Two courts, sixty years of war, and the most dramatic silhouettes in the sword’s history: broad blades, extended points, true ōdachi later cut down into the majestic katana collectors prize. The Sōshū manner was the style of the age.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatchAlthough in old togi condition, this is a sword with the finest jigane. A sword from approximately 600 years ago (late Nanbokucho period to around Oei) with a same-togidashi-saya. An old sword for the connoisseur. You can enjoy the moist, urumi-hada characteristic of koto and Hokkoku-mono. This beautiful urumi is only found in certain koto. No matter how much you polish a shinto or gendaito, with few exceptions, this urumi will not appear. The hardness of the ji and ha was perfected through the iron sand, forging, and quenching unique to the Hokkoku region of that time, and this urumi finally emerges through the art of the togishi's polishing and the final stage of nugui. On pieces with hard ji, even if kanahada-nugui is performed, this unique urumi does not appear; the expression remains hard, and the more you work it, the more the hada simply collapses. Whatever the reason, it is good steel! Please, take the actual object in your hands and enjoy it. The sword is waiting for you. About Uda The Uda school is a general term for the swordsmiths who moved from Uda-gun in Yamato province to Etchu province to make swords. With Kunimitsu in the late Kamakura period as the founder, smiths such as Kunifusa, Kunimune, and Tomohisa were active during the Nanbokucho period. However, among them, the vast majority of extant works are from the Oei to the late Muromachi period. Condition of the product *There are no hagire, hagarami, hakobore, bends, shinai, or fukure. There is no nioigire or kakedashi, but there is tsukare appropriate for its age, and there are areas with a kakedashi-kokoro feel. It has not reached kakedashi. *Please understand there may be dirt, fine scratches, deterioration, etc., due to age. Please refer to the photos. Regarding the koshirae: same-togidashi-saya; there are repair marks as it is used. The habaki is loose, but other than the tsuba and seppa, there is no rattling.
NihontoWatchOffered by Yazawa Shokai
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As written by the shop
Machine translation from the shop's Japanese · may contain errors ·
Wakimono · Etchu · around 1394-1428
Fujishiro Chu-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 18%
1 piece on the market now
Where Kunifusa 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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Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Wakimono · Etchu
Phase: Ko-Uda古宇多· 1310–1394
9 pieces on the market now
Ko-Uda (古宇多) names the founding stratum of the Uda school, the work that does not descend later than the Nanbokucho period and so stands before the long Muromachi continuation that the same studio names would carry. The setsumei place the origin in Yamato: around the Bunpo era at the close of Kamakura, the monk-smith Ko-nyudo Kunimitsu left Uda District in Yamato and settled at Utsu in Etchu, and from him the lineage took root. His sons Kunifusa and Kunimune are recorded, and across the Juyo and Jubi explanations the active founding hands are listed together as Kunifusa, Kunimune, and Kunitsugu, the generations that worked through the Nanbokucho period before the name-bearing successions ran down into late Muromachi. A signed Ko-nyudo Kunimitsu is hard to fix among several smiths who used the name; the Tokuju tachi is read as the founder precisely because it shows the most archaic character of the surviving examples, earlier even than the Kunifusa pieces taken for Nanbokucho. The early steel is the school read at its source. The forging is itame mixed with mokume and running nagare-hada that tends to stand (hada-dachi), ji-nie adhering with chikei, and over it a whitish shirake-utsuri or, on the founder's own work, a nie-utsuri; the jigane carries a blackish, golden-toned cast that the explanations call a northern-province feeling. The temper sits in narrow to chu-suguha, opening into ko-notare, ko-gunome, ko-midare, and togariba, with ko-ashi and yo and ko-nie well set; along the habuchi the Yamato signature of hotsure and kuichigai-ba appears, while kinsuji and sunagashi run through.
Against the later Uda generations, the Ko-Uda face is the purer one. The Tokuju founder is appraised as workmanship entirely like Yamato; the Hie Shrine and Kurokawa tachi by the shodai Kunifusa hold a tight, clear nioiguchi and a bright forging, and the nie in the best stands strong and rounded where the later hands run coarser and more provincial. A Soshu lean exists, traced to the study of Norishige and Go, yet in this phase the steel and nioiguchi keep returning the blade to Yamato roots rather than dissolving into them. To kantei a Ko-Uda blade is to catch the standing, whitish jigane with its masame tendency and utsuri beneath a suguha that might otherwise recall Yamashiro, and to bring a nie-rich, chikei-laden example home from Soshu by the dark steel and the subdued (shizumi) nioiguchi. The named early hands recur across the corpus: the shodai Kunifusa, fixed against dated pieces no earlier than Koo 1 (1389) and the calligraphy of the lattice-broken 国; the signed Ko-Uda Kunimitsu and Ko-Uda Tomonori of around Meitoku; and the rare Tomoshige and Tomonori, smiths of few survivals through whom the phase's reach is gauged. Because signed early work is uncommon, the phase leans on mumei attributions read off forging and temper, several entered as den Ko-nyudo Kunimitsu. Provenance settles into shrine and institutional holding, the Hie Shrine and Kurokawa Institute tachi serving as the calibrating standards against which other early Kunifusa are judged, and the dated examples valued as documentary footing for the study of how Yamato workmanship took its northern form. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunifusa國房 | 1368-1405 | 17 |
| Kunimitsu國光 | 1362-1368 | 9 |
| Tomonori友則 | 1390-1394 | 4 |
| Kunitsugu國次 | 1356-1361 | 1 |
| Kunimitsu國光 | 1317-1319 | 2 |
The Nanbokuchō period (1333 to 1392)
Two courts, sixty years of war, and the most dramatic silhouettes in the sword’s history: broad blades, extended points, true ōdachi later cut down into the majestic katana collectors prize. The Sōshū manner was the style of the age.
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 site