Tametsugu is a smith of Bicchu working in the early period, and his name carries one of the celebrated objects of the whole tradition: the National Treasure known as Kitsunegasaki, transmitted in the Kikkawa family. He is the maker the published sources reach for when they describe the early Bicchu manner, the steel of the province before the main line settled into the look the later centuries made famous. The records place him close in time to the smiths of the same generation, the transmitting him as a son of Moritsugu active around the Jogen era, his extant work descending no later than the end of the period into the early . With - and the great mid- still ahead of him, he stands among the first hands whose blades let the school be recognized at all.
His recognized work is the slender signed , several still in their original tang with the two-character cut on the , high in with strong and a small or medium point, one keeping the kiji-momo tang of an old blade. The tell of the hand is the . Over an mixed with that stands a little and carries , the published sources find the speckled of the , patches of clear , and a quiet suggestion of . On more than one blade the description runs almost word for word, the forging becoming , mixed in, an impression of reflection across the surface, and it is this crepe-like, clear-steeled , rather than the temper, that the judges name as the school's mark on his blades.
Upon that the temper divides in two, and the division is the spine of his record. The earliest blade, the one the sources call the oldest of the group and the nearest to the Kitsunegasaki, wears a deliberately calm hand: a into which is mixed, entering, the on a companion piece overall subdued, the running straight to a above a tang filed in . The later group, set a little after the National Treasure because the signature is cut in larger characters, is broader in the body and more vigorous in the : a gathering , in one blade returning in places to a base with well in and the edge full of , , and , in a Jubi blade widening at the center into a large . The published commentary calls this manner forceful and full of spirit, and the there finishes not in a round but in .
The central question around him is one the sources refuse to close, and it is more interesting than any single feature. Examining the three Important Art Object together, the judges hold all three to be yet write that 'they cannot at once be declared the work of the same hand', that the oldest of them is the most archaic, and even of that one that 'it cannot be decisively identified with the celebrated National Treasure Kitsunegasaki Tametsugu'. The manner of the signature differs blade to blade; the workmanship shades from the quiet early to the later, showier . A later paper puts the matter plainly, 'Tametsugu was the son of Moritsugu, and several smiths bore the same name', and singles out one folded-back two-character signature for 'the strongly struck chisel that marks the signature'. Whether one smith changed across a working life or several smiths shared the name is left, in the institution's own words, to further study, which is exactly why the , signed pieces are prized as documentary material for the school.
What sets him apart he shares with no neighbour in quite the same combination. Against the plainer of the smiths of the same years, his is the with and a suggestion of ; against the flamboyant the main line would later make its signature, his earliest hand is a quiet . The published sources affirm his blades from precisely these two things, writing that 'the and clearly display the characteristic features of the group' and that 'the archaic manner of workmanship is not later than the early period'. He is read, in short, by the old Bicchu steel and the calm of the early edge, the school caught at its beginning.
For the collector he is, before anything else, the maker of a National Treasure, and that fixes the terms. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo . The Kitsunegasaki, the long held by the Kikkawa house and now in the Kikkawa Historical Museum, is patrimony preserved, not a thing that trades; the published sources call it a sword that predates Shoji 2. Beyond it his record is small and largely held: signed reaching the prewar and, in the modern era, three at , one passing through Iwasaki Koyata to the Seikado Bunko, one through Ninomiya Kojun to the Sano Art Museum, another formerly with Matsumoto Kenjiro. With a single locked National Treasure and only a handful of designated blades on record, a signed Tametsugu of recorded whereabouts is a rare thing to meet; one comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example would be, for a collector of early work, among the more memorable things to encounter, a document of how the Bicchu school began.
