NihontoWatchSwordsmith Okubo Kazuhira was born in Showa 18 (1943) in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture. A student of the Living National Treasure Miyairi Shohei, his real name was Okubo Towazu. After receiving approval to manufacture swords in Showa 42 (1967), he became independent and changed his swordsmith mei to "Kazuhira," taking the "Kazu" from Towazu and the "Hira" from his teacher Shohei. He exhibited at the Shinsaku Meito Ten, achieving consecutive awards including the Excellence Award twice, the Encouragement Award twice, and the Effort Award seven times, and received the Kunzan Sho in Heisei 3 (1991). In Heisei 12 (2000), he was recognized as a Mukansa holder, but unfortunately passed away three years later on February 24, Heisei 15 (2003). Regarding his style, in addition to the Soshu-den passed down from his teacher, he expanded the scope of his research to other schools such as Bizen-den to create swords. The taihai of this work has a long nagasa of just under 2 shaku 5 sun 4 bu, a wide mihaba, a firm kasane, a slightly shallow koshi-zori, and a sharp, extended kissaki, presenting a grand taihai. The jigane is itame with flowing masame mixed in, chikei enters frequently, and ji-nie attaches thickly, resulting in a powerful jihada. The yakiba is a notare base mixed with gunome and togari-ba, with high and low points in places, ashi enters well within the ha, and kinsen are hooked in parts influenced by the hataraki of the ji. The boshi continues as notare and returns in komaru with a togari-kokoro tip. This item is an imposing sword by the swordsmith Okubo Kazuhira from Kanagawa Prefecture. With a powerful kitae-hada where ji-nie attaches well and chikei enters strongly, and a blade fired with a notare base where the nioiguchi is bright and clear, it is a careful work by this smith copying the high-ranking masters of Soshu. Shirasaya, gold-clad ichiju habaki, Tokubetsu Hozon Token Kanteisho.
Soshu School相州派
Offered by World Seiyudo
37 on the market
Machine translation from the shop's Japanese · may contain errors ·
Soshu-den · Sagami
37 pieces on the market now
The Soshu school took root in Kamakura, the seat of the Hojo regents in Sagami province, where the demand of the warrior government drew the country's leading smiths to a single town. The published sources count Awataguchi Kunitsuna of Yamashiro and the Bizen masters Kunimune and Sukezane among the immigrant pioneers of Kamakura sword-making, but the first native smith of Sagami, the man who cut his Kamakura residence and his dates into the nakago, was Shintogo Kunimitsu, reckoned the de facto founder of the Soshu-den. Working from the close of the thirteenth century into the 1330s, Kunimitsu built his refined manner on Awataguchi foundations: his tanto read at a glance like Yamashiro work until the conspicuous chikei and kinsuji in ji and ha betray the new tradition. From his forge came the three masters Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige, with Daishinbo Yukei as carving specialist and Kunihiro among the smith's own sons; through them the nie-laden suguha of the founder opened into the mature nie-deki that would define the school. A shared vocabulary runs through the whole register. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing in places, covered in thick ji-nie with chikei entering abundantly, so the steel reads bright and clear in the manner the texts call particular to the upper rank of Soshu-den work. Over it the temper runs as a notare mixed with gunome, the nioiguchi deep, the nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi working busily through the ha, with yubashiri drifting into the ji and a swept hakikake boshi above. From this common ground the internal arc unfolds.
Kunimitsu and Yukimitsu hold the restrained early hand, a calm suguha tending to shallow notare; Norishige carries the bold standing grain laced with thick chikei until the surface reads like pine bark (matsukawa-hada), his nioiguchi subdued and sunken. Masamune raises the nie to its highest refinement, a notare-based midareba alive with leaping kinsuji and chikei that the sources liken to splashed-ink (haboku) landscape painting; Sadamune, succeeding him in the mainline, works a calmer, more relaxed notare and excels as the carving master of the school. With Hiromitsu and Akihiro the temper escapes the edge entirely into the full-fledged hitatsura of Nanbokucho, tobiyaki and muneyaki firing the whole blade, Hiromitsu marked by his round dango-choji and Akihiro by a rougher, more openly active steel. A collector seeks Soshu for the nie itself, the most refined expression of hardened-steel artistry the tradition produced, and Masamune stands at its summit, his name carrying the heaviest weight of designation in the field and a place among Fujishiro's Sai-jo saku. To kantei the school is to read the recognition core the appraisers return to again and again: a chikei-rich standing itame, a deep and bright nioiguchi, busy kinsuji and sunagashi, and the swept boshi. The discriminations are fine and qualitative, Norishige's sunken nioiguchi and heavier grain set against Masamune's tighter quieter ji; Go Yoshihiro, who carried the manner west into Etchu, lit a degree brighter still with masame creeping into the hada and a deep ichimai-swept point; Yukimitsu kept the smaller, quieter pattern; Takagi Sadamune, who took the tradition into Omi, stood a touch more and ran shizumi in the nioiguchi where he fell short of the master. Because the great names left almost nothing signed, most of what survives is o-suriage mumei resting on Hon'ami attribution, and the signed meibutsu (the Kinoshita Masamune, the Mutsu Shintogo, the Okurikara Hiromitsu) carry provenance through the men who held the country: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the Maeda, Date, Hosokawa and Uesugi houses, with the highest blades resting in the great museums and shrines. The school's influence radiated outward, Norishige's pine-bark forging passing through Tametsugu to the later Etchu smiths and the perfected hitatsura reaching swordsmiths of other provinces, so that the Soshu-den became one of the five great traditions by which the whole field is read. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Masamune正宗 | 1288-1293 | 87 |
| Sadamune貞宗 | 1329-1331 | 88 |
| Go Yoshihiro義弘 | 1299-1302 | 53 |
| Kunimitsu國光 | 1293-1322 | 69 |
| Akihiro秋廣 | 1346-1370 | 28 |
Shōwa to the present: destruction and revival
The twentieth century nearly killed the craft twice: wartime distortion, then the occupation ban. The NBTHK’s founding in 1948 and licensed forging from 1953 rebuilt the sword as an art, crowned by Living National Treasures and the mukansa rank.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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 siteNo cooling-off period or returns; refund only if the purchased sword is proven fake, capped at purchase price (excludes commission sales, accessories, auction items).
¥1,800,000
Certificate reading — 銘 相州住和平作（大久保十和形） 昭和六十三年正月吉日