Ichimonji Shigehisa

Shigehisa is one of the earliest Bizen Ichimonji smiths, an Ichimonji hand of the early Kamakura period whose surviving work the published sources call few. His name sits across a line the swordbooks themselves are unwilling to draw. The Meikan carries Shigehisa in both the Ko-Bizen lineage and the early Ichimonji, and a Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi names him plainly as "Ko-Ichimonji Shigehisa of Bizen Province"; yet a Jūyō piece records that in the reference works he is treated as a Fukuoka Ichimonji smith "while the workmanship is rather that of Ko-Bizen, the period appraised as early Kamakura"1. The published sources go further and say that the matter cannot be settled by the signature, that "from the manner of signing alone it is difficult to decide at a glance whether a piece is Ko-Bizen or Ichimonji"2. To know Shigehisa is to read a smith who stands at the very root of the school, before its school-name had hardened into a manner.

His recognized work is the slender, two-character signed tachi. Most surviving examples have been shortened, yet they keep an old-fashioned early-Kamakura shape: a narrow body with a ko-kissaki, the koshizori running high and the curvature shallowed by the shortening, one Jūyō blade showing a clear taper from base to point. Over a ko-itame well packed, at times mixed with mokume, lies the feature the judges return to. A midare-utsuri stands distinctly above the jigane, and the published commentary on his Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi notes that on his steel the reflection "appears more clearly than on Ko-Bizen pieces"3. That clarity of utsuri, over so closely knit a forging, is what lifts him out of the plainer Ko-Bizen hands and toward the Ichimonji.

The temper is a quiet one, and it is the second half of his tell. It is not the towering clove-flower of the school's later prime but a suguha-toned ko-midare into which ko-chōji is mixed to a considerable degree, the published sources naming the ko-nie-deki ko-midare with its abundant ko-chōji as the very mark of Ko-Ichimonji. Ashi and yō enter well, the habuchi is deep in nioi with ko-nie laid along it, and on one Jūyō blade kinsuji and sunagashi run within the temper. The jigane itself carries thick ji-nie, and where the forging stands a little, mixing nagare-hada, the reflection only grows more visible. The bōshi runs straight to a small round. On one Jūyō tachi the chōji is held back so far that, in the judges' words, "the chōji does not stand out, and there is an antique flavour"4.

There is variety within the few blades, and the published sources read it carefully rather than smooth it over. The Jūyō Bijutsuhin pieces divide between a well-knit itame with thickly applied ji-nie and a ko-midare mixing chōji and sunagashi, and a broader-tempered tachi with a wide yakihaba and ko-chōji. The judgment of a single blade has moved between the two. When his best-known tachi was first designated Jūyō in 1958, the commentary, citing its rather bold signature and ko-nie-based archaic elegance, judged it probably a Ko-Bizen work; at Tokubetsu Jūyō in 1976 the same blade was designated as Ko-Ichimonji Shigehisa. The Ibaraki Jūyō tachi, with its standing midare-utsuri and restrained chōji, is read the other way: the reference works place him in the Fukuoka Ichimonji line, but the commentary finds its workmanship rather that of Ko-Bizen, of the early Kamakura period. One wide Jūyō Bijutsuhin tachi carries a carved bonji at the koshimoto, which the judge Honma calls exceptional: "the carving of a bonji is rare not only among Shigehisa's works but among Ichimonji blades generally"5.

What sets the Ko-Ichimonji Shigehisa apart from his neighbours is exactly what the judges name. From the plainer Ko-Bizen smiths he is divided by the brightness of his midare-utsuri and the gathering of ko-chōji on the edge; from the flamboyant mid-Kamakura Ichimonji of Norimune, Sukezane and Yoshifusa he is divided by the quietness of his hand, his suguha-toned small temper standing before the school's full flowering of full-size chōji. He keeps the flavour of Ko-Bizen in his shape and in his ji and ha alike, one of the early hands the swordbooks call Ko-Ichimonji beside Sukemune, Naomune, Munetada and the rest. He is a document of how the Ichimonji began, the quiet root from which the most brilliant of the Bizen traditions grew.

For the collector he is a rare early name held almost entirely outside the market. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, a tachi preserved at Hie Shrine in Tokyo, together with a Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi once held by Ikeda Nagamasa, a further Jūyō tachi, and two prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin pieces that passed through the Tokyo collector Itō Tarō and the Hyōgo collector Seto Yasutarō. One more signed tachi, outside the designation lists, is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The published sources call the extant works few, and signed Shigehisa tachi number no more than a handful in all. Only two fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, and those, like most designated blades, are held rather than traded. A signed Ko-Ichimonji Shigehisa comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a witness to the first generation of the Bizen Ichimonji.