The Masamune of Yotsuya. Minamoto Kiyomaro burned brief and brilliant — a Shinano farmer’s son who carried the Sōshū revival to its shinshintō peak in Edo, drowned his commission backlog in debt and sake, and died by his own hand at forty-two. His brother Masao and his students — Nobuhide, Masakatsu — carried the school past the end of the sword age itself.
Era
1830 — 1880
Members
10
Kokuhō
0
Jūbun
0
Jūbi
4
Tokujū
1
Jūyō
127
For Sale
15
10smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun4Jūbi1Tokujū127Jūyō
The Musashi Kiyomaro School (清麿) Lineage
The The Musashi Kiyomaro School (清麿), active 1830–1880 in Musashi Province across 10 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 0 Jūbun, 4 Jūbi, 1 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 127 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Musashi Kiyomaro School (清麿) · 1830 – 1880
Kiyomaro (清麿) — Mainline · 1839-1854. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Yamaura Kiyomaro was born Naizosuke Tamaki in Bunka 10 (1813) at Akaiwa village in Komoro, Shinshu, the second son of the rural warrior Nobukaze and the younger brother of the smith Saneo. He learned forging under Kawamura Toshitaka, a swordsmith of the Ueda domain, signing first Masayuki and for a brief interval Hidetoshi, the name his teacher gave him, before returning to Masayuki within the year. Under the patronage of the bakufu retainer and military scholar Kubota Kiyone he went up to Edo, forged for a year at Hagi in Choshu from the eighth month of Tenpo 13, returned to Edo in Koka 2, and in the autumn of Koka 3 settled at Iga-cho in Yotsuya and changed his signature to Kiyomaro. He so excelled in the Soshu tradition that the published sources record he was called the Yotsuya Masamune (四谷正宗), and they place his reputation today as high as that of Kotetsu, calling him without question the foremost master among the *shinshinto*. He died by his own hand at forty-two in Kaei 7 (1854).
What he aimed at, in the words of the published commentary, was the upper level of the Soshu transmission (相伝上位), and among *shinshinto* smiths his construction and manner reveal *Soshu-den* with particular clarity. The temper is a *gunome-midare* mixed with *ko-notare*, the *ashi* entering, the *nie* thick and gathering coarse in clusters of *ara-nie*, the whole work, as the NBTHK puts it, filled with a vigorous and commanding spirit[[c:1]]. Long *kinsuji* and streaming *sunagashi* run through most of his blades, in both the Masayuki and the Kiyomaro periods, the activity of a *ha* built on *nie*; the published sources single out this play of *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* in his strong steel as splendid. The *boshi* is *midare-komi*, turning pointed with *hakikake*, at times thrusting up to a point or settling into a small round.
He forges an *itame* that flows and stands a little, well packed and at times mixed with large open grain, the *ji-nie* laid thick and in fine particles, the *chikei* entering frequently and the steel clear. Where the forging tightens into *ko-itame* the *jigane* only grows clearer. His mature katana carry an imposing shape, the body wide, the *sori* toward the point, the *chu-kissaki* extended or running to a large point with the *fukura* withered for a sharp impression.
The record now reads in two periods and a favoured register. The early Masayuki work is substantial: some twenty-six blades of the period, signed Masayuki, Minamoto Masayuki, Yamaura Masayuki, Yamaura Tamaki Masayuki and the bare single character Tamaki, dated from Tenpo 4 to Koka 3, among them the Hagi pieces inscribed 於萩城 and 於長門国 and the Komoro pieces inscribed 於信小諸城. The earliest, a Tenpo 4 wakizashi bearing Kubota Kiyone's name, shows that the two men were already in contact during his Matsushiro years; the published sources note that its *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* are less abundant than in later work, though the *nioiguchi* is already bright. These blades carry a closely packed *itame* that often tends to *masame*, with a *gunome* mixed with *choji* and pointed elements, deep *nioi* and attaching *ko-nie*. The mature Kiyomaro manner is the Soshu prime described above. Within it lies the register he prized most: the published sources say that 「志津伝は得意中の得意」, the Shizu transmission his forte of fortes, and they already read it in the early hand, calling a small Tenpo 11 katana a masterpiece of the Shizu manner. That register gathers in the *shobu-zukuri* and *kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri* wakizashi he favoured and in the tanto, where a *ko-notare* base mixed with *gunome* and *choji*, with *ara-nie* in clusters, tempers into a flamboyant *midare*.
What sets him apart from his *shinshinto* contemporaries is this Soshu reach. He looked past the Bizen and Kotetsu copying of his day to the Soshu masters, taking Shizu Saburo Kaneuji as his model. His own steel and edge, thick in *ji-nie* and *chikei*, vigorous in *ara-nie*, rich in *kinsuji* and *sunagashi*, are what the judges praise: they call one blade the very best among works by the same hand[[c:2]], and say of others that his true ability is there fully revealed[[c:3]]. His Sai-jo saku rating in Fujishiro and the line named for him carry the Soshu-revival manner forward through his pupil Kiyondo and the wider Kiyomaro-den.
Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku, and the *Toko Taikan* places him high among *shinshinto* names. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs through the modern designation tiers, one blade at Tokubetsu Juyo and sixty-eight at Juyo, with four blades also recognised before the war as Juyo Bijutsuhin, seventy-three designated works on record, every one of them signed. The published sources estimate his extant work at something over one hundred blades, note that examples in ordinary *shinogi-zukuri* of standard dimensions are comparatively few, and call a matched *daisho* dated Kaei 1 without parallel. The recorded blades pass through documented hands: the Iwasaki family and the Seikado Bunko, a retainer of the Matsushiro domain who ordered a *daisho*, his patron Kubota Kiyone, Makino Suo-no-kami Yasushige, and the Bakumatsu swordsman Chujo Kinnosuke, whose favoured sword one Juyo katana is said to have been. Most are held rather than traded, so a Tokubetsu Juyo or Juyo Kiyomaro reaches the market only from time to time and at the very top of it, and a signed example in private hands is among the more notable things a collector of *shinshinto* could encounter.
Nobuhide (信秀) — Mainline · 1857-1867. Jūyō. Kurihara Kenji Nobuhide was born at Sanjō in Echigo and began life as a maker of metal mirrors, turning to the sword only around Kaei 3 when he entered the Edo workshop of Yamaura Kiyomaro at Yotsuya. Of the master's pupils he is the one the published sources place nearest the source: examining a blade made before he took his title, the NBTHK writes that 'his technique was, among the members of that school, the closest to approaching the level of his master'[[c:1]]. He received the honorary title Chikuzen no Kami in the fifth month of Keiō 1, lived three years at Osaka, returned to Edo, and after the Haitōrei went home to Echigo and forged only a little until his death in Meiji 13. He signed Nobuhide, often Taira Nobuhide and, after the title, Kurihara Chikuzen no Kami Taira Nobuhide. With Kiyondo he is one of the two hands who carried the Kaei-era Sōshū revival of the Yotsuya Masamune into the Bakumatsu and early Meiji.
What he aimed at is his teacher's manner, and within it the Shizu vein Kiyomaro favoured most. The published commentary states plainly that his workmanship 'resembles his teacher and excels in the Shizu tradition'[[c:2]]. The temper is a *gunome-midare* into which he sets *togariba* and an angular *kaku-gunome*, a *chōji* feeling entering and at times mixing in, with *ashi* and *yō* well in. The activity is that of a deep *nie* edge: *ko-nie* adheres well, *sunagashi* streams through, and long *kinsuji* enter frequently, the *nioiguchi* bright and clear. The *bōshi* runs *midare-komi* and turns with a pointed tendency, often with *hakikake*, sometimes thrusting up to a small round. On a wide *hira-zukuri* wakizashi the judges read exactly this hand at full strength, 'a work full of commanding spirit, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* operating repeatedly, giving a powerful impression'[[c:3]].
The *jigane* is where his closeness to Kiyomaro tells most. Over an *itame* that flows and stands a little, at times mixed with *masame* and *mokume*, he lays a thick *ji-nie* with *chikei* entering frequently, the steel clear. There is no *utsuri*: this is a *shinshintō* hand reaching back to Sōshū through Shizu, not a Bizen one, and the brightness lives in the *nie* of *ji* and *ha* rather than in any reflection. His swords are imposing in shape, wide in body, the *kasane* often thin and the *sori* shallow, the *kissaki* extended or run to an *ō-kissaki*, several with a *sakizori* tendency. Set against this strength the published sources are candid about the limit of the inheritance: his spirit and forcefulness, they note more than once, do not reach his master's, even as the deftness of the work is beyond question.
His own tell, the feature that is his alone in the school, is the carving. The mirror-maker's training gave him a hand for metal that the others lacked, and the NBTHK records that within the Yamaura line 'there are no blades but his that bear carvings'[[c:4]]. The motifs are diverse and distinctively his: a grass-style *kurikara*, a jewel-chasing dragon, a dragon-riding Kannon, Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto and mountain cherry at the *koshimoto*, *bonji* and *suken* beneath *futasuji-hi* and *bō-hi*. From Meiji 1, after study with the metal-artist Kanō Natsuo, his carving changes markedly into a shallow, low-relief manner. The form that accompanies the carving is the *katakiriba-zukuri*, which the published sources note is not uncommonly encountered among his swords, alongside the wide *hira-zukuri sunobi* wakizashi. Carving was so much the point of his work that on one entirely uncarved katana the judges turn the absence into praise: with no *horimono* to occupy the eye, they write, the blade is 'all the more such that it could be mistaken for his teacher Kiyomaro'[[c:5]].
What separates him from his teacher is named in the commentary itself, and it is a matter of degree, not of kind. He works the same flowing *itame* with thick *ji-nie* and *chikei*, the same *gunome-midare* deep in *nie* with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, the same pointed *bōshi*; but where Kiyomaro's hand is read as overwhelming in spirit, Nobuhide's is read as the most skillful approach to it, the closest the school came. Among the Kiyomaro pupils his is the carved hand, the Osaka and Echigo wandering hand, the one whose blades can be dated and placed by their signatures and titles. He is therefore the open, knowable face of a school whose founder is the more mythologized for his short and violent life.
For the collector he is an attainable Kiyomaro-school name of real quality. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work highly among *shinshintō* smiths. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the Jūyō Tōken rank, where something over thirty of his signed katana, wakizashi and naginata are designated. His provenance is grounded and historically resonant rather than broad: one *katakiriba* wakizashi of Keiō 1, the published sources record, 'was presented to Shogun Yoshinobu'[[c:6]], and a blade is preserved at the Hachiman shrine of his native Sanjō in Echigo. Most designated blades are held rather than traded, and only a small share fall in the tradeable tier, so a signed Nobuhide reaches the market only from time to time. When one does, it is among the most rewarding ways a collector can hold the Kiyomaro Sōshū manner, signed, dated, and often carried by his own carving.
Kiyondo (清人) — Mainline · 1848-1868. Jūyō. Saito Ichiro Kiyondo was born in Bunsei 10 (1827) at Oizumi-sho in the Shonai district of Dewa, the present Atsumi Onsen, into a family said to have kept a hot-spring inn, and in the fourth month of Ka'ei 5 (1852) he went up to Edo, where an introduction by the Shonai-born metalworker Funada Ikkin brought him into the school of Minamoto Kiyomaro. The training lasted only a little more than two years before Kiyomaro took his own life in the eleventh month of Ka'ei 7 (1854), yet the published sources stress that in that short span he learned well and faithfully carried on his teacher's manner. What raised his name beyond the workshop was an act outside the forge: he afterward settled the sword debts his master had left behind, and that episode became the one most often told of him. He set up independently at Kanda Ogawa-cho, received the court title Buzen no Kami in the seventh month of Keio 3 (1867), and when the government prohibited the wearing of swords in Meiji 3 (1870) he gave up the craft and returned home to keep the family inn, dying there in Meiji 34 (1901) at the age of seventy-five. He stands as the most accomplished of Kiyomaro's pupils and the chief carrier of that manner into the final years of the shinshinto.
The hand by which he is known is the one inherited from his master, a vigorous gunome-midare that is the Soshu revival held at full strength. The shape carries it: a wide body with little taper from base to tip, the shinogi-haba narrow for the breadth, little hiraniku, a greatly extended o-kissaki whose fukura is allowed to wither, grand and forceful, what the published record calls the form particular to the Kiyomaro line. Over it the temper is built on a round-headed gunome as its main theme, intermixing gunome, ko-gunome, angular and slightly pointed teeth and gunome-choji-flavored elements, the ashi entering long and vigorously. Thick nie gathers, in places coarse and uneven, and through the whole run long and conspicuous kinsuji, nie-suji and sunagashi, with yubashiri-like tobiyaki drifting into the shinogi-ji. The boshi turns in with the midare, the point pointed and brushed with strong hakikake, at times returning in a jizo-like sweep. It is a manner with appetite to it, and the sources describe one such blade as a powerful work of gunome-midare carrying forward the master's tradition.
The jigane beneath that edge is an itame mixed with mokume and a flowing nagare-hada, standing in places so that the surface takes on a faintly hadamono character, over which the ji-nie attaches thickly, sometimes coarse and gathering unevenly, and chikei enter frequently. The nioiguchi runs deep and is for the most part bright, though on his boldest pieces it can sink toward a subdued tone where the tempering grows assertive and rough in the lower half. The temper sits high on the blade overall, the long ashi sometimes broken by yo, here and there a rounded shima-ba where the hardening seems to drop out, with hotsure and yubashiri-like nijuba along the habuchi. The whole reads as nie-laden Soshu work pushed toward flamboyance rather than restraint, the activity the published sources say stands out all the more the bolder the piece becomes.
Against that inherited mode the sources set a second and quite different manner that they call his own and absent from Kiyomaro, 「清人独特の大和伝の直刃」, a suguha aligned with the Yamato tradition. Here the forging tightens to a well-packed ko-itame, at times running to a masame-leaning grain, the ji-nie fine and the jigane clear, with chikei intermixed; the temper is a suguha, or a suguha-base carrying a slight gunome with small choji ko-ashi well in, the ko-nie adhering and the nioiguchi tight and bright, the boshi straight to a ko-maru with hakikake at the tip. Of the first of his blades to be designated Juyo the published sources write that 「この作は清磨の作風とは別に直刃を焼いて地刃の出来が殊に優れている」, that here, apart from Kiyomaro's manner, he has tempered a suguha and the quality of both ji and ha is particularly superior. The Keio 3 katana he forged at Kyoto while traveling up for his appointment, taken by the sources to be 「豊前守を冠した第一作と思われる」, probably his first work bearing the Buzen no Kami title, is in this same Yamato suguha. The two manners together are the model by which he is read, the showy midare and the quiet suguha, with the Kiyomaro lineage shape carried across both.
What distinguishes him is best read through his own work rather than by contrast with his master, for the relation is one of fidelity rather than departure. The midare blades keep the round-headed gunome, the long ashi, the abundant nie and the long kinsuji and sunagashi that are Kiyomaro's, and the sources measure his success by how nearly he reaches that standard: of one orderly piece they write that the tempering is more even than usual, the nie steadier, the activity within the ha richer, a result approaching the master and 「師清麿に迫る出来映えで、清人会心の一口」, a work of his own fulfillment. The Yamato suguha is the manner he holds alone, never worked by Kiyomaro, and it is there that the sources find both ji and ha at their most refined in his hand. His tells, then, are the round-headed gunome-midare with its conspicuous kinsuji and sunagashi on the one side and the bright Yamato suguha on the other, set within the broad-bodied, large-pointed Kiyomaro silhouette.
The record on which all of this rests is, for a smith of his standing, narrow and uniform: ten blades on record, every one designated Juyo Token, every one signed and in original ubu form, several dated, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them and no earlier provenance on their tangs. Fujishiro grades him Jo-saku. The sources reserve their highest words for the Keio 3 katana dated immediately after his title, which they call 「師清麿に比肩する出来映えを示した清人の相州伝の最高傑作」, the supreme masterpiece in the Soshu-den manner that demonstrates a level rivaling Kiyomaro himself. Rarer still in interest is the katana whose tang bears the sacred name Iwai Obahari, the Ame no Ohabari of the Kojiki, and a long chiseled text recording that Kiyomaro had vowed to forge a sacred sword for his friend Saito Tomomaro but died before fulfilling it, so that Kiyondo, entrusted with the unfulfilled intention, forged this blade from the very materials his master had amassed. Because every recorded Kiyondo is a signed, designated work in private hands rather than museum patrimony, his blades reach the market more readily than those of a Kamakura master, yet they are few and held closely; a dated signed example comes to a collector only from time to time, and a piece carrying an inscription such as the Obahari sword would be a landmark whenever it appeared.
Masao (真雄) — Mainline · 1844-1866. Jūyō. Yamaura Masao (山浦真雄) was born in Bunka 1 (1804) at Akaiwa village in the Komoro district of Shinano, the eldest son of the country gentry-warrior (gōshi) Yamaura Nobukaze (山浦信風), and his younger brother was Minamoto Kiyomaro (清麿), the most celebrated swordsmith of the late Edo Sōshū revival. His personal name was Noboru (昇). In Bunsei 12 (1829), in his twenties, he entered together with Kiyomaro the school of the Ueda-domain smith Kawamura Toshitaka (河村寿隆), and from that shared apprenticeship the two brothers set out on the same path. He signed first as Kanri (完利) and Jushō (寿昌), then took the names Masao (正雄) and Masao (真雄), and in his late years changed his signature again to Toshinaga (寿長); during his Jushō period he used the art-name Tennenshi (天然子), and across the long span of his Masao years the art-names Yūshaken (遊射軒) and others. He lived to an advanced age and died in Meiji 7 (1874) at seventy-one. The published sources fix his development in a single recurring sentence, that his manner, like Kiyomaro's, 「作風は清麿と同じく、寿隆風の丁子に始まって相州伝に転じている」, beginning with chōji in the style of Toshitaka and then turning to Sōshū-den.
It is the Sōshū-den manner of his maturity that the published record calls his favored field, his 得意の相州伝, and it is the work on which his designations rest. Over an itame jigane he tempers a gunome mixed with notare and ko-notare, richly covered in nie with coarse ara-nie at times, the ashi and yō entering, and across it the sunagashi and kinsuji run with force; sunagashi appears in nearly all of his recorded blades and the kinsuji follow it in the Sōshū way. The bōshi turns back in a midare-komi with a pointed tendency, at times a ko-maru, and where the work is at its boldest the point shows vigorous hakikake. A residual chōji flavor from the early manner persists into these later blades as a faint admixture, 僅かに丁子風の刃交じり, so that the two phases are never wholly separate but shade one into the other.
The jigane is an itame that takes thick ji-nie throughout and draws chikei, at times piling into mokume and ō-itame and tending to flow into nagare-hada toward the shinogi. The published commentary measures him candidly against his brother on exactly this point, observing that 「清麿に較べて地には地景が刃中には砂流し・金筋が少なく出来が及ばない」, that his chikei in the ji and his sunagashi and kinsuji within the hardened area are fewer than Kiyomaro's and the overall quality does not reach his brother's level. Yet on his best blades the same activities gather in strength: of one late katana the sources say 「金筋・砂流しの働きも同工の作としては常以上に豊富であり」, that the kinsuji and sunagashi are richer than usual even for this maker, and that 「地景を頻りに交えて地沸の厚くついた強い鍛えがよく」, the chikei frequently interwoven and the ji-nie thickly gathered into a strong forging.
His two manners answer the development the sources describe, and they answer also to the form of the blade. The early phase is the Toshitaka chōji, a chōji-midare mixed with gunome over an itame with plentiful ji-nie, the nioiguchi bright and clear with ko-nie, the bōshi running midare-komi to ko-maru; of one such katana the sources write 「この刀は真雄の本領が発揮された一口であり、鍛えが非常によい」, that here his true strengths are fully brought forth and the forging is exceptionally good. The mature Sōshū-den is the field of his wakizashi as much as his katana, and a characteristic vehicle for it is the shōbu-zukuri wakizashi with a withered, sharpened fukura (fukura). Of one such blade the published account remarks that 「これは同工によく見られる姿であり」, that this is a form frequently seen in his work, and that 「ふくらの枯れた姿にも同工の特徴がよく表われている」, the characteristic traits of the smith clearly manifest even in that faded silhouette. His signatures track the same biography the texts recite, the long inscriptions running from the Masao readings through the formal 山浦昇源正雄 of his commissioned pieces.
Masao's place is settled by his brother and by their shared teacher. He stands at the head of the Yamaura household and at the senior edge of the Kiyomaro circle, the elder who took the same instruction and walked the same course from Toshitaka's chōji into the Sōshū revival, and the sources weigh the two brothers as a matter of course, marking where his ji and ha fall short of Kiyomaro's while crediting the strong, nie-laden forging that is his own. His distinction is carried by his own grounded traits rather than by the comparison: the thick ji-nie and frequent chikei of his itame, the forceful sunagashi and kinsuji of his Sōshū temper, and the pointed midare-komi bōshi that recurs across his work. Where a blade is wide in the mihaba and carries an ō-kissaki, the sources call the construction bold and heroic and the whole 「極めて覇気にみちた作である」, a work filled with an exceptionally forceful spirit.
For the collector, Masao is a late Shinshintō name whose record runs through the Jūyō tier rather than the higher designations; his blades hold no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property standing, and the seven on record are Jūyō-Tōken. The provenance that survives is modest and personal, the commissions of the Shinano gentry he served, a katana of Ka'ei 2 (1849) forged for Aoki Yasuei (青木安栄) among them, the sources noting plainly that 「この刀は青木安栄のために作刀したもの」 and judging its ji and ha especially outstanding among his works. As the elder brother of Kiyomaro, whose own blades are rare and closely held, Masao offers a way into the Yamaura workshop and the Sōshū revival that comes to market from time to time rather than never; a signed Jūyō wakizashi or katana of his appears with patience, and a strong example, well covered in nie with the kinsuji and sunagashi at full strength, is a substantial acquisition for a collector of the bakumatsu masters.
Masanao (正直) — Mainline · 1865-1868. Jūyō. Smith of the Musashi Kiyomaro School.
Masatoshi (正俊) — Mainline · 1860-1862. Jūyō. Smith of the Musashi Kiyomaro School.
Other smiths
Masao (正雄) — Mainline · 1844-1857. Yamaura Masao was born in Bunka 1 (1804) in Akaiwa village, Komoro, Shinano Province, the eldest son of the rural samurai Yamaura Nobukaze and elder brother of the celebrated Kiyomaro. Together with Kiyomaro, he studied under the Ueda domain smith Kawamura Toshitaka, signing early works as Kanri and Toshimasa before adopting the name Masao, then Shin'o, and finally Toshinaga in his later years. He used art names including "Tennenshi," "Yushaken," and "Yuunsai," and died in Meiji 7 (1874) at seventy-one.
His stylistic trajectory followed that of his brother: beginning with *choji* in the manner of Toshitaka, then shifting decisively toward *Soshu-den*. The setsumei consistently note a forging of *itame-hada* with thick *ji-nie* and conspicuous *chikei*, and a tempering of *gunome* mixed with *ko-notare*, richly laden with *nie*, *kinsuji*, and *sunagashi*. His finest katana (Juyo, 58th Session) is described as possessing "a powerful forging -- thick with *ji-nie* and heavily interwoven with *chikei*" in which "*kinsuji* and *sunagashi* activities are richer than usual even for this maker's work." Yet the NBTHK observes that "in comparison with Kiyomaro, his work tends to show fewer *chikei* in the *ji* and fewer *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* within the hardened area, and the overall quality does not reach Kiyomaro's level."
Despite this candid assessment, Masao's designated works demonstrate a smith of real accomplishment, particularly in the *Soshu-den* mode where *nie* is vigorously expressed and his *shobuzukuri* wakizashi display the sharp *fukura-kare* profile he favored. His output spans both katana of bold construction and wakizashi of refined character, and his commissions from named patrons attest to the regard in which he was held during the *shinshinto* era.
Yoshinobu (義信) — Mainline · 1864-1865. Smith of the Musashi Kiyomaro School.
Hidetoshi (秀寿) — Mainline · 1834. Smith of the Musashi Kiyomaro School.
Nobuchika (信親) — Mainline · 1864-1865. Smith of the Musashi Kiyomaro School.