Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatchNBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon en-suite Koshirae Hirado Kunishige Hamon : Ko-Nie deki suguha with a bright, consistent nioi-guchi. Gentle notare is mixed in and there are nezumi ashi. Boshi : Togari with a long kaeri. Nie hataraki can be seen in the kaeri. Kitae : Itame hada with ji-nie. Slightly hadatachi. Masame is mixed in along the mune. About this sword : A fine and powerful wakizashi by Bizen no Kami Ujifusa. He is a well regared smith. Ranked as Wazamono by the Yamada family of sword testers, Chu Jo Saku by Fujishiro and 3.5 million yen in the Toko Taikan. Bizen-no-Kami Ujifusa was the heir of Hida no Kami Ujifusa. He was born in Kiyosu in 1595. He was first known by the childhood name Isechiyo and later took the name Chojiro. In 1621, at the age of 27, he received the title of Bizen-no-Kami and began signing blades as Bizen no Kami Fujiwara Ujifusa. He exclusively served as a retained craftsman for Tokugawa Yoshinao, the lord of Owari. In 1631, at the age of 37, he succeeded his father as the head of the family. In the spring of 1634, he retired at the age of 40 and adopted the signature, "Bizen-no-Kami Ujifusa Nyudo". He passed away on October 25, 1666 (Kanbun 6) at the age of 72. This blade was made betweeen 1621 and 1634. The koshirae that accompanies this sword is a gorgeous example of Hirado‑school work. The tsuba, kozuka, and fuchi are signed "Hirado Ju Kunishige". We can see that each mei shows different tagane mannerisms and strokes. Wakayama lists two Kunishige of the Hirado school. They were both ranked as Ryoko (the 4th level) by Wakayama and are highly regarded artists. This koshirae presents a delightful endeavor for a deep dive into the mei of the two generations. The theme is that of dragons, and the Hirado pieces are done in brass. The menuki are shakudo of a food bowl with chopsticks. The bowls are a unique reddish‑orange color with gold details. The kozuka blade is signed "Kaga Jiro Fujiwara Morimichi". The saya is black ishime-ji and in great condition, with some small marks to the urushi. Overall, this is a beautiful koshirae and a well-preserved example of Hirado work. This sword is in full polish and there are no kizu. It is not easy to find Tokubetsu Hozon level work that still has its Edo period koshirae, and this one is easy to recommed. A zaimei tanto by Bizen no Kami Ujifusa with a fine Hirado Kunishige koshirae en-suite. Gold foil habaki, tsunagi, shirasaya, storage bags and with a NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon paper.
Offered by Nihontocraft
130 on the market
Mino-den · Mino
130 pieces on the market now
Seki (関), in Mino Province, grew from two roots set down in the Nanbokuchō period and rose to become the great center of mass sword production in the late medieval age. The published sources trace the wellspring of Mino swordmaking to Kinju (whose name the commentary also reads Kaneshige), counted since antiquity among the Masamune Jittetsu, the ten disciples of Sōshū Masamune, and to Kaneuji of the Shizu line; the Kokon Meizukushi records Kinju as a native of Tsuruga in Echizen who "crossed over to Seki and resided there," carrying the Sōshū-den manner east. Beneath that Sagami inheritance lay a Yamato foundation, legible in the Tegai descent of the Seki Zensada line through Kaneyoshi, so that the Mino-den the Seki workshops forged stands as a fusion of Yamato grain and Sōshū activity in nie. From this Nanbokuchō founding the name multiplied across the Muromachi period into Sue-Seki, the last and largest body of the tradition; its representative masters at the close of the old-sword age were Magoroku Kanemoto, famed for the sanbonsugi, and Izumi no Kami Kanesada, the smith called Nosada, while the Kanefusa, Ujifusa and Daidō hands worked beside them and the move of Wakasa no Kami Ujifusa to Kiyosu carried the Mino body to the threshold of Owari shintō. A common Mino vocabulary binds the Seki body, however widely its members range. The forging is an itame that stands and runs to masame, often mixed with mokume and nagare, over which rises the cool whitish shirake-utsuri of Mino steel rather than the bright midare-utsuri of Bizen; this pale, standing jigane is the constant tell the judges read first, present alike on Kinju's Nanbokuchō katana, Kaneyoshi's Ōei tachi and Nosada's late-Muromachi blades. Over it the smiths temper gunome into which the pointed togariba of Mino enters, with ko-nie clinging to a tight nioiguchi, ashi and yō, and sunagashi streaming through; the bōshi answers in midare-komi turning to a pointed or jizō-cast ko-maru swept with hakikake. From this shared grammar the individual hands diverge.
Kanemoto fixed the regular three-cedar sanbonsugi of pointed teeth; Kanefusa devised the rounded-head, constricted-waist "Kanefusa midare"; Kinju and the early founders held a calmer, rounder gunome away from the restless Shizu line, their work laid with thicker ji-nie and dry, standing grain. The late masters carried the manner to a higher finish: Nosada wove togariba among rounder forms for a broader temper than Kanemoto's one-sided file, and turned at times to a slender Rai-styled suguha with a hidden gunome; Kaneyoshi held instead to a cool ito-suguha, the disciplined Yamato face of late Seki, lightly broken with ko-gunome. A collector seeks Seki because it is the connoisseur's ground for reading Mino-den across a vast body of signed and attributed work. The kantei runs through the jigane first: the standing, masame-leaning itame and the whitish shirake separate a Seki blade from Bizen and Yamashiro, after which the pointed togariba, the dry nie, and the pointed or jizō bōshi confirm the province; the discriminations the judges draw, Kinju held apart from Shizu by his rounder gunome, Nosada parted from Kanemoto by his breadth, give the eye its anchors. Within the school the standing of the best members is settled: Magoroku Kanemoto for the sanbonsugi, Nosada whom the swordbooks call simply "an excellent master" and the most accomplished of the several Kanesada hands, and the early Kinju as a rare and precious founding name, his record running through the Jūyō tier with the signed pieces few and the long blades attributed den. Signature works carry real provenance: a Kinju tantō presented to the Tokugawa shogunal house in 1679, a Nosada katana borne by a chief retainer of the Kii Tokugawa and a tachi forged for the father of Takeda Shingen, a Kaneyoshi tachi transmitted in the Chikuzen Kuroda family. Beyond connoisseurship, Seki's blades earned a battlefield reputation for cutting; the full hiraniku and stout build of the Sue-Seki katana, made to sever, set the wazamono standing that made Mino the working sword of its age. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kinju金重 | 1340-1346 | 42 |
| Kaneyuki金行 | 1350-1352 | 10 |
| Kanekore兼之 | 1504-1555 | 7 |
| Kanenori兼法 | 1579-1615 | 5 |
| Nagasada永貞 | 1862-1866 | 5 |
The Edo period (1615 to 1868)
Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
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 site3 day inspection period on all sales. Items can be returned for any reason for a full refund, less return shipping cost. Returned items must be in the same condition as when purchased.
$5,700