiquity of the line and places its production at the close of the Kamakura age. The school continued through the Nanbokucho era and on into the Muromachi period, a northern branch removing to Asako in Echizen under the collective title Asako Taima. The Taima smiths share the full *Yamato-den* vocabulary, worked in a register that leans further toward *nie* activity than that of its Yamato siblings. The *jigane* is a flowing *itame* that gathers toward the edge into *masame*, the steel standing somewhat open, with thick *ji-nie* laid over it and *chikei* entering the grain frequently; on the finest blades a *nie-utsuri* rises in the *ji*, a reflection that on these smiths is a product of *nie* rather than of the Bizen *midare-utsuri*. Over this foundation the temper is built on a quiet line, a *suguha* or *suguha-cho* waved shallowly into *notare* and mixed with *ko-gunome*, small *ko-choji*, and at times *ko-midare*, the disorder always slight and worked over the straight base rather than displacing it. The *habuchi* frays into *hotsure*, breaks into *kuichigai-ba*, doubles into *nijuba*, and lifts into *uchinoke*, while within the tempered area the *ha-nie* lies thick and bright, *ashi* and *yo* entering, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* flashing through repeatedly. Above it the *boshi* runs straight and is then swept with *hakikake*, most often finishing in *yakizume* without a turnback or turning in a small *ko-maru*. The recurring traits cohere into a recognizable hand: the *masame*-rich *itame*, the abundant glittering *nie*, and the brushed point are the marks by which the school is read, and the school leans toward *nie* where Tegai and the others keep a tighter, calmer key. Individual smiths inflect the manner: Aritoshi is set apart by a near-constant *nijuba* unusual even within Yamato, while the Echizen Nobunaga carries an angular *gunome-midare* and a darkened steel into Hokuriku. Kantei of a Taima blade proceeds from this cluster of Yamato evidence, the *masame*-leaning *itame*, the *hotsure* and *nijuba* along the *habuchi*, and the swept *hakikake* *boshi*, laid over a *suguha* base; against the other Yamato schools the appraisers look for the heavier *nie* activity and the conspicuous *ashi* and *yo* within a bright edge that separate Taima from the plainer suguha of Tegai and Senjuin, the *togariba* tendency of Shikkake, and the dense *masame* of Hosho. Kuniyuki stands as the progenitor and defining voice of the line, his signed *tachi* prized as documentary anchors against which the rest is measured; below him Aritoshi, Toshinaga, Tomoyuki, and Tomokiyo are read each by his own grounded traits, their few signed survivals valued first as reference material because so little of the school was ever signed. The greater part of the record is *o-suriage mumei*, wide-bodied Nanbokucho *katana* cut greatly down, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated *chu-kissaki* and from the Taima activity at its strongest, the texts candid that on such a shortened blade no individuality singling out one smith can be discerned even while the piece is held a fine work of the school. Provenance is mostly thin, running through private hands rather than the daimyo houses, with a few institutional holdings and the occasional notable mounting, so that an unsigned Taima blade is the usual encounter and a signed one a landmark of *Yamato-den* work.

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