NihontoWatchNihontoWatchCao Cao, who had pacified Hebei (the region north of the Yellow River) in the Battle of Mount Bailang, demonstrated formidable power in the Zhongyuan region (the northern area centered around the Yellow River basin) and was intensifying his southward movement with the aim of conquering all of China. Since Sun Quan in Yangzhou to the south had built trust over three generations, Liu Bei, along with his distant relative Liu Biao of Jingzhou and Liu Zhang of Yizhou, were in a situation where they had no choice but to be sensitive to these surrounding movements. At that time, Liu Bei was a guest under the command of Liu Biao of Jingzhou, using Xinye Castle as his residence. Jingzhou was a strategic military point, and it was also a land that Cao Cao had set his sights on. During this period, despite having brave men of purpose such as Guan Yu and Zhang Fei and many gathered soldiers at his disposal, Liu Bei, who wished for the restoration of the Han Dynasty, was in a situation where he could not find a good plan to fight Cao Cao. Therefore, Liu Bei thought he needed a strategist to serve as his own brain, and through Sima Hui and Xu Shu, he came to know of Zhuge Kongming, who lived in seclusion at the foot of the mountains in Longzhong. On this occasion, the fact that Liu Bei welcomed Kongming as a strategist after visiting him three times is well known as the "Three Visits to the Hut," and in tosogu, it is depicted as Liu Bei, accompanied by Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, standing in the freezing snow, quietly waiting for Kongming. Meanwhile, Kongming was also searching for a reliable warrior who possessed the power to realize his own plans. The meeting of the two was not a coincidence. To Liu Bei, who had traveled to his thatched hut many times, Kongming explained the "Plan for the Three-Way Division of the World." Liu Bei was surprised by that grand and meticulous analysis of the state of the world and wished to make that clear brain and knowledge his own power. Of course, the goal was not the tripartite confrontation of three kingdoms, but nothing other than the restoration of the Han Dynasty after defeating Cao Cao. The existence of Cao Cao in the north with formidable power was an immovable reality. In order to fight him on equal terms, the best plan was to join forces with Sun Quan of Yangzhou. By turning Jingzhou, which was a military and economic base, and Yizhou, which was a fertile land but lacked an excellent ruler, into countries with stable power, it would become possible to suppress Cao Cao, who was moving south. Kongming's theory was also something that could not be realized without Liu Bei. Incidentally, it has been passed down that the cause of victory in the later Battle of Red Cliffs in Jingzhou was due to Kongming's intellectual warfare. The policy of balancing the three kingdoms, the "Plan for the Three-Way Division of the World," was nothing other than a passing point toward the restoration of the Han Dynasty that not only Liu Bei but also Kongming had envisioned. This fuchi kashira depicts the scene where Kongming is showing his plan, the "Plan for the Three-Way Division of the World," to Liu Bei. Before Liu Bei and Zhang Fei, who are looking intently at the widely spread scroll inscribed with details, it carves and depicts Kongming, who gazes steadily as if trying to gauge the character of Liu Bei himself. It was Nara Toshinaga who took as his theme this most important moment of the grand Tale of the Three Kingdoms, which unites two people who, while heading toward the same goal, were in different positions. The fuchi fittings of Toshinaga have a relatively low profile. Despite the narrow space, he finished the shakudo ji in the Nara school's unique jiban-style ishimeji, accurately capturing even the movements of the figures' bodies, applying iroe of gold, silver, and suaka to the realistic takabori, and adding precise tagane to reproduce the historical scene. Spreading the scroll, Zhang Fei, with his characteristic aquiline nose and rounded eyes, is surprised by the content consisting of meticulous strategy and deep reading, while Liu Bei is reading intently as if confirming every single character, casting a stern gaze. In the space of the fuchi kashira, which is less than one sun, he carves and expresses the movement of the bodies and hands resulting from the swaying of clothes, the texture of the skin, and even the movement of the eyes, facial expressions, and the personalities of the three individuals. Such character depictions that make the historical background vivid are the characteristics of the Nara school that flourished in Edo. The distinctive qualities of Toshinaga, who was hailed as one of the three Nara masters along with Tsuchiya Yasuchika and Sugiura Joi, are expressed in the fine details of this work as well. Toshinaga was called Tahei and was a pupil of Toshiharu, born in Kanbun 7. He excelled at figure drawings based on history such as the Three Kingdoms and the Genpei War, carved and depicted lucky gods such as Jurojin, and spiritual beasts like fierce tigers and lions, and also left behind designs full of a sense of life even within rustic settings, such as pheasants and gamecocks.
Offered by Choshuya
This piece has sold
79 on the market
Get an email when a new Nara Toshinaga (利寿) piece hits the market.
Nara
Edo
Musashi
Signed
Jūyō (NBTHK)
As written by the shop
Machine translation from the shop's Japanese · may contain errors ·
Machibori · Edo
Nara Toshinaga (利寿), whose common name was Tahei, was born in Kanbun 7 (1667) and died in Genbun 1 (1736) at the age of seventy. One record names him a pupil of the Edo Nara master Toshinaga written 利永, the fourth generation of the school, and places his house at Honjo in Edo. With Tsuchiya Yasuchika and Sugiura Joi he is counted among the Nara Sansaku, the three celebrated masters of the Nara school, and the published sources rank him first among them: the eldest of the three and, in their words, the most skilled[[c:1]]. One commentary calls him the master "praised as first in the Nara school"[[c:2]], another sets him at "the summit of the Nara school"[[c:3]].
What the NBTHK names, again and again, is the force of his chisel. Of a kozuka with a tiger beside a waterfall it writes of "carving charged with power into every corner"[[c:4]], of his lions that their leaping high relief is "worth a second look" and "one of the highlights of Toshinaga"[[c:5]]. His relief is high and sukidashi, cut back from the plate so that the figure stands proud, and it is enriched with gold, silver, suaka and shibuichi colour inlay. On a Fujito battle kozuka the waves are carved in iron with finely graded sukidashi relief, the figures raised higher still, and the colour kept to a minimum.
His materials are wide. He works shakudo, iron, shibuichi, oborogin and roughened suaka, very often with an ishime texture that the published sources call his own[[c:6]]. Brass is singled out: of a Jurojin-and-tortoise fuchigashira they write that brass worked in sukidashi is "the method in which this maker excelled"[[c:7]]. Some pieces are finished with lacquer laid over parts of the plate, a Nara touch that darkens the oborogin or the copper. His output is dominated by fuchigashira, the fuchi low-waisted and slightly tall in the ichimonji manner, and the commentary repeats that "tsuba and kozuka are scarce, and fuchigashira are many"[[c:8]]. His tsuba are thick, and an early record doubts that they number more than ten; among them the Omori Hikoshichi and the Mure Takamatsu tsuba are famous.
His subjects run in two registers. The first is the human figure. Shoki and the oni are his particular theme, and the commentary says that "the expressions of Shoki and the oni are especially his own"[[c:9]]. Jurojin with a minogame tortoise is another subject he favoured, with several tsuba and fuchigashira of similar design surviving. Bishamonten, the Three Kingdoms, the Fujito crossing and the vanguard at the Uji river complete it. Of his mounted warriors the NBTHK writes that they follow the Goto manner but are "more true to life than the warriors of the Goto house"[[c:10]]. The second register is birds and beasts: fighting cocks with chicks at their feet, a tiger crouched above a falling torrent, a parent tiger swimming a raging current while its cub crouches on the bank, a lion with peony, and returning geese descending across a brass sky worked smooth in sukidashi.
Through both registers runs a contrast of movement and stillness. On the waterfall kozuka the published sources read the water as movement and the crouching tiger as stillness, a tiger "watching intently"[[c:11]] and about to spring. On one gamecock fuchigashira the bird is not in its fighting pose: beak closed and feathers lowered, it is read as the still "wooden cock" of the old tale, set against the combative cocks of his other works. A Uji river fuchigashira pairs his fuchi with a kashira added in the late Edo period by Toryusai Seiju.
His record numbers thirty designated works: three Important Cultural Properties, four at Tokubetsu Juyo, twenty at Juyo, and three recognised before the war as Juyo Bijutsuhin. The three Important Cultural Properties are national patrimony and do not change hands. The prewar records name Hosokawa Moritatsu, whose set is now with the Eisei Bunko, and Furukawa Toranosuke; a Jurojin fuchigashira comes from the Ryushido collection of Mitsumura Toshimo with a box inscribed by Unno Shomin in Meiji 37 (1904). A Tokubetsu Juyo or Juyo fuchigashira appears from time to time, a tsuba or kozuka far more seldom.
Where Toshinaga stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Machibori · Edo
79 pieces on the market now
The Nara school of kinko (metalwork) emerged in the mid-Edo period as one of the most celebrated independent traditions of sword-fitting craftsmanship, its masters working outside the patronage structures that governed the Goto house. The school coalesced around the figure of Nara Toshihisa (1667--1736), also known as Tahee, who as head master during its creative zenith defined the mature idiom of the lineage. Though the school's origins are often traced through the successive generations of the Nara family beginning with Toshiharu, its lasting fame rests upon the Nara sansaku — the Three Masters of Nara: Toshihisa, Tsuchiya Yasuchika, and Sugiura Joi. " Joi (1701--1761), trained under Juei in the lineage of Toshiharu, rose to become the third pillar of this triumvirate. Together, and joined by masters of allied lineages such as Hayashi Shigemitsu of the Higo kinko tradition, the Nara school and its circle represent the highest achievement of independent metalwork in the Edo period. The collective technical vocabulary of the Nara school encompasses an extraordinary breadth of materials and methods. Its masters worked in iron, shakudo, shibuichi, brass (shinchu), refined copper (suaka), and oborogin, treating surfaces as polished grounds (migaki-ji), hammered textures (tsuchime-ji), and stone-grain finishes (ishime-ji) — the latter developed by Toshihisa into a distinctive personal manner. The school's carving methods span the full spectrum: sukidashi-bori modeled relief, takabori high relief, the thread-fine line work of kebori, and the single-stroke katakiribori incision. " Yet individual specialties distinguish the masters within this shared vocabulary.
Toshihisa's art finds its fullest expression in sukidashi takabori — relief carving in which figures are raised with subtly graduated heights to produce an illusion of spatial depth — executed against his richly textured ishime-ji grounds. Joi developed nikuaibori, a modulated relief technique of unrivaled refinement, producing entire compositions through chisel work alone on polished oborogin grounds, dispensing with inlay and colored-metal accents. Yasuchika's range is perhaps the broadest, encompassing the distinctive daigaku-gata iron tsuba conceived for his patron and kozuka that "draw forth a small universe" within a confined surface, while his late works signed with the art name Tou achieve an austere, detached realm the NBTHK terms kotan. The legacy of the Nara school rests on the singular ability of its masters to transcend decorative function and achieve genuine artistic expression within the confines of sword fittings. Toshihisa, as the senior figure among the sansaku, established the standard of dignified, powerfully carved relief against richly textured grounds, and his figural subjects — gamecocks, tigers, Bishamonten — consistently achieve what NBTHK scholarship identifies as the philosophical duality of do (movement) and sei (stillness) within a single composition. " Joi, working primarily in the intimate format of the kozuka, achieved expressive authority through the sheer subtlety of his nikuaibori chisel work — his celebrated lion-and-cub compositions existing in closely related versions across multiple designations and published in the canonical reference Tagane no Hana. That the school also attracted masters of allied provincial traditions — Hayashi Shigemitsu of Higo, whose iron tsuba display the characteristic murasaki-sabi patina and "somewhat gentler feeling" that distinguishes the second generation from the founder Matahichi — attests to its gravitational influence on Edo-period metalwork as a whole. Across the school's production, the NBTHK's evaluative language converges on a consistent theme: compositional intelligence, technical command across the full range of materials and carving methods, and an expressive depth that elevates the finest works from accomplished craft to art of the highest order. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Yasuchika安親 | — | 87 |
| Toshinaga利寿 | — | 30 |
| Joi乗意 | — | 12 |
| Shigeharu重治 | — | 0 |
| Toshiyoshi利善 | — | 0 |
Exceptional craft of very high artistic value, judged to rank with a nationally recognized Important Art Object (Jūyō Bijutsuhin).
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteIf, due to our fault, the item differs significantly from its proper condition, the item may be returned. Cooling-off is within one week of the item's arrival.