¥16,500,000

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About the maker

Fukuoka Ichimonji Sukeyoshi助吉

Sukeyoshi is a Bizen Ichimonji smith of the Kamakura period, working under the single character ichi cut by the school that flourished at Fukuoka, Yoshioka, Katayama and Iwato. The published sources give his lineage from the signature compendia: "according to the meikan, Sukeyoshi was a son of Fukuoka Ichimonji Sukefusa, and by one account the founder of the Yoshioka Ichimonji line." That double placement is the problem of his name. Same-name smiths are recorded in both the Fukuoka and Yoshioka groups, and three signed Jūyō Bijutsuhin tachi catalogued together, though all judged Fukuoka Ichimonji, are said to differ enough in the manner of their signatures that the published sources will not commit them to a single hand. His record therefore reads as two manners drawn by the judges themselves rather than as one even style, and the second character of his identity is settled less by a personal tell than by era and school. The first manner is the signed two-character tachi, and it reads archaic. The published commentary calls the ji and ha old at a glance and identifies the work as Ko-Ichimonji of the early Kamakura, the generation that comes immediately after Ko-Bizen. Over a well-packed *ko-itame*, at times an *itame* closely forged, fine *ji-nie* gathers and a vivid *midare-utsuri* stands clearly. The temper here is comparatively calm: a *suguha*-toned base broken into a small *midare*, into which *ko-chōji* and small *chōji* are mixed in a *gunome-deki* manner, with *ashi* and *yō* working well in *ko-nie*, *sunagashi* laid in and *kinsuji* running through, the *bōshi* a *ko-maru*. The two-character signature is cut boldly at the very end of the tang, and the judges call its manner of inscription pleasing. One of these tachi carries the character *ue* above the name; the published sources note this is to be read "tatematsuru" (たてまつる), with other examples known, signifying that the smith presented the blade to the patron who had commissioned it. The *jigane* is the constant across both manners. *Itame*, tightening at times into a fine *ko-itame* and elsewhere standing a little open, carries *ji-nie* and that bright *midare-utsuri* of old Bizen steel on every example, signed and unsigned alike. On the more refined pieces the forging closes up and the reflection only grows clearer; on the wider attributions the grain stands more, tending toward *hada-tatsu*, and *chikei* enters with *mokume* mixed into the *itame*. It is the *jigane* he shares with the whole school, and the surface against which his two tempers are read. The second manner is the flamboyant one for which Fukuoka Ichimonji is named, seen on the *ō-suriage* attributions. The published sources describe the mid-Kamakura Fukuoka style as "the most splendid and richly varied large-pattern *chōji-midare*," and it was on exactly such a temper that the connoisseur Hon'ami Tadaaki rendered his judgment. On a greatly shortened, unsigned wakizashi he cut a gold-inlaid attribution to Sukeyoshi, reasoning from the blade's brilliant large-pattern *chōji-midare* that the hand was the Fukuoka rather than the Yoshioka Sukeyoshi. That blade shows a *chōji-midare* mixed with *togariba* and *tobiyaki* over an *itame* with *mokume*, *ashi* and *yō* entering, *ko-nie* adhering, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* through it, the *bōshi* a *notare-komi* tending to *ko-maru* with *hakikake*. A wide shortened tachi of the same character has a *chū-kissaki* leaning to *ikubi* and a *chōji-midare* that inclines to *saka-gakari*. Where the signed work is quiet and old, these are showy and full of variation. What sets him apart within Bizen is held in that contrast. Against the plainer Ko-Bizen smiths who precede him, his signed tachi is brighter in its *midare-utsuri* and gathers *chōji* on the edge where theirs run quieter. Against the full mid-Kamakura flowering of the school at Fukuoka, his archaic signed manner stands a half-generation earlier, the Ko-Ichimonji root from which that flowering grew, even as his attributed work carries the later flamboyant temper forward. The published sources keep the two faces honestly side by side, judging the unsigned blades Fukuoka Ichimonji "from every point" while granting that they "cannot be readily decided to be by the same hand," so that what is fixed about him is the school and the period rather than the individual. For the collector he is a rare early name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku, and the *Tōkō Taikan* values him in the upper-middle range of the old Bizen masters. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs through the Jūyō rank and the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, the signed early-Kamakura tachi held by the published sources to be sound and of fine quality. His blades carry good provenance: a signed tachi from the Tsugaru house, another recorded in the Sasaki collection, and a great *naginata* transmitted in the Uesugi family and attributed by tradition to his hand, with a piece now in the Hayashibara Museum of Art among the recorded whereabouts. Only a couple of his works fall in the Jūyō tier, and signed Sukeyoshi survives in just a handful of examples, so one comes to light only seldom. A privately held signed Sukeyoshi is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, and a document of how the Ichimonji passed from its archaic beginnings into its great flowering.

Iida Koendo

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