NihontoWatchA famous treasure attributed to having been forged by the hands of Retired Emperor Go-Toba himself during the Heian period. Retired Emperor Go-Toba was the fourth son of Emperor Takakura, born in Jisho 4 (1180), and held cloistered rule during the reigns of the three emperors Tsuchimikado, and later Juntoku and Chukyo. The brilliant Retired Emperor Go-Toba is widely known for his profound knowledge regarding swords; it is said that he established monthly rotations to summon master smiths from across the country to serve as his partners in sword making, and those he personally tempered during this time are called Kikusaku or Kiku-gosaku. The reason they are called Kikusaku is due to the kebori of 16-petal or 24-petal chrysanthemum crests at the habaki-moto, and incidentally, the use of the chrysanthemum crest by the Imperial Family began with Retired Emperor Go-Toba. The style varies depending on the smith who served at that time, with some resembling Ko-Ichimonji, some in the Ko-Aoe style, and others close to the Awataguchi style; generally, yaki-otoshi is seen, and from there, many exhibit a mizukage-like appearance. This tachi is accompanied by an origami from Enpo 1 by Hon'ami Kotsune valued at 150 kan, and the aforementioned characteristics are prominent; as the character "Ichi" remains, the partner was likely a Ko-Ichimonji smith. While several examples remain, such as the Gyobutsu, the Shimazu family heirloom, the Matsudaira family heirloom, and the Hayashibara possession (all Important Cultural Properties), there is no other example accompanied by the character "Ichi," making it truly a masterpiece. In Keian 4, the ceremony for the appointment of the 4th Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna was held at Edo Castle, and as an envoy of thanks, on September 21, Sakai Kawachi-no-kami Tadakiyo traveled to Kyoto along with the Koke Kira Wakasa-no-kami Yoshifuyu; on this occasion, Tadakiyo received this tachi, and after his return, he was appointed as Uta-no-kami. Long treasured as a family heirloom of the same house, during the time of the 13th head Tadamasa, who served as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and Vice-Chairman of the House of Peers and contributed greatly to the Meiji political world, it was designated as a national Important Art Object; after the war, it entered the Yamauchi family and was preserved at the Yushukan in Kudan, Tokyo, which manages the family's treasures. In the Heisei era, it was also designated as Tokubetsu Juyo Token by the Public Interest Incorporated Foundation Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai.
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As written by the shop
Machine translation from the shop's Japanese · may contain errors ·
Goban-kaji (the imperial rotation smiths) · Yamashiro · around 1207-1211
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Go-Toba-in is not a swordsmith in the ordinary sense but the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (後鳥羽上皇), the sovereign of the early Kamakura period who made the forge an imperial practice. The published sources state the tradition consistently: he selected the goban-kaji, the appointed smiths of his rotation, organized them into alternating shifts at the cloistered palace, and had swords forged there, and among these works the blades for which the Emperor himself performed the tempering are termed kiku-saku or gosaku[[c:1]]. The record is old. The NBTHK writes that his summoning of the master craftsmen of his day and his personal quenching of blades "has long been known from classical sword treatises, beginning with the Meizukushi" in the Kanchi-in manuscript, and the modern study Go-Toba-in Goban-kaji-ko collects the recorded works.
The defining mark is the chrysanthemum. The works are called kiku-saku because at the base of the ubu nakago, within the togidamari, they bear a finely incised sixteen- or twenty-four-petal chrysanthemum crest, and where the tang survives intact the worn kebori of the crest is still legible. The style, by contrast, is never his alone: the published sources repeat that the workmanship differs with the smith who served as the Emperor's counterpart on each occasion, some works resembling the Ko-Ichimonji, some in a Ko-Aoe manner, and some close to the working range of Awataguchi. What binds the group is the hallmark of the program: "in general they show yakiotoshi (焼落し), and from that area a mizukage-like effect often appears." At the dropped temper the nioiguchi weakens, so that at first glance the blade can suggest a retempered piece, and the published record is explicit that it is not. Among the surviving examples the sources distinguish a Kyoto style and a Bizen style.
The quiet side of the corpus is carried by the tachi handed down in the Yamauchi family, bearing the kiku-mon over a cipher-like character ichi[[c:2]] cut diagonally beneath it. The blade is slender, with high koshizori and funbari, inclining forward toward a small kissaki. Its jigane is itame mixed with mokume and flowing hada, the grain standing somewhat, with ji-nie and chikei, and toward the base a diagonal mizukage-like reflection rises. The temper is dropped above the machi with a koshiba-like flare; above it the hamon runs in a suguha tone with shallow notare, mixing ko-midare, ko-gunome and a ko-choji feeling. Small ashi enter and tobiyaki lie close to the edge, the whole well covered in nie with sunagashi and kinsuji; the boshi is sugu with ko-maru, strong in nie. The published sources place this work close to the Bizen Ko-Ichimonji school and read off the program's yakiotoshi and the mizukage-like utsuri at the base. The added ichi beneath the crest has no other recorded parallel among kiku-saku, "a precious piece of documentary material," and the blade carries a Hon'ami Kojo origami of Enpo 1 (1673) valuing it at 150 kan.
The flamboyant side is the tachi of the hatamoto Kuroda family, judged by the published sources to have had a Bizen smith as the counterpart. It is a dignified blade of nearly standard width with a marked taper, ample hiraniku, high curvature with koshizori and funbari, and a chu-kissaki. Here the jigane is a well forged ko-itame, the ji-nie dust-fine, and a vivid midare-utsuri stands out clearly. The yakiba is high, a flamboyant choji-midare with ashi and yo, nioi-dominant with ko-nie and an overall slanting tendency; tobiyaki mingle near the heads of the temper, and the nioiguchi is tight, bright and clear. Bonji are cut above the grooves, with gomabashi on the ura. The ji and ha are so robust (頗る健体) that the commentary records sensing a freshness at first glance, and it concludes that overall it is a splendid work and that the traditional attribution to kiku-gosaku may reasonably be accepted. The osuriage-mumei katana attributed to the group continue this Bizen manner, choji mixed with ko-midare, deep in nioi with yubashiri, sunagashi and kinsuji, the boshi midare-komi; on these the shortening has removed the yakiotoshi and the mizukage, and the appraisal rests on the archaic tone of the ji and ha. Of the Matsudaira blade Honma recorded that the attribution is appropriate and the workmanship good.
He left no pupils, and there is no downstream school. The lineage of a kiku-gosaku runs sideways, back to the school of the smith who attended the Emperor, and it is that resemblance, Ko-Ichimonji, Ko-Aoe or Awataguchi, joined to the crest, the yakiotoshi and the mizukage, that defines the group for appraisal. The published record also sets out the designated company these blades keep: it lists among kiku-gosaku one recorded as Gyobutsu and Important Cultural Properties from the former Echizen Matsudaira, Owari Tokugawa and Hayashibara collections, every one carrying the chrysanthemum cut into the tang. A further tachi, with a twenty-four-petal crest, handed down in the Kujo house and later presented to the Emperor Meiji, is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection. It is worked in an Ichimonji-like manner, ko-midare mixed with choji and a rather tight nioiguchi, and that text notes that the crest is seen on no other gosaku and leaves open, as a subject for future study, whether it belongs with them.
Ten designated works stand on record: four Important Cultural Properties, one blade recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, two Juyo Bijutsuhin, two Tokubetsu Juyo and one Juyo. Nine carry recorded provenance, and the roll is what an emperor's hand would lead one to expect. The Kuroda tachi was bestowed by Tokugawa Ieyasu on Kuroda Naotsuna in 1614 and was maintained every year through the Edo period by the shogunal sword office; the Itsukushima Shrine tachi is by shrine tradition a former possession of Ouchi Yoshitaka, dedicated by Mori Motonari, and suffered in the fire of Meiji 20 (1887); other blades passed through the Yamauchi, the Matsudaira and Echizen Matsudaira, and the Kujo, whose tachi was later presented to the Emperor Meiji, and one came down from Uesugi Kagekatsu. Of recorded whereabouts the works rest at Itsukushima Shrine, the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums and the Kurokawa Institute. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony and will not trade, and the tachi of the Honma inventory is likewise outside the market; what remains to the private sphere is the small Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, three blades in all, so that a kiku-gosaku, the chrysanthemum of Go-Toba's own forge, coming into open hands is among the rarest encounters the field affords.
Where Go-Toba-in 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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Yamashiro-den
Within the corpus gathered here, every blade belongs to a single institution: the goban-kaji, the rotation of swordsmiths that the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (後鳥羽上皇) is recorded as having summoned to his cloistered palace (in no gosho) in the early Kamakura period. The setsumei describe a consistent arrangement in which the sovereign selected appointed smiths (ban-kaji), organized them into alternating monthly shifts, and had swords forged on the imperial premises. Blades for which the Emperor himself performed the quenching (yaki-ire) are termed Kiku-saku or Gosaku. The setsumei do not name the individual smiths of the rotation by personal name; instead they identify the traditions from which the partner-smiths were drawn, citing the Bizen Ko-Ichimonji group, the Bichu Ko-Aoe manner, and the Yamashiro Awataguchi range. One entry grounds the institution in classical treatises, naming the Meizukushi (Kanchiin manuscript), the Masukagami, the Jōkyūki, and the study Gotobain Ban Kajikō. Because the men who served as the sovereign's counterpart came from these separate provincial lineages, the corpus is a historical grouping rather than one line of transmission. The blades therefore divide along the very fault line the setsumei warn of, and the descriptions record two distinct hands rather than one shared idiom. The first group works in a Bizen mode: the Kuroda tachi (Tokuju 21, Juyo 53) show shinogi-zukuri with high koshizori and funbari, a well-forged ko-itame-hada carrying vivid midare-utsuri, and a high-tempered, flamboyant chōji-midare with ashi and yō, nioi-dominant with ko-nie and a saka-gakari tendency.
The second group is built on suguha: the Yamauchi tachi (Tokuju 11) and the "Ichi" tachi (Juyo 35) open with yakiotoshi near the machi, giving a koshiba-like impression, then continue in a shallow notare with ko-gunome and ko-chōji, abundant nie, sunagashi, and kinsuji, with a diagonal mizukage-like utsuri at the base. The tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection sit between these, showing ko-midare with chōji intermixed and utsuri-gokoro in the Ichimonji manner with a tight nioiguchi. Bōshi run sugu with ko-maru across the group; yakiotoshi and the mizukage effect recur often enough that the setsumei treat them as a general marker of the type, while cautioning that such blades may at first glance resemble retempered (saiha) work though they are not. The chrysanthemum crest is the connecting thread the setsumei return to throughout. At the base of the tang, executed in hairline kebori, a kiku-mon of sixteen or twenty-four petals is recorded on the blades in Honma's inventory and as a worn remnant within the togidame of the Kuroda tachi and the Itsukushima Jūyō-Bijutsuhin piece. Two blades add a tally-like character "一" beneath the crest; the setsumei note no other known parallel and value them as documentary evidence, while one entry separately cautions that the later term "Kiku-Ichimonji" is often confused with these imperial works. Provenance carries weight across the corpus: the Kuroda tachi was bestowed by Tokugawa Ieyasu on Kuroda Naotsuna in Keichō 19 and is recorded in the Tsuchiya Oshigata; the Yamauchi and "Ichi" blades carry Hon'ami origami; the tachi in Honma's inventory descends from the Kujō regent house to Emperor Meiji; and the Itsukushima blade passed from Ōuchi Yoshitaka through Mōri Motonari to the shrine. As a group the goban-kaji blades stand as the surviving record of an imperial forge, read not through one style but through the divergent provincial hands the chrysanthemum gathered under a single crest. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Go-Toba-in後鳥羽院 | 1207-1211 | 10 |
Yamashiro in the Heian period
Yamashiro means Kyōto, and Heian Kyōto meant the court. Tradition places Sanjō Munechika at the head of the line in the late tenth century; his Mikazuki Munechika was later counted among the five great swords of Japan. Elegance led, because the patrons required it.
The NBTHK’s highest grade, reserved for the rare Jūyō blades of exceptional artistry, condition, and historical value, judged on par with a nationally designated Important Cultural Property (Jūyō Bunkazai).
Only 1,211 swords have ever reached Tokubetsu Jūyō, about 1 in 2,064 registered blades.
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.
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