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About the maker

Enju Kunitoki國時

Kunitoki is a smith of the Higo Enju school, working in the Kikuchi district of Higo Province at the very end of the Kamakura period and into the Nanbokuchō. The published sources set the school's origin plainly: "the founder of the Higo Enju school was Kunimura" (肥後国延寿派の始祖は国村), a man recorded as a grandson of Rai Kuniyuki of Kyōto. From that Yamashiro descent the line takes its temperament, working broadly in the Rai manner and noted for skill in suguha. Around Kunimura a cluster of named smiths arose almost at once, Kunitoki, Kuniyoshi, Kunisuke, Kunitai and Kuninobu, and Kunitoki is counted among the first generation, traditionally given as Kunimura's son or younger brother. Two of his signed tachi are Important Cultural Properties, one held at Kakegawa Shrine in Kōchi and one at the Wakayama Tōshō-gū, and a third signed tachi survives ubu with its two-character mei, so his is one of the better-documented hands in a school whose members the judges otherwise find hard to tell apart. His characteristic work is read on a slender tachi or an ō-suriage katana of standard proportions, the surviving signed tachi keeping a high *koshi-zori*, a *ko-kissaki*, and a thick chisel cut into the ubu tang. The temper is the constant: a *suguha* base, most often a *chū-suguha*, into which small *gunome* and *ko-gunome* enter, with *ashi* and *yō*, *ko-nie* well laid, and on the signed tachi a slight tendency toward *nijūba*. It is a quiet line by intention. The published commentary draws the school's hand as close to its Yamashiro parent but more reserved, observing that "compared with Rai work the *jigane* and *hamon* are somewhat weaker" (来物に比しては地刃がやや弱く) and that the *suguha* commonly carries little activity and a subdued *nioiguchi*. Against that baseline one blade stands out, the signed tachi transmitted in the Date family, which the judges single out because "within the *suguha* the *gunome* are frequently prominent" (直刃の中に互の目が頻りにめだち) and the internal activity is comparatively rich. The *jigane* carries the school's signature as surely as the temper. Over a well-packed *ko-itame* that tends to flow, at times mixing in *ō-hada*, lie fine *chikei* and *ji-nie*, and across the *jigane* stands a whitish *shirake-utsuri* rather than the bright clove reflection of Bizen. This cooler, mistier reflection is the Enju *jigane*, the feature the school carries down from its Rai-Yamashiro line, and it appears on his signed and his attributed work alike. Where the forging tightens into a closely knit *ko-itame* with thick *ji-nie* the result is, in the words of one entry, unmistakably well made. Over that *jigane* the *bōshi* runs straight to a small round and returns shallowly, with faint *sunagashi* on the calmer pieces. His record divides cleanly by register. The signed work, the ubu Date-family tachi and the gold-inlaid katana, carries his personal touches, the frequent *gunome* riding the *suguha*, and on the tachi a devotional carving program, *bonji* set above a *soe-hi* beside the *bōhi*. The other face is the ō-suriage *mumei* katana attributed to him as a representative Enju hand, dignified in shape, deep in *nioi* with thick *ko-nie*, the *nioiguchi* subdued. On the gold-inlaid Jūyō katana, inscribed in *kinzogan* with his name and a *futatsu-dō* cutting test, the judges affirm the workmanship as a typical Enju style of the late Kamakura yet caution that "there are, on the contrary, no decisive points by which it should be determined as Kunitoki" (国時と特に断定すべき見どころは寧ろ掴めない). The name itself continued through successive generations into the Muromachi period, so the generation of a given blade is read from its make rather than its signature. What sets the Higo Enju Kunitoki apart from his neighbours is exactly what the published sources name. He is held apart from the brighter, stronger Yamashiro hand of true Rai by the cooler *shirake-utsuri* and the somewhat softer *jigane* and *hamon* the judges describe; his temper, they write, is the kind that "tends toward a subdued impression." Yet within his own school, where the smiths share a quiet *suguha* and little individual character, his comparatively abundant *gunome* and *ashi* give him a recognizable place, and the published commentary calls one of his *mumei* katana a *chū-suguha* "reminiscent of the Rai school" (来派をおもわせる). He stands among the founding generation of a Kyūshū line that carried the Yamashiro manner south, a calm and well-forged hand at the head of the Higo tradition. For the collector he is a rare early Higo name with a clear documentary trail. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through two Important Cultural Properties, a tachi at Kakegawa Shrine and a tachi at the Wakayama Tōshō-gū, the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, and a small number of Jūyō blades, signed, gold-inlaid and *mumei*. Several pieces carry daimyō and connoisseur provenance: a signed tachi transmitted in the Date family, accompanied by a gold *okukakeji* *kenuki-gata tachi* mounting, and an ō-suriage katana with a Hon'ami Kōchū *origami* of Kyōhō 6 valuing it at 700 *kan*. His blades are now preserved in long-held collections and public institutions, the Sano Art Museum among them. Only three of his works fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a signed Higo Enju Kunitoki comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Rai manner took root in Kyūshū.

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