NihontoWatchNihontoWatch後藤徳乗 生没年：1550-1631（天文19-寛永8） 桃山，江戸時代の彫金工。後藤祐乗を祖とする後藤宗家の5代目で，通称を源次郎光基といい，父光乗の嫡男として京都に生まれた。後藤家は代々装剣金具の製作を家業とし，足利将軍家に仕えたが，足利家滅亡後，徳乗は織田信長，豊臣秀吉に仕えた。特筆すべきは，家業のほかに大判金と金銀を測る天秤の分銅を製作したことで，同家の記録では1581年（天正9）信長から父とともに分銅大判役を命ぜられたと伝えている。信長没後も秀吉から引き続きこの役を与えられ，1591年4月には山城国の愛宕郡市原村，久世郡中村，葛野郡西院村に私領250石を永代不易に与えられる厚遇を得，やがて畿内各地に成立していた金屋，金吹きの業を独占掌握するようになった。天正16年（1588）の墨書がある丸枠桐極印のある大判は，徳乗が製作したものである。徳乗の得た分銅大判製作の特権は江戸時代にも引き継がれ，代々世襲された。さらに徳乗の弟子山崎庄三郎（後藤庄三郎）は金座における小判の製造，鑑査の独占請負を徳川家康から与えられ，後藤家は江戸期を通じて社会的，経済的繁栄をみた。 後藤光孝 後藤光孝は後藤宗家13代延乗同人です。 胴乱とは薬・印・煙草・銭などを入れて腰に下げる方形の袋のこと。
Certificate reading — 銘 紋徳乗 光孝(花押)
NihontoWatchOffered by Ayakashi
3 on the market
Goto Tokujo
Momoyama-Early Edo (1550-1631)
Signed
Tokuho (NBTHK)
As written by the shop
(Translation unavailable)
Iebori · Yamashiro · around 1550-1631
3 pieces on the market now
Goto Tokujo, the fifth-generation head of the Goto main line, was the eldest son of the fourth master, Kojo. He was born in Tenbun 19 (1550) and died in Kan'ei 8 (1631). His common name was first Genjiro, later Shirobei, and his personal name is recorded as Mitsumoto and also as Masaie. Since the first master, Yujo, the Goto had served the Ashikaga shoguns. When the Ashikaga line ended in his father's time, Kojo and Tokujo served Oda Nobunaga, and after Nobunaga's death Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who charged them with three offices: the great gold coinage, the weights, and the carving of sword fittings. In Tensho 16 (1588) Tokujo made the great and small gold coins, struck them with a paulownia stamp known as the Tokujo-giri or Taiko-giri, and wrote his own name on them in ink. He remained in office under Ieyasu and Hidetada and in his last years received the rank of Hogen.
The published sources record his family in detail. He had five sons and four daughters. His eldest son, Eijo Masafusa, succeeded as the sixth head; the second son died young; the third son became the seventh head, Kenjo; and the fourth and fifth sons, Takujo and Kyujo, founded branch houses. His daughters married into the Hon'ami family, the gold-mint house of Goto Shozaburo Mitsutsugu, and the Kano family. Through these ties the Goto house stood at the centre of the craft lineages of the Momoyama period.
His work is executed above all on shakudo nanako-ji, the minute, dense nanako that underlies the Goto formal repertoire. His principal technique is takabori with gold iroe, the gold applied thick, often with silver iroe and a gilt reverse. For menuki he carves in yobori with in'yo-ne roots. The published sources describe the modelling as usu-kin-dashi with a deep underside, the pressing from the front and the high-and-low change of the modelling standing out, and they call it highly refined. His subjects include crawling dragons, the lucky gods Hotei and Idaten, and the house's formal designs.
Among his formal designs the paulownia crest is the most celebrated. The published sources write that Tokujo's paulownia is famous under the names Taiko-giri and Tokujo-giri, and that 「麦鏨と称される特殊タガネは十個打っている」, the special barley chisel struck ten times. They read the slightly narrow width of one of his kozuka as a mark of the Momoyama age. Like the other early Goto heads, his work is mostly unsigned and attributed by the origami and gold-inlaid appraisal signatures of later heads, above all the thirteenth master Enjo Mitsutaka. A self-signed piece is rare: of a kogai of Hotei signed Goto Tokujo with a kao, the published sources write that 「自身銘は特に珍稀である」.
The published sources describe his work as conveying the bold, sumptuous spirit of the Momoyama age, with a dignity proper to the Goto main line. Of a three-piece set of Hotei they write that the robes and bags are varied between the menuki, kozuka and kogai and that fine chisel work reaches every joint, so that the work lets one fully appreciate 「御家彫後藤家の技術の確実さ」, the sureness of the official Goto house carving. Another set they call 「品格を兼ね備えた後藤家の面目躍如たる作品」, a work of dignity that shows the Goto house at its best, judged from its origami to be one of the few sets of his own making. He set the standard of authority and richness against which the main-line Goto work of the following generations is measured.
His designated record stands at thirty-two Juyo. Several of his works descended in great houses, the Hachisuka daimyo family and the Osaka merchant house of Konoike among them, and the Nabeshima family appears in the recorded provenance as well. No current institutional holder is recorded against them. Because his work is almost wholly unsigned and much of it kept as complete sets, a piece by Tokujo comes to light only occasionally, and a signed one is among the rarest things a collector of Goto work could encounter.
Where Goto Tokujo 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.
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Iebori · Yamashiro
317 pieces on the market now
The Goto house stands as the preeminent dynasty of sword-fitting makers in the history of Japanese metalwork, an unbroken lineage of seventeen generations spanning from the founding master Yujo (1440--1512), who served Ashikaga Yoshimasa amid the refined culture of Higashiyama, through the final head Hojo (1816--1856) in the closing years of the Tokugawa shogunate. From its inception the house served successive rulers -- Ashikaga shoguns, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Tokugawa -- and its productions became known as iebori, the "house carving" distinguished from machibori made for ordinary public demand. The fourth master Kojo first introduced warrior subjects and employed preparatory drawings by Kano Motonobu and Eitoku; the fifth master Tokujo struck the celebrated "Tokujo kiri" hallmark upon oban gold coinage for Hideyoshi; the third master Joshin -- "not only a metalworker but also a warrior" -- was killed in battle against the Azai clan in 1562. The seventh master Kenjo, praised since ancient times as a restorer of the house's fortunes (the finest exponents being termed Yuko-ken), traveled to Kaga and laid the foundations for the later flourishing of the Kaga-Goto tradition, while the tenth master Renjo carried the mainline from Kyoto to Edo, where it would remain through the seventeenth generation. The eleventh master Tsujo bridged the formal tradition with the expressive spirit of the Genroku era, and the thirteenth master Enjo served as an authoritative appraiser, authenticating works by earlier masters across the entire succession. The collective technical vocabulary of the Goto house is built upon shakudo nanako-ji grounds of extraordinarily minute and dense stippling, upon which motifs are rendered in takabori with kin-iroe and gin-iroe, frequently supplemented by solid gold (kinmuku) construction and kin'ura gilt backing. The sculptural manner is characterized by what the NBTHK repeatedly describes as "high mountains and deep valleys" -- a modulation of volume in which modeling rises emphatically while recesses are cut deep and clean, producing forceful and crisply articulated relief.
" Sojo inherited and tightened these forms with controlled elegance; Joshin amplified them to conspicuously larger scale with claws that are "characteristically large and long, with the tips splayed open"; Eijo brought a finer, more delicate precision to compositions of equally grand ambition; and Kenjo introduced a distinctive shosha quality -- austere and urbane -- that distinguished his work from the first six generations. The later masters sustained this discipline: Teijo's calm restraint and distinctive coloristic effects, Renjo's forty-five years of deeply worked takabori capturing instantaneous warrior movements, Tsujo's innovative left-right spreading compositions, and Hojo's reintroduction of machibori aesthetics into the official house style all demonstrate the lineage's capacity for renewal within tradition. The Goto house's enduring significance resides not merely in the technical excellence of individual masters but in the institutional continuity of a critical tradition sustained across four centuries. Works from the "upper six generations" (kami roku-dai) through Eijo established the canonical repertoire of prescribed okitemono motifs -- dragons, lions, paulownia crests, Kurikara, and auspicious figures -- while successive heads served simultaneously as makers and authenticators, issuing origami certificates and kiwame-mei inscriptions that themselves constitute important documents of connoisseurship. Valuations reaching one thousand kan and transmission through such distinguished collections as the Konoike, Shimazu, Tokugawa, and Maeda houses attest to the unrivaled esteem in which Goto metalwork has been held. Even Sokujo, whose tenure lasted barely four years before his death at thirty-two, left a small but distinguished body of work authenticated across eight subsequent generations of headmasters. From Yujo's founding vision through Hojo's final flowering -- whose technical command the NBTHK judges the finest from the twelfth master onward, betraying "not the slightest hint of the approaching conclusion" of the unbroken line -- the Goto house represents the defining standard against which all Japanese metalwork is measured, the wellspring from which the entire sokeN kinkO tradition flows. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Goto Joshin後藤乗真 | 1512-1562 | 68 |
| Goto Yujo後藤祐乗 | 1440-1512 | 41 |
| Goto Kenjo後藤顕乗 | 1586-1663 | 46 |
| Goto Sojo後藤宗乗 | 1461-1538 | 56 |
| Goto Teijo後藤程乗 | 1603-1673 | 42 |
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 siteExcept where the item is defective, we do not accept returns as a rule. In the case of an error on our part, please contact us by email within 3 days of the item's arrival.
¥1,500,000