Yamato carried west. On the iron-rich coast of Bingo — a forging country since the tenth century — the Mihara smiths worked the great Kinai temple estates and absorbed the Yamato tradition, then bent it to a quieter key. Across two phases, from the Ko-Mihara masters Masaie and Masahiro through the long Sue-Mihara continuation, the line forged a restrained suguha over standing mokume grain and the whitish shirake-utsuri that became its signature — a tradition of the centre, transplanted and made its own.
Era
1288 — 1596
Members
77
Kokuhō
0
Jūbun
1
Jūbi
16
Tokujū
7
Jūyō
100
For Sale
10
Phase 01
古三原Ko-Mihara1288 – 1393
26smiths0Kokuhō1Jūbun16Jūbi7Tokujū91Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Phase 02
末三原Sue-Mihara1394 – 1596
51smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi0Tokujū9Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Sub-schools— branch houses of the Bingo Mihara School
Branch五阿弥Goami13 smiths
Branch法華Hokkefrom 正家10 smiths
The Bingo Mihara School (三原) Lineage
The The Bingo Mihara School (三原), active 1288–1596 in Bingo Province across 77 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 1 Jūbun, 16 Jūbi, 7 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 100 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ko-Mihara (古三原) · 1288 – 1393
Ko-Mihara (古三原) opens the Mihara story at its Bingo base, where a body of smiths gathered from the close of the Kamakura period and through the Nanbokuchō era. The setsumei treat the term as a chronological bracket rather than a separate workshop: works of this span are "collectively termed Ko-Mihara," with Masaie and Masahiro repeatedly named as the leading figures, and Masahiro held by tradition to be Masaie's son. The province's web of *shōen* estates tied to Kinai temples such as Tōji and Rengeō-in (Sanjūsangendō) drew the early smiths into regular contact with the central provinces, and the *Yamato-den* temperament that the records read in these blades is referred to that exchange. A second current runs alongside it: because some pieces show an Aoe manner, the appraisals also weigh influence from neighbouring Bitchū, as the Chikatsugu *tachi* of Shōhei 7 (1352) makes plain, sitting on the seam between Yamato bearing and Aoe surface.
In the *ji*, the early hand keeps an *itame*-tending ground that takes on *mokume*, *nagare*, and a *masame*-like flow, with the grain inclined to stand (*hada-dachi*) and fine *ji-nie* set densely across it; a pale *shirake-utsuri* recurs as the most cited diagnostic, though the Masaie *ōdachi* of around Jōji instead shows a darkish steel with a *midare-utsuri*-like cast. The temper holds to a refined *chū-suguha* with *ko-ashi* and *yō*, the *nioiguchi* drawn tight or *shizumi*, the *habuchi* breaking into *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba*, *uchi-noke*, and a *nijūba* suggestion, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* threading through. The *bōshi* runs *sugu*, closing in *yakizume*, *ko-maru*, or *maru* with *hakikake* at the tip. The records keep these early works the cleaner pole of the school: a quiet, controlled Yamato manner whose forging shows "not the slightest looseness," set against the coarser, looser later Sue-Mihara of the closing Muromachi, where the disciplined *suguha* and tight ground give way.
For kantei, the early phase reads as Yamato bearing without Yamato vigour: the *nie* of *ji* and *ha* runs weaker than in the Nara schools proper, the steel turns whitish, and the *nioiguchi* tightens, so a bright clean *suguha* with pointed *bōshi* can be mistaken at a glance for Aoe until the broad *shinogi-ji*, high *shinogi*, standing *mokume*, and *hotsure* with *kuichigai-ba* declare Mihara. Masaie and Masahiro divide on *sugata*: Masaie is the man of the bold *ō-kissaki* and the *ōdachi*, while Masahiro keeps ordinary *chū-kissaki* proportions and a freer, *midare-gokoro* edge with deeper *kaeri*, as in the Meibutsu Ō-Mihara cited by name. Because Yamato habit left few signed Mihara works, the early phase rests heavily on *mumei* and *kinzogan* attributions, several of them given to Masaie by Hon'ami Kōtoku, while dated and signed survivors stay scarce and so carry weight as reference material. Provenance threads through the great houses, the signed Masaie *tachi* presented to Emperor Meiji by the Shimazu family and another Masaie transmitted in the Date.
Masahiro (正廣) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. At the second Tokubetsu Juyo session, in 1973, the NBTHK designated a suriage tachi signed Bishu ju Masahiro (備州住正広), recording it as the blade of this name whose ji and ha are of the finest workmanship (地刃の出来が最も優れ). Masahiro of Mihara in Bingo province stands with Masaie as one of the two representative smiths of Ko-Mihara, the collective name for the school's work from the end of Kamakura through Nanbokucho. "Masahiro is traditionally regarded as a son of Ko-Mihara Masaie" (正広は古三原正家の子と伝えられている), in other texts a pupil, yet the same sources repeatedly invert the chronology: "judged from the workmanship, Masahiro reads older in style than Masaie" (作刀上からは正家よりも正広の方が古調である), several signed tachi being appraised as late Kamakura work. The name itself is collective. The signature references list six smiths called Masahiro in Bingo, the recorded dates opening in Joji 3 (1364) and running through Shitoku, Kakei and Oei, and "the Oei work is regarded as a second generation" (応永は二代とみられている). Extant dated blades are rare, only Shitoku and Oei examples being known, and the NBTHK treats the name collectively, several generations under one attribution.
His manner is Yamato carried into Bingo steel. Bingo held many estates of the central temples, Toji and the Rengeoin among them, and the published sources read the Mihara style as the product of that exchange: suguha-based work over a flowing itame. The same sources separate him from Yamato proper in one recurring formula: "compared with works from Yamato proper, the nie of ji and ha is as a rule weaker, the forging stands out in moku, the whitish utsuri is conspicuous, the hamon is a suguha whose nioiguchi tends to tightness, and the boshi turns back gently in a rounded manner" (大和本国のものに比べては、地刃の沸が弱いのが通例で、鍛えが杢立ち、白け映りが目立ち、刃文は匂口が締まりごころの直刃で、帽子も穏やかに丸く返る). A pale shirake-utsuri rises in the ji on nearly half of his recorded works; his boshi runs straight to a gentle ko-maru return, often with hakikake, never to the yakizume that defines the Yamato schools; and his itame flows and stands without resolving into their full masame.
In detail the forging is itame mixed with moku and nagare-hada, standing in places, with very fine ji-nie, chikei entering finely, and patches of jifu. Over it the hamon is a medium suguha or suguha-cho mixed with ko-gunome and ko-midare, with ko-ashi and yo entering well; the habuchi frays into hotsure, kinsuji and sunagashi work through the ha, and the nioiguchi stays tight or subdued with thick ko-nie rather than bright heavy nie. The work divides into two registers. The signed tachi, mostly suriage though several keep their ubu nakago, carry the mei in large slender-chisel characters: the first generation signs invariably Bishu ju (備州住) and never Bingo no kuni ju, beside rarer three-character mei reading Masahiro saku (正広作) and two-character mei. The sanji-mei pieces read oldest; one tachi has its nakago recorded in the Ojakusho (往昔抄), the Muromachi compendium of sword rubbings. Beside them stands the o-suriage mumei register, katana attributed by kiwame, several settled by kinzogan attribution inscriptions rather than signatures; the Nanbokucho examples run wide in mihaba with o-kissaki, one of them "originally a tachi of nearly three shaku" (もとは三尺に近い太刀であった).
Within the one suguha discipline distinct strains stand out. The tachi dated Shitoku 1 (1384), a 79.6 cm blade with its nagamei intact, keeps the suguha-cho base but takes nie throughout, yubashiri running hard along the upper half into niju and sanju-ba effects, and is singled out as "showing, within his oeuvre, a manner strong in the nie of ji and ha" (同作中にあって地刃の沸の強い作風を示している); a later designation links a sanji-mei tachi of the Nanbokucho end to it by the same yubashiri and nijuba. The Oei work, read as the second generation, leans toward the neighbors. The tachi dated Oei 6 (1399) shows "a manner that could at first sight be mistaken for the Rai school of Yamashiro" (一見山城国来派の作に見紛う作風), only the slight saki-zori betraying the period. The katana dated Oei 22 (1415), the one blade in the record signed Bingo no kuni ju Masahiro (備後国住正広), goes the other way toward Bitchu Aoe: a slanting lean enters the midare of its suguha, a midare-utsuri stands in the ji with jifu, and "the boshi burns its return deeply downward in waterfall fashion, the so-called Mihara-boshi" (帽子は返りを滝落し風に深く焼下げる所謂三原帽子となっている). A sun-nobi tanto of the same years lines up round-topped ko-gunome that the sources liken to the Hokke Kaneyasu (法華兼安) of the same province. The Aoe adjacency is old: the Muromachi treatise Shinkan Hidensho already wrote that the school's face "resembles a Bitchu tachi" (面ぶり備中太刀に似たり).
Against Masaie, the school's other master, the record draws the kantei line through the ha. In Honma Junji's adjudication, "Masaie's hamon is almost invariably an orderly suguha, while Masahiro more often shows pieces with a degree of midare feeling and many activities within the ha" (正家の刃文は殆ど整然たる直刃であるが、正広には多少乱ごころのもの、刃中の働きが多いものが多く), the boshi likewise not uniformly round but at times tending to midare or nie-kuzure. The sugata divides the two as well: "Masaie has many works with o-kissaki, while Masahiro shows comparatively many with a moderate kissaki" (正家に大鋒の作品が多いのに対し、正広には比較的鋒の尋常な作が多く見受けられる). The school's stream runs to the end of Muromachi, and the deep-returning boshi of his kiwame side is anchored by its celebrated blade, the meibutsu O-Mihara (名物大三原), a kinzogan-mei katana designated Important Cultural Property, invoked for the strikingly deep turnback seen within his work.
Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku. The official record carries thirty-seven designated works: one Important Cultural Property, the meibutsu O-Mihara itself, three Tokubetsu Juyo, twenty-five Juyo and eight Juyo Bijutsuhin, twenty-six of them signed against seven mumei, with four more carrying kinzogan attribution inscriptions. Seven blades hold recorded provenance, among them a Jubi tachi whose cut signature reads Bingo ju Masa (備後住正), passed from Prince Konoe Fumimaro to the Yomei Bunko, Kyoto, and another held by Asano Kii no Kami. The Important Cultural Property is patrimony, permanently held; recorded institutional holders are the Tokyo National Museum, the Tsukamoto Museum and the Yomei Bunko, the rest in private hands. For the collector the realistic field is the twenty-eight blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers: not beyond reach in the way the great Soshu and Bizen names are, but coming to market only from time to time. The signed tachi with the slender-chisel nagamei carry the chronology of the school; of one such the NBTHK closes its notice praising not only the work but the unforced, gentle character of the signature itself (屈託のない穏やかな銘字も魅力である).
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1353-1375. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Masaie of Mihara in Bingo Province is, with Masahiro, one of the two foremost smiths of Ko-Mihara, the term the published sources give to the group that worked at Mihara from the end of the Kamakura period through Nanbokucho. Tradition makes him the head of the school, its founder, and Masahiro his son. The published record qualifies that tradition from the blades themselves: signed Masahiro reads the more archaic of the two, and the name is not a single hand. Honma observed that "neither Masaie nor Masahiro existed only as a single-generation lineage" (正家、正広ともに一代限りではない), so the dated work, falling between Bunna and Enbun of the mid Nanbokucho, is gathered under the one name without splitting the generations. The longest of the surviving pieces is an ubu odachi over a meter, held by Yasukuni Shrine, signed only with the two characters 正家 high on an unshortened tang.
The hand the published descriptions assign to him is Yamato cast in Bingo steel. Over a flowing, standing itame the temper is a chu-suguha, narrow and quiet, mixing in ko-gunome, a slight ko-midare tendency and a little ko-notare, with ko-ashi and yo entering and the habuchi finely frayed into hotsure, kuichigai-ba and a niju-ba effect. What separates the school from Yamato proper, the sources state plainly, is that "compared with the work of the Yamato homeland the nie of ji and ha is weaker" (大和本国のものに比べては、地刃の沸が弱い); the steel tends whitish, the nioiguchi tightens, and the boshi turns gently rather than running out. Against this restrained manner the published record sets Masaie apart from Masahiro by scale: "in general Masahiro's works have many ordinary pieces with chu-kissaki, whereas Masaie has many bold examples with o-kissaki" (一般に、正広の作品には中鋒の尋常なものが多いのに対し、正家には豪壮な大鋒の作例が多い). The bold point is his signature, and a wide blade closing in a great kissaki is the first thing the judges read toward him.
The jigane is itame, flowing toward the ha and standing across the surface, with conspicuous moku entering and, near the edge, a tendency to lean masame. Fine ji-nie gathers and chikei run through it. The defining feature of the jigane is a pale shirake-utsuri, a whitish reflection that rises in over half the surviving blades and stands out most on the o-suriage mumei pieces, the steel sometimes reading dark and kana-colored beneath it. The boshi runs sugu to a gentle ko-maru, often brushed with hakikake and returning long, and it burns yakizume on only the rarest piece. On his finest work the temper does not stay subdued: of the Tokubetsu Juyo katana the published sources single out that "the bright, clear nioiguchi is a point worthy of special note" (匂口が明るく冴えている点が特筆される), where the suguha rises sharp over the whitened ji.
The corpus divides into two registers of the one manner. On one side are the signed and ubu blades, the tachi, odachi and naginata-naoshi, cut with a small-chisel long signature, 備州住正家作 or 備後国住右衛門尉正家作, and on the rarer of these a date of Bunna, Joji or Enbun. The published record prizes these dated pieces: signed Mihara work is scarce, owing to the Yamato discipline of the school, and "signed work is few, and a piece bearing a date like the present one is also a rare thing" (在銘作は少なく、且つ本作の如く年紀を有することも珍しい), so the surviving nengo blades are valued as historical material on the school. On the other side stand the o-suriage mumei katana, settled onto the name by later connoisseurs, several by gold inlay; one such bears the kinzogan attribution of Hon'ami Kotoku, the appraiser's hand recorded in the Edo compendia. A second, recurrent face leans toward neighboring Bitchu: a chu-suguha burning bright and clear over black-tinged steel with a midare-utsuri standing in the ji, the boshi pointing and returning deep, so that "at a glance it could be mistaken for Aoe" (一見すると青江に紛れる). The sources name the two pulls on the school, the Yamato manner carried in through the temple estates and the Aoe-like cast of the adjacent province.
What overrides the Aoe resemblance and gives the work back to Mihara is the Yamato temperament the judges name in detail: the high shinogi and broad shinogi-ji, the conspicuous moku and flowing grain standing across the ji, and the hotsure and kuichigai-ba along the habuchi. On the bright o-suriage Tokubetsu Juyo katana the published commentary states that here "the points of recognition for Ko-Mihara are displayed" (ここに古三原の見どころが表示されている), and then narrows the attribution within the school: "among the school the workmanship of ji and ha is superior, and with the o-kissaki form it is reasonable to appraise it, narrowing in particular, as Masaie" (同派の中でも地刃の出来が優れ、且つ大鋒の形状から、特に絞って正家と鑑するのが妥当である). The bold point and the superior ji are the two criteria on which a Ko-Mihara kiwame is settled onto Masaie himself, where the moderate point reads Masahiro. The school's stream runs on from Ko-Mihara through Mihara and Kai-Mihara down to the Sue-Mihara of late Muromachi, where the Masaie name is cut again in Bingo.
Masaie is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading. The weight of designation behind the name lies not in the highest national tiers, of which he holds none, but in a substantial Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo record: three blades at Tokubetsu Juyo and twenty-one at Juyo, twenty-four in the two tiers together, with a further handful recognized Juyo Bijutsuhin in the prewar rounds. The longest odachi, over a meter and preserved unshortened, drew the highest praise the published record gives him: for so long a blade "the forging shows not the slightest looseness, and the high level of forging skill is apparent" (これほどの長寸でありながらも鍛えに些かも緩みがなく、鍛錬技量の高さが窺え), a piece the judges call this smith's most distinguished work. The provenance recorded against his blades carries the great holders, the Tokugawa, the Date and the Shimazu families and the Imperial House among them; of recorded whereabouts two are institutional, the Yasukuni Shrine odachi and a blade in the Tokugawa Art Museum. None of his work sits in the highest national tiers that never trade, so a Masaie is not wholly beyond reach in the way a top Kamakura name is; but most of the designated blades, signed and unsigned alike, are held rather than traded, and a dated, signed example, scarce to begin with, is among the rarer things a collector of Bingo work could hope to encounter, coming forward only from time to time and with patience.
Sukekuni (助國) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Jūbi, Jūyō. Sukekuni is the Kokubunji-group smith of Bingo Province, his career fixed by a run of dated blades that carry the eras Tokuji, Genko, Karyaku, Gentoku and Kenmu, placing him from the close of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho years. His is one of the standing province problems of the kantei room. Because even his long signatures cut the province only as Bishu (備州), and the Edo-period swordbooks read that single character as Bizen, he was transmitted for centuries as a Bizen Kokubunji smith, and the *Kokon Meizukushi* named him the founder of the Hokke lineage. The published sources now correct this to Bingo for three reasons: late-Kamakura and Nanbokucho Bingo work customarily cut the province as Bishu, with *Bingo no kuni* appearing only from the Muromachi period; the *Koto Meizukushi Taizen* records his residence at Anna Tojo, and the Bingo Kokubunji stood in that Anna district; and the genealogies set this Kokubunji line apart from the Mihara group. The recognition of his hand rests not on shape but on the *ji* and *ha*, for his construction stays orthodox, without the broad *shinogi-ji* and high *shinogi* by which old Mihara announces itself.
His hand is best read as one smith working in three registers that the published sources name again and again. The first and most characteristic is a *suguha* or fine *hoso-suguha* carrying a strong Yamato temperament, and the commentary states it plainly, that 'his style, like that of Mihara works, possesses a Yamato temperament' (その作風は三原物などと同じく大和気質がある). Over an *itame* that flows and tends to *masame*, the grain standing, with *ji-nie* adhering and a whitish *shirake-utsuri* rising, he tempers a narrow *suguha* whose *habuchi* frequently frays into *hotsure*, with *ko-ashi* and *yo* entering, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* running, and *ko-nie* well laid. The *masame-gakari* of his steel is the tell that ties him to Mihara and holds him apart from the pure *itame* of mainstream Bizen, and a reverse inclination, the *saka-gokoro* that slants his *gunome* and *ashi* toward the base, runs through the temper from his earliest dated work.
The *jigane* is where his two traditions meet. Across the Mihara-toned pieces the steel is an *itame* flowing to *masame*, the grain raised, with *ji-nie* and the whitish *utsuri* of Bingo; but on the Bizen-leaning blades the *ji* throws up a mottled, *jifu*-like *utsuri* that the published sources liken to the Unrui group, 'work in a *suguha* manner with a *jifu* reflection that calls to mind the Unrui of Bizen' (備前の雲類を想わせるような地斑映りの立つ直刃仕立ての出来). That *jifu-utsuri* is the single Bizen trait that distinguishes him within the Yamato-influenced Bingo schools. The *boshi* runs straight to a *ko-maru* or finishes in a *yakizume*-toned sweep with *hakikake*, and on the *ji* the published sources find a steel of somewhat dark tone, with *chikei* entering on the better-forged examples.
The third register the commentary names is a somewhat more decorative *midare*, a feature it notes is scarcely seen in old Mihara. Into the *suguha* base he mixes *ko-choji*, *gunome*, angular and pointed elements, widening in places to a *ko-midare*, the whole running *saka-gokoro* with *saka-ashi*, *ashi* and *yo* frequent, *ko-nie* well laid and *yubashiri* appearing, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* within the *ha*. The dated works anchor these registers in time: the Genko 3 *ubu* tachi of 1323 shows the Mihara-toned *suguha* at its clearest, while the rare Karyaku 2 tanto of 1327 carries the same hand at small scale. The published sources read the more animated tachi against the school directly, observing that this mixing of many kinds of teeth into a *suguha* base 'corresponds closely to the Gentoku-dated tachi' and is 'a stylistic mode showing a *midare-ba* scarcely encountered in Ko-Mihara'.
What sets him apart from his neighbours is exactly what the judges name. He stands within the Yamato-influenced Bingo orbit beside the old Mihara smiths, sharing their *suguha* and standing *masame*, yet held apart from them by the more decorative *midare* and by the *jifu*-like *utsuri* recalling Bizen Unrui. The published sources describe his working domain as one 'in which Bizen-*den* and Yamato-*den* are intermingled' (備前伝と大和伝が混在した作域), with the characteristics of Kokubunji Sukekuni shown in both *ji* and *ha*, and for that reason they affirm his many *o-suriage mumei* attributions. Even where a *suguha* piece at first glance recalls Ko-Mihara, the commentary takes care to note that the construction differs, being orthodox rather than the broad-*shinogi* Mihara shape; of one such katana it concludes that its appearance, which 'at first glance recalls old Mihara, expresses one facet of Sukekuni's style' (一見古三原を思わせる出来は助国の一作風を示したもの).
For the collector Sukekuni is a name encountered seldom and held with care. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the Juyo tier, where twenty of his blades are designated, and through the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, which holds three more, among them the Gentoku 1 tachi and a Karyaku 2 tanto. Signed works are extremely few, most of them tachi, and the published sources call surviving tanto by this smith exceedingly rare, 'examples by this maker in tanto form being exceedingly rare' (同工の短刀での遺例は稀有), so a dated piece is prized as research material. His blades have passed through long-held private collections rather than museums: the Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi were held by Saito Makoto and by Takashima Tatsunosuke, and the orikaeshi-mei tachi by Okajima Kichiro, while one Juyo Bijutsuhin blade is recorded as having been 'presented as a memento among the belongings of Ito Hirobumi' (伊藤博文公の遺物として贈られたものという). Held mostly in private hands and seldom traded, a signed and dated Kokubunji Sukekuni comes to light only from time to time, a quiet but well-documented witness to the Yamato-influenced swordmaking of late-Kamakura Bingo.
Chikatsugu (親次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Tokujū. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Kaneyasu (兼安) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. The oldest fixed point in Kaneyasu's record is a small hira-zukuri wakizashi signed Bishu-ju Kaneyasu (備州住兼安) and dated the third month of Ōan 2, that is 1369, the signature cut in five characters down the center of the omote and the date on the reverse. He was a swordsmith of Bingo, of the Hokke Ichijo group that worked in Ashida district, and the published commentary derives the line from the Kokon Meizukushi Taizen (古今銘尽大全), which holds that it belongs to a body of Ashida work standing apart from the better-known Mihara tradition and traces its founding to Sukekuni. That distinction is the first thing to understand about him. He is not, despite the directory label, a Mihara smith proper but a member of the neighboring Hokke line, repeatedly set against Mihara in the very texts that designate his blades; the group was active from the Nanbokucho era into the Muromachi period, and alongside Ichijo, Yukiyoshi, Shigeyasu, Shigeie and Nobukane, Kaneyasu stands among its leading hands, named directly after the founder-figure Ichijo in the roll of survivors.
His hand is the school's hand, and it is a quiet one. Over an itame that flows toward masame along the edge, with mokume worked in here and there, he tempers a low, gentle straight temper, a chu- or hoso-suguha that at times carries the faintest notare and runs alongside a linked string of small gunome. The temper is nioi-dominant with ko-nie gathered along it, the nioiguchi tight and inclined to sink rather than to glow, with fine ashi and yo entering and hotsure breaking the habuchi in places. The published sources put the school manner plainly as a low, calm suguha, or a suguha-toned pattern accompanied by a continuous run of ko-gunome, and Kaneyasu's blades hold to that base almost without exception. He is a smith read not by any flamboyant flourish but by the restraint and evenness of a straight edge that never works itself up into a midare, the small gunome a recurring punctuation along an otherwise still line.
The ji is where his school marks itself most clearly. The itame stands rather than lying flat, the grain visibly raised (肌立ち), and the steel takes on a whitish cast over which a faint shirake-utsuri rises (白け映り), the iron tone running somewhat dark; on the broader katana ji-nie forms and thick chikei enter the standing grain. This pale, slightly adhesive jigane, with flowing hada turning to masame and a frequent yakizume close to the boshi, is what the judges have in mind when they call the work of the line one in which a Yamato temperament can be discerned, summarizing the school as forging itame mixed with flowing grain whose boshi may be finished as yakizume, in which 「帽子は焼詰めることもあるなど、大和気質の窺えるもの」. The boshi itself is read in two forms that the school keeps in parallel: one that runs straight to a yakizume finish, the Yamato tell, and one whose point grows pointed and turns back long, and a given blade is placed in part by which of the two it shows.
Kaneyasu's surviving work falls cleanly into two registers, and the rarer of them is the one signed. The ubu signed pieces are confined to hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi and tanto, wide in the body and thin in the kasane, bearing the Bishu-ju Kaneyasu signature and Ōan dates; they are exceedingly few, the commentary noting that 「兼安有銘の作は経眼したものは僅かに五指を掘するに過ぎず」, no more than can be counted on one hand. One such Ōan 2 wakizashi is praised for showing 「典型的な作風を示して、銘振りも極めてよい」, a typical manner with an exceptionally fine cutting of the signature, and a single signed tachi is called 「すこぶる珍らしく貴重」, exceedingly rare and valuable, since a tachi-form signature from this hand is almost unheard of. The far larger register is the o-suriage mumei katana of grand Nanbokucho shape, shinogi-zukuri with the shinogi tending high, wide-bodied with an o-kissaki or chu-kissaki, attributed den Hokke Kaneyasu. It is on these unsigned, greatly shortened blades that his name now chiefly rests, the attribution resting on the standing whitish itame, the shirake-utsuri and the quiet suguha mixed with ko-gunome that he and his school share. The sword-signature compendia, working from the dated signed pieces, variously assign his activity to Enbun (延文), Shitoku and Oei, but the Ōan dates on his own blades fix him securely within the Nanbokucho passage.
What sets him apart is best stated through his own traits rather than against another school's. One o-suriage mumei katana is described as one that 「一見備中青江物に似た作風を示している」, resembling Bitchu Aoe work at first glance, yet it is kept for Kaneyasu by the elevated shinogi of its construction and a forging that mixes in large mokume, the judges naming these the features that mark it as his. The lesson is the school's whole identity in miniature: a pale, standing, Yamato-tempered straight-temper hand that can be mistaken for its Bitchu and Bingo neighbors and is separated from them by particulars of ji and construction, not by drama of temper. His suguha-cho over a whitish, masame-tending jigane, with the yakizume boshi, is the manner the Hokke line carries from Nanbokucho into Muromachi, and the Yamato character read in that boshi and that grain is precisely the trait that the texts use to hold the Ashida line apart from the Mihara work to which it is forever being compared.
Kaneyasu is a connoisseur's name rather than a collector's quarry, and the record is honest about its scale. The Fujishiro appraisal places him at Chu-jo saku, and his blades on the official record number a dozen, every one of them at the Important Sword tier; there are no National Treasures, no Important Cultural Properties and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them, and the designation record carries no recorded denrai or named former owners to roll out. What this offers a collector is a clear and attainable thing rather than a famous one. A signed Kaneyasu, an ubu hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi or tanto with the five-character mei and an Ōan date, is among the scarcer encounters, the survivors counted on one hand and a signed tachi rarer still. The o-suriage mumei katana attributed to him are the more findable face of his work, several of them designated and praised as 「同派極めの優品」, excellent representative pieces of the school in which the standing pale ji and the quiet, sinking suguha are well shown. These reach the market only from time to time, and when one does it offers the patient student of the koto schools a sound and characteristic example of a Bingo Yamato-influenced hand, the kind of grounded, undramatic blade on which a careful kantei is built rather than a famous signature acquired.
Shigeyasu (重安) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Jūyō. Shigeyasu signed his blades Bishu-ju Shigeyasu (備州住重安), a five-character residence inscription that the published sources read as Bingo Province, and the few of his works that carry a date fall within a narrow span of the Nanbokucho period: a wakizashi of Joji 2 (1363), a naginata-naoshi katana of Oan 2 (1369), and another dated piece of Oan 6 (1373). He is one of the Bingo wakimono of the fourteenth century, placed by the earlier designations among the Mihara hands and by the fuller commentaries among the smiths of the Hokke Ichijo line, and his name belongs to a small group whose surviving signed work is so scarce that each dated blade is treated as documentary material. The published sources note plainly that 現存する有銘の作は極めて少ない, extant signed works by him are extremely few, and it is on that handful of pieces that his hand has to be read.
His characteristic manner is a fine, low, gentle suguha, a hoso-suguha (細直刃) carrying slight ko-ashi and a tight nioiguchi with ko-nie, the temper held deliberately quiet and shallow rather than worked into display. Set beneath it is the feature that most distinguishes his work, an itame that flows strongly toward masame and tends to stand a little (流れ肌, 柾がか), over which a whitish reflection rises, the shirake-utsuri (白け映り) of Bingo steel. The published sources gather these into a portrait of the school's temperament, describing a jigane forged of itame mixed with flowing nagare-hada (流れ肌) that raises a whitish cast and a somewhat sticky surface, a low and gentle suguha, and a boshi that finishes yakizume, and they read in the whole a 大和気質, a Yamato-derived temperament carried in Bingo work. On one tanto the resemblance is close enough that the judges remark it is 手掻物などにも粉れるような出来, workmanship that at first glance might be confused with a Tegai piece, before they settle it with the Ko-Mihara hand.
The jigane on which all of this rests is an itame, at times tightened to ko-itame and at times opened with o-itame (大板目) and mokume, the grain flowing toward the edge and tending to masame, with ji-nie (地沸) gathering and, on the more robust blades, fine chikei and a jifu-like patchiness; the steel can take on a slightly blackish tone, and over it stands the whitish shirake reflection that marks the Bingo jigane. The boshi answers the quiet temper below, running straight into a ko-maru (小丸) or, on the naginata-naoshi, sweeping into a yakizume (焼詰) turn, with on one tachi a faintly pointed return. The construction is of its period: hira-zukuri tanto and wakizashi of slightly elongated, sun-nobi (寸延び) proportions, wide in the mihaba and thin in the kasane, the sori shallow, a large-bodied shape that the published sources read as the period character of the middle Nanbokucho. Carving appears as gomabashi (護摩箸) cut on both faces of one wakizashi, and on the naginata-naoshi a naginata-bi (薙刀樋) finished maru-dome with long companion grooves.
Because the record holds only a small number of blades, all of them signed and all designated at the Juyo level, his work is read less through datable phases than through two manners on one Bingo jigane. The first and prevailing one is the calm hoso-suguha just described, the typical hand of the Hokke and Mihara smiths. The second, seen at its fullest on the latest of the dated pieces, tempers a mixed gunome, round-headed gunome (頭の丸い互の目) and ko-gunome with a little ko-notare, the crests tending to align, ashi entering and nie adhering well; along the habuchi run hotsure (ほつれ) and uchinoke (打のけ) that pass at places into a nijuba (二重刃) appearance, with kinsuji and sunagashi (砂流し) frequent and the nioiguchi sinking. That broader, more active face shows that the same hand could work beyond the restrained suguha when the blade called for it.
What sets Shigeyasu apart is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast: his is the quiet, low suguha of a Bingo wakimono smith, read in the flowing masame-tinged itame and the standing shirake reflection, and closed at the point by a ko-maru or a yakizume turn. The school placement is itself a matter of record, for the published sources, following the Kokon Meizukushi, present the Bingo Hokke Ichijo line as a genealogy distinct from the Mihara tradition, give its founder as Sukekuni, and name Ichijo, Kaneyasu, Shigeyasu, Shigeie and Nobukane among its smiths, while the earlier Juyo papers had read Shigeyasu as a Mihara or Ko-Mihara hand. A late wakizashi signed with the character 康 in place of 安, Bishu-ju Shigeyasu (備州住重康), has no entry in the standard reference works, and the judges assign it to the same Hokke tradition by its residence inscription and its Bingo workmanship, an adjacent name within the one austere school.
Shigeyasu is an uncommon name on the designated record. Five of his blades are held at Juyo Token, every one of them signed, with none rising to the Tokubetsu Juyo level or the higher designation tiers, and no provenance of named owners is recorded among them. These signed Juyo pieces are the only ones a private collector could realistically hope to encounter, and with so few in existence one appears only rarely and as a notable event rather than a regular offering; a dated, signed blade by him, filling as it does a gap the reference works leave open, is sought as much for its documentary value as for its quality. The judges' own summations give the measure of that value. Of the Mihara tachi the published sources say the workmanship in both ji and ha 三原派の特色をよく示しており, clearly displays the characteristic features of the Mihara school; of the Joji-dated wakizashi they call it a piece of high documentary value that plainly expresses the features of Bingo work; and of the Oan 2 naginata-naoshi they note that it conveys a 渋い味わい, a subdued and austere flavor, and that the latest of the dated pieces serves as 銘鑑の欠を補う好資料, useful material that helps make good the lack of documentation in the reference works. A signed blade by Shigeyasu offers, in a single scarce Bingo hand, the quiet Yamato-tinged suguha of the Hokke line set over a flowing, shirake-lit jigane.
Other smiths
Masanobu (正信) — Mainline · 1390-1394. The fixed point in Masanobu's record is a tachi signed Bishu Masanobu and dated Meitoku 5, that is 1394, the long signature cut in fine chisel strokes on the omote and the date carried on the reverse. He was a swordsmith of the Ko-Mihara school in Bingo Province, working at the close of the Nanbokucho period, and a second blade carries the still earlier date of Eiwa 2 (1376), the two dated pieces fixing his activity within the final decades of that age. The published commentary counts him, together with Masaie and Masahiro, among the representative hands of Ko-Mihara, and names him with Masamune of the same group as one of the smiths in whom 「正宗・正信等はその最後を飾る刀工であろう」, those who adorned the finale of the line. The Mihara group arose at the end of the Kamakura period and flourished down to the close of the Muromachi period, and the work of its late-Kamakura-through-Nanbokucho phase is collectively called Ko-Mihara; the strong Yamato temperament of that work is explained by exchange with the Yamato heartland through the many estates of its great temples and shrines, Toji and Rengeo-in among them, that lay within Bingo.
His hand is the school's hand, and it is a quiet one. Over an itame mixed with mokume and flowing nagare-hada that stands rather than lies flat and runs toward masame along the edge, he tempers a low, gentle straight temper, a suguha or naka-suguha that here and there carries a shallow notare and mixes in small ko-gunome and slight ko-midare rather than working itself up into a true midare. Along the habuchi run hotsure, kuichigai-ba and futae-ha, the doubled temper line, with small ashi entering and fine kinsuji and sunagashi threading through; ko-nie gathers on the line, and the nioiguchi is tight and inclined to sink rather than to glow, though on the best blades it brightens and clears. The published sources are candid that the temper is subdued in feeling, yet they hold that 「直刃の出来も地味ながら同派の持前をよく示して」, that the suguha, plain as it is, displays the inherent traits of the school well, and that the workmanship is sound throughout. He is a smith read by the restraint and evenness of a straight edge, the small gunome a recurring punctuation along an otherwise still line.
The ji is where the school marks itself most plainly. The itame stands, the grain visibly raised, and the steel takes on a bluish-black tone over which a whitish shirake-utsuri rises; fine ji-nie adheres, jifu and chikei-like dark lines enter the standing grain, and patchy texture gathers in places. This pale, standing jigane, with the flowing hada turning to masame and the gentle, rounded boshi that runs straight with hakikake to a ko-maru or an o-maru return, is what the judges have in mind when they read a Yamato temperament throughout Mihara work. They put the school manner plainly: compared with Yamato proper the nie of both ji and ha is generally weaker, the mokume stands out and the grain rises, the shirake-utsuri is conspicuous, the nioiguchi inclines to tighten and the boshi turns back in a calm, rounded form. Masanobu's blades hold to that base almost without exception, the bluish-black steel deeply tasteful and the tight-nioiguchi suguha bright and clear on his finest piece.
His surviving work falls into two registers, and the rarer of them is the one signed. The signed pieces are ubu or only lightly shortened tachi cut with a long Bishu Masanobu signature and an Eiwa or Meitoku date, and they are exceedingly few; signed Masanobu, and especially signed-and-dated examples, were thought from old times to have almost no precedent, so much so that among the Edo-period sword reference books one records 「この太刀のみを載せている」, this tachi alone. One such piece is the unusual shobu-zukuri construction, which the published sources grant is encountered from time to time in a Mihara so strongly touched by Yamato. The larger register is the suriage or orikaeshi-mei blade, shinogi-zukuri with the shinogi tending high, on which the folded-back three-character signature or the bare attribution carries his name; it is on these that his work is most often met, and the standing whitish itame, the shirake-utsuri and the futae-ha that he and his school share are what hold them for him. The sword-signature compendia, working from the dated pieces, place his activity in the Eiwa and Meitoku years, securing him within the Nanbokucho passage.
What sets him apart is best stated through his own traits rather than against another school. The published commentary, citing the Shinkan Hidensho that Mihara appearance 「面ぶり備中太刀に似たり」, resembles Bitchu tachi, grants that some of his blades read at first glance like the neighboring Aoe work; yet it keeps them for Mihara, finding that 「鎬高の造り込みや地に現われた白け映り、また刃中の二重刃・喰違刃等に一派の特色を見出し得る」, that in the high-shinogi construction, the shirake-utsuri risen in the ji, and the futae-ha and kuichigai-ba within the ha the characteristics of the line can be discerned. The futae-ha is itself a school habit rather than a personal flourish, for the records note that Masanobu has other extant examples showing it and that his fellow Mihara smiths Masaie and Masahiro work in the same manner. The same texts that praise his blades are honest about his individuality: in his work, they say, 「地刃に同工の特色と云うよりも同派の特色が濃く」, the characteristics of the school are stronger in both ji and ha than any distinctly personal style, so that he is recognized first as a Ko-Mihara hand and only then as Masanobu.
Masanobu is a connoisseur's name rather than a collector's quarry, and the record is honest about its scale. The Toko Taikan values him at a middling figure, and his blades on the official record number four, every one of them at the Important Sword tier; there are no National Treasures, no Important Cultural Properties and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them. What survives carries provenance of the first order: the Meitoku 5 tachi descended in the Maeda house of the Kaga million-koku domain, its mid-Edo black lacquered uchigatana mounting still attached, and the kodachi was transmitted in the Ii house, lords of the Hikone domain, the published sources calling it 「現存稀な古三原正信の在銘作として資料的にも貴重である」, a rare extant signed work by Ko-Mihara Masanobu, precious as documentary material. Most designated blades of this rank are held rather than traded, and a signed and dated Masanobu, of which only a handful survive, reaches the market very rarely indeed; the suriage and orikaeshi-mei pieces are the more findable face of his work, and one appears from time to time, offering the student of the koto schools a sound, characteristic example of a Bingo Yamato-influenced hand, the kind of grounded blade on which a careful kantei is built.
Kageshige (景重) — Mainline · 1375-1381. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masakiyo (政清) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (正宗) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Shigeyoshi (重吉) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tomoshige (共重) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Ariyoshi (有吉) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Masaie (正家) stands alongside Masahiro as one of the two foremost representatives of the Ko-Mihara school, the group of swordsmiths that flourished in Mihara of Bingo Province from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho period. Because this region contained many estates (*shoen*) belonging to major shrines and temples of the Kinai heartland, frequent exchange with Yamato fostered a pronounced Yamato temperament in Mihara workmanship. At the same time, certain works display an Aoe-like manner, suggesting influence from smiths of neighboring Bitchu Province. Dated examples bearing the Teiji and Sadaji era inscriptions indicate that successive generations worked under this name, with the lineage traceable to the end of the Kamakura period around the Karyaku and Tokuji eras.
Masaie's forging typically shows *itame-hada* with areas of *mokume* mixed in, tending toward *hada-dachi*; *ji-nie* and *chikei* appear frequently, while the steel takes on a somewhat dark, iron-colored tone with a *midare-utsuri*-like effect. His *hamon* is characteristically a *chu-suguha* tempered in *nie-deki*, with *ashi* entering well, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* appearing within the tempered area. A slight *hotsure*-like aspect along the *habuchi* and the presence of *yubashiri* clearly display the Yamato-tradition traits absorbed by this school. The *boshi* is rendered *sugu*-cho with *hakikake*, turning in *komaru* with a long return. Where Masahiro's works often have ordinary proportions with *chu-kissaki*, Masaie is frequently seen in examples of bold construction culminating in a large *kissaki*.
Masaie's oeuvre encompasses forms ranging from *hira-zukuri* wakizashi to powerfully built *odachi* of exceptional length that embody the characteristic Nanbokucho period aesthetic. Even in blades of great dimension, his forging shows not the slightest looseness, from which his high level of skill can be inferred. His straight *hamon* is executed without any breakdown, and the internal activity observable within the tempered area constitutes qualities well worth savoring. Signed works by Masaie are comparatively rare among surviving examples, and blades that preserve their *ubu* nakago hold exceptionally high documentary value for understanding both this smith's individual manner and the original form of Nanbokucho-era swords.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1306-1308. Masaie (正家) is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Mihara school of Bingo Province and one of the representative figures of the group known as Ko-Mihara, which flourished from the end of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho period. According to *meikan* and other reference works on smith lineages, Masaie was active around the Showa (1312--1317) or Shochu (1324--1326) eras, and his line continued down into the Muromachi period. Within the Ko-Mihara group, Masaie stands alongside Masahiro as the school's most distinguished name. Works of the Mihara school display pronounced Yamato character, belonging firmly to the *Yamato-den* tradition centered in Bingo Province. An Imperial Collection tachi bearing his signature has been described as representing the highest level of Ko-Mihara craftsmanship, with even Masahiro having scarcely any work of such caliber.
The distinguishing traits of Masaie's work may be seen in several key technical features. The *jigane* typically shows *ko-itame-hada* tightly forged, with fine *ji-nie* adhering and a characteristic whitish *utsuri* appearing in the ground metal---a hallmark of Ko-Mihara production. The *hamon* favors *chu-suguha*, sometimes with a slight admixture of small *gunome*, tempered in a *nioi*-based manner with the *nioiguchi* tending toward tightness and *ko-nie* present along the border. Fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* frequently appear within the tempered zone. Whereas many works by Masahiro are of *chu-kissaki*, Masaie is often encountered in examples with a bold and imposing *o-kissaki*, lending his blades a particularly powerful *sugata*.
Signed works by Masaie of early date are extremely rare, making authenticated examples of considerable scholarly value. His blades consistently demonstrate sound preservation, with both *ji* and *ha* described as notably *kenzen* in official evaluations. Among blades attributed to Ko-Mihara, his work is singled out as especially superior, and those examples bearing the large *kissaki* and characteristic *boshi* make the attribution to Masaie fully persuasive. His contribution to the founding of one of Bingo Province's most important sword-making traditions secures his place among the significant smiths of the late Kamakura period.
Masakiyo (正清) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (政宗) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1390-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nagakane (長包) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobuhiro (延廣) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Noritada (則忠) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Shigemitsu (重光) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Suetsugu (李次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tatsubo (辰房) — Mainline · 1389-1390. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tsugusada (次貞) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Phase 2 · Sue-Mihara (末三原) · 1394 – 1596
Where Ko-Mihara closes at the end of the Nanbokuchō period, Sue-Mihara takes up the Bingo tradition through the Muromachi era. The setsumei place the later production in the same Mihara orbit but spread across several named hands and affiliated branches: Kai Mihara Masamori, whose Muromachi katana often carry the long "Mihara-jū Kai ___" signature; and the closely tied Hokke Ichijō line, whose founder Ichijō is traditionally called a son of Mihara Masaie and whose generations continued from the Ōei era into the late Muromachi. Within that affiliated group the corpus names Nobukane, Yoshitsugu, and the joint-signing Ichijō Morie and Ichijō Moriyuki, working at Kusado (Kusado Sengen) in Bingo. Several setsumei stress that the Hokke Ichijō reckoning is genealogically uncertain, said variously to branch from Mihara or from Kokubunji, which marks the looser, more diffuse character of the school in its later chapter.
The later workmanship the setsumei describe keeps the Yamato base of the early school but states it in a coarser, more standing-grain register. The forging remains *itame* mixed with *mokume* and flowing grain (*nagare*), now repeatedly noted as *hada-dachi* (standing grain) and, in one *tantō*, "somewhat coarse" with the steel turning *masame* toward the *mune*. A whitish cast persists: *shirake-utsuri* is singled out in the Ōei Nobukane *tantō*, while other blades show only a faint or shadowy *utsuri*-like effect and a darkish, "metallic" steel color. The tempering moves from the school's quiet *suguha* toward more open *midare*: a *chū-suguha* varied with small *gunome*, *ko-gunome* run together into continuous *midare*, *gunome* mixed with pointed (*togari*) elements, and edges showing *hotsure*, *sunagashi*, and a subdued (*shizumi*) *nioiguchi*. The sugata follows Muromachi form, with *sakizori* added to the curve and a *chū-kissaki*. Against the refined early Ko-Mihara, with its tighter *nioiguchi* and restrained finish, these later blades read as looser and plainer, the *Yamato-den* footing now worn shallower; the corpus is thin, so this contrast rests on the handful of traits the setsumei actually record rather than on a full stylistic survey.
For kantei, the setsumei separate Sue-Mihara from Ko-Mihara chiefly by the loosening of the ground and the opening of the temper: standing, occasionally coarse *itame*; faint or merely shadowy *utsuri* rather than a clear cast; and *gunome*-laced *midare* in place of quiet *suguha*. Where the Hokke Ichijō hand is present, the setsumei note one consistent point of difference, that its *nie* in both *ji* and *ha* runs a step stronger than ordinary Mihara, with the *bōshi* becoming pointed and turning back deeply. Named smiths supply the anchors: Masamori for the two-character Kai Mihara rarity against his usual long signatures, and the Ichijō hands, including a *mumei* katana appraised *den* Ichijō under a Hon'ami Kōchū *origami*. The dated works, in the Ōei and Chōroku eras, carry the documentary weight here, fixing the later phase to Muromachi Bingo and to the Kusado smiths of Kusado Sengen.
Hokke Ichijo (法華一乗) — Mainline · 1394-1573. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Kanetsugu (金次) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamori (正盛) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masanori (正則) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobukane (信兼) — Mainline · 987-1596. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Jūyō. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Other smiths
Masachika (正近) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Sadayuki (定行) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Kaneyasu (兼安) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Kuniyoshi (國吉) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masachika (正近) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masachika (正近) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masachika (正近) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masahiro (正廣) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (正宗) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (政宗) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masanaga (正永) — Mainline · 1555-1558. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaoki (正興) — Mainline · 1521-1528. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaoku (正奥) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaoku (正奥) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masayoshi (正賀) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriie (盛家) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (宴行) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1455-1457. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nagashige (長重) — Mainline · 1487-1489. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nagatsugu (長次) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobuie (信家) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobumasa (延正) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobumori (信守) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Noriie (則家) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Sadakuni (貞國) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Sadanobu (貞信) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Sadayuki (貞行) — Mainline · 1487-1489. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Suetsugu (李次) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tadatsugu (忠次) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Takakane (高兼) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Takamitsu (高光) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Takanobu (高信) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tamenori (爲範) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tomohisa (友久) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tomotsugu (朝次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Yasumitsu (泰光) — Mainline · 1501-1504. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Yoshisada (吉貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Yoshisada (吉貞) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Live·Mihara lineage
三原
The Bingo Mihara School
Yamato carried west. On the iron-rich coast of Bingo — a forging country since the tenth century — the Mihara smiths worked the great Kinai temple estates and absorbed the Yamato tradition, then bent it to a quieter key. Across two phases, from the Ko-Mihara masters Masaie and Masahiro through the long Sue-Mihara continuation, the line forged a restrained suguha over standing mokume grain and the whitish shirake-utsuri that became its signature — a tradition of the centre, transplanted and made its own.
Era
1288 — 1596
Members
77
Kokuhō
0
Jūbun
1
Jūbi
16
Tokujū
7
Jūyō
100
For Sale
10
Phase 01
古三原Ko-Mihara1288 – 1393
26smiths0Kokuhō1Jūbun16Jūbi7Tokujū91Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Phase 02
末三原Sue-Mihara1394 – 1596
51smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi0Tokujū9Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Sub-schools— branch houses of the Bingo Mihara School
Branch五阿弥Goami13 smiths
Branch法華Hokkefrom 正家10 smiths
The Bingo Mihara School (三原) Lineage
The The Bingo Mihara School (三原), active 1288–1596 in Bingo Province across 77 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 1 Jūbun, 16 Jūbi, 7 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 100 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ko-Mihara (古三原) · 1288 – 1393
Ko-Mihara (古三原) opens the Mihara story at its Bingo base, where a body of smiths gathered from the close of the Kamakura period and through the Nanbokuchō era. The setsumei treat the term as a chronological bracket rather than a separate workshop: works of this span are "collectively termed Ko-Mihara," with Masaie and Masahiro repeatedly named as the leading figures, and Masahiro held by tradition to be Masaie's son. The province's web of *shōen* estates tied to Kinai temples such as Tōji and Rengeō-in (Sanjūsangendō) drew the early smiths into regular contact with the central provinces, and the *Yamato-den* temperament that the records read in these blades is referred to that exchange. A second current runs alongside it: because some pieces show an Aoe manner, the appraisals also weigh influence from neighbouring Bitchū, as the Chikatsugu *tachi* of Shōhei 7 (1352) makes plain, sitting on the seam between Yamato bearing and Aoe surface.
In the *ji*, the early hand keeps an *itame*-tending ground that takes on *mokume*, *nagare*, and a *masame*-like flow, with the grain inclined to stand (*hada-dachi*) and fine *ji-nie* set densely across it; a pale *shirake-utsuri* recurs as the most cited diagnostic, though the Masaie *ōdachi* of around Jōji instead shows a darkish steel with a *midare-utsuri*-like cast. The temper holds to a refined *chū-suguha* with *ko-ashi* and *yō*, the *nioiguchi* drawn tight or *shizumi*, the *habuchi* breaking into *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba*, *uchi-noke*, and a *nijūba* suggestion, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* threading through. The *bōshi* runs *sugu*, closing in *yakizume*, *ko-maru*, or *maru* with *hakikake* at the tip. The records keep these early works the cleaner pole of the school: a quiet, controlled Yamato manner whose forging shows "not the slightest looseness," set against the coarser, looser later Sue-Mihara of the closing Muromachi, where the disciplined *suguha* and tight ground give way.
For kantei, the early phase reads as Yamato bearing without Yamato vigour: the *nie* of *ji* and *ha* runs weaker than in the Nara schools proper, the steel turns whitish, and the *nioiguchi* tightens, so a bright clean *suguha* with pointed *bōshi* can be mistaken at a glance for Aoe until the broad *shinogi-ji*, high *shinogi*, standing *mokume*, and *hotsure* with *kuichigai-ba* declare Mihara. Masaie and Masahiro divide on *sugata*: Masaie is the man of the bold *ō-kissaki* and the *ōdachi*, while Masahiro keeps ordinary *chū-kissaki* proportions and a freer, *midare-gokoro* edge with deeper *kaeri*, as in the Meibutsu Ō-Mihara cited by name. Because Yamato habit left few signed Mihara works, the early phase rests heavily on *mumei* and *kinzogan* attributions, several of them given to Masaie by Hon'ami Kōtoku, while dated and signed survivors stay scarce and so carry weight as reference material. Provenance threads through the great houses, the signed Masaie *tachi* presented to Emperor Meiji by the Shimazu family and another Masaie transmitted in the Date.
Masahiro (正廣) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. At the second Tokubetsu Juyo session, in 1973, the NBTHK designated a suriage tachi signed Bishu ju Masahiro (備州住正広), recording it as the blade of this name whose ji and ha are of the finest workmanship (地刃の出来が最も優れ). Masahiro of Mihara in Bingo province stands with Masaie as one of the two representative smiths of Ko-Mihara, the collective name for the school's work from the end of Kamakura through Nanbokucho. "Masahiro is traditionally regarded as a son of Ko-Mihara Masaie" (正広は古三原正家の子と伝えられている), in other texts a pupil, yet the same sources repeatedly invert the chronology: "judged from the workmanship, Masahiro reads older in style than Masaie" (作刀上からは正家よりも正広の方が古調である), several signed tachi being appraised as late Kamakura work. The name itself is collective. The signature references list six smiths called Masahiro in Bingo, the recorded dates opening in Joji 3 (1364) and running through Shitoku, Kakei and Oei, and "the Oei work is regarded as a second generation" (応永は二代とみられている). Extant dated blades are rare, only Shitoku and Oei examples being known, and the NBTHK treats the name collectively, several generations under one attribution.
His manner is Yamato carried into Bingo steel. Bingo held many estates of the central temples, Toji and the Rengeoin among them, and the published sources read the Mihara style as the product of that exchange: suguha-based work over a flowing itame. The same sources separate him from Yamato proper in one recurring formula: "compared with works from Yamato proper, the nie of ji and ha is as a rule weaker, the forging stands out in moku, the whitish utsuri is conspicuous, the hamon is a suguha whose nioiguchi tends to tightness, and the boshi turns back gently in a rounded manner" (大和本国のものに比べては、地刃の沸が弱いのが通例で、鍛えが杢立ち、白け映りが目立ち、刃文は匂口が締まりごころの直刃で、帽子も穏やかに丸く返る). A pale shirake-utsuri rises in the ji on nearly half of his recorded works; his boshi runs straight to a gentle ko-maru return, often with hakikake, never to the yakizume that defines the Yamato schools; and his itame flows and stands without resolving into their full masame.
In detail the forging is itame mixed with moku and nagare-hada, standing in places, with very fine ji-nie, chikei entering finely, and patches of jifu. Over it the hamon is a medium suguha or suguha-cho mixed with ko-gunome and ko-midare, with ko-ashi and yo entering well; the habuchi frays into hotsure, kinsuji and sunagashi work through the ha, and the nioiguchi stays tight or subdued with thick ko-nie rather than bright heavy nie. The work divides into two registers. The signed tachi, mostly suriage though several keep their ubu nakago, carry the mei in large slender-chisel characters: the first generation signs invariably Bishu ju (備州住) and never Bingo no kuni ju, beside rarer three-character mei reading Masahiro saku (正広作) and two-character mei. The sanji-mei pieces read oldest; one tachi has its nakago recorded in the Ojakusho (往昔抄), the Muromachi compendium of sword rubbings. Beside them stands the o-suriage mumei register, katana attributed by kiwame, several settled by kinzogan attribution inscriptions rather than signatures; the Nanbokucho examples run wide in mihaba with o-kissaki, one of them "originally a tachi of nearly three shaku" (もとは三尺に近い太刀であった).
Within the one suguha discipline distinct strains stand out. The tachi dated Shitoku 1 (1384), a 79.6 cm blade with its nagamei intact, keeps the suguha-cho base but takes nie throughout, yubashiri running hard along the upper half into niju and sanju-ba effects, and is singled out as "showing, within his oeuvre, a manner strong in the nie of ji and ha" (同作中にあって地刃の沸の強い作風を示している); a later designation links a sanji-mei tachi of the Nanbokucho end to it by the same yubashiri and nijuba. The Oei work, read as the second generation, leans toward the neighbors. The tachi dated Oei 6 (1399) shows "a manner that could at first sight be mistaken for the Rai school of Yamashiro" (一見山城国来派の作に見紛う作風), only the slight saki-zori betraying the period. The katana dated Oei 22 (1415), the one blade in the record signed Bingo no kuni ju Masahiro (備後国住正広), goes the other way toward Bitchu Aoe: a slanting lean enters the midare of its suguha, a midare-utsuri stands in the ji with jifu, and "the boshi burns its return deeply downward in waterfall fashion, the so-called Mihara-boshi" (帽子は返りを滝落し風に深く焼下げる所謂三原帽子となっている). A sun-nobi tanto of the same years lines up round-topped ko-gunome that the sources liken to the Hokke Kaneyasu (法華兼安) of the same province. The Aoe adjacency is old: the Muromachi treatise Shinkan Hidensho already wrote that the school's face "resembles a Bitchu tachi" (面ぶり備中太刀に似たり).
Against Masaie, the school's other master, the record draws the kantei line through the ha. In Honma Junji's adjudication, "Masaie's hamon is almost invariably an orderly suguha, while Masahiro more often shows pieces with a degree of midare feeling and many activities within the ha" (正家の刃文は殆ど整然たる直刃であるが、正広には多少乱ごころのもの、刃中の働きが多いものが多く), the boshi likewise not uniformly round but at times tending to midare or nie-kuzure. The sugata divides the two as well: "Masaie has many works with o-kissaki, while Masahiro shows comparatively many with a moderate kissaki" (正家に大鋒の作品が多いのに対し、正広には比較的鋒の尋常な作が多く見受けられる). The school's stream runs to the end of Muromachi, and the deep-returning boshi of his kiwame side is anchored by its celebrated blade, the meibutsu O-Mihara (名物大三原), a kinzogan-mei katana designated Important Cultural Property, invoked for the strikingly deep turnback seen within his work.
Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku. The official record carries thirty-seven designated works: one Important Cultural Property, the meibutsu O-Mihara itself, three Tokubetsu Juyo, twenty-five Juyo and eight Juyo Bijutsuhin, twenty-six of them signed against seven mumei, with four more carrying kinzogan attribution inscriptions. Seven blades hold recorded provenance, among them a Jubi tachi whose cut signature reads Bingo ju Masa (備後住正), passed from Prince Konoe Fumimaro to the Yomei Bunko, Kyoto, and another held by Asano Kii no Kami. The Important Cultural Property is patrimony, permanently held; recorded institutional holders are the Tokyo National Museum, the Tsukamoto Museum and the Yomei Bunko, the rest in private hands. For the collector the realistic field is the twenty-eight blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers: not beyond reach in the way the great Soshu and Bizen names are, but coming to market only from time to time. The signed tachi with the slender-chisel nagamei carry the chronology of the school; of one such the NBTHK closes its notice praising not only the work but the unforced, gentle character of the signature itself (屈託のない穏やかな銘字も魅力である).
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1353-1375. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Masaie of Mihara in Bingo Province is, with Masahiro, one of the two foremost smiths of Ko-Mihara, the term the published sources give to the group that worked at Mihara from the end of the Kamakura period through Nanbokucho. Tradition makes him the head of the school, its founder, and Masahiro his son. The published record qualifies that tradition from the blades themselves: signed Masahiro reads the more archaic of the two, and the name is not a single hand. Honma observed that "neither Masaie nor Masahiro existed only as a single-generation lineage" (正家、正広ともに一代限りではない), so the dated work, falling between Bunna and Enbun of the mid Nanbokucho, is gathered under the one name without splitting the generations. The longest of the surviving pieces is an ubu odachi over a meter, held by Yasukuni Shrine, signed only with the two characters 正家 high on an unshortened tang.
The hand the published descriptions assign to him is Yamato cast in Bingo steel. Over a flowing, standing itame the temper is a chu-suguha, narrow and quiet, mixing in ko-gunome, a slight ko-midare tendency and a little ko-notare, with ko-ashi and yo entering and the habuchi finely frayed into hotsure, kuichigai-ba and a niju-ba effect. What separates the school from Yamato proper, the sources state plainly, is that "compared with the work of the Yamato homeland the nie of ji and ha is weaker" (大和本国のものに比べては、地刃の沸が弱い); the steel tends whitish, the nioiguchi tightens, and the boshi turns gently rather than running out. Against this restrained manner the published record sets Masaie apart from Masahiro by scale: "in general Masahiro's works have many ordinary pieces with chu-kissaki, whereas Masaie has many bold examples with o-kissaki" (一般に、正広の作品には中鋒の尋常なものが多いのに対し、正家には豪壮な大鋒の作例が多い). The bold point is his signature, and a wide blade closing in a great kissaki is the first thing the judges read toward him.
The jigane is itame, flowing toward the ha and standing across the surface, with conspicuous moku entering and, near the edge, a tendency to lean masame. Fine ji-nie gathers and chikei run through it. The defining feature of the jigane is a pale shirake-utsuri, a whitish reflection that rises in over half the surviving blades and stands out most on the o-suriage mumei pieces, the steel sometimes reading dark and kana-colored beneath it. The boshi runs sugu to a gentle ko-maru, often brushed with hakikake and returning long, and it burns yakizume on only the rarest piece. On his finest work the temper does not stay subdued: of the Tokubetsu Juyo katana the published sources single out that "the bright, clear nioiguchi is a point worthy of special note" (匂口が明るく冴えている点が特筆される), where the suguha rises sharp over the whitened ji.
The corpus divides into two registers of the one manner. On one side are the signed and ubu blades, the tachi, odachi and naginata-naoshi, cut with a small-chisel long signature, 備州住正家作 or 備後国住右衛門尉正家作, and on the rarer of these a date of Bunna, Joji or Enbun. The published record prizes these dated pieces: signed Mihara work is scarce, owing to the Yamato discipline of the school, and "signed work is few, and a piece bearing a date like the present one is also a rare thing" (在銘作は少なく、且つ本作の如く年紀を有することも珍しい), so the surviving nengo blades are valued as historical material on the school. On the other side stand the o-suriage mumei katana, settled onto the name by later connoisseurs, several by gold inlay; one such bears the kinzogan attribution of Hon'ami Kotoku, the appraiser's hand recorded in the Edo compendia. A second, recurrent face leans toward neighboring Bitchu: a chu-suguha burning bright and clear over black-tinged steel with a midare-utsuri standing in the ji, the boshi pointing and returning deep, so that "at a glance it could be mistaken for Aoe" (一見すると青江に紛れる). The sources name the two pulls on the school, the Yamato manner carried in through the temple estates and the Aoe-like cast of the adjacent province.
What overrides the Aoe resemblance and gives the work back to Mihara is the Yamato temperament the judges name in detail: the high shinogi and broad shinogi-ji, the conspicuous moku and flowing grain standing across the ji, and the hotsure and kuichigai-ba along the habuchi. On the bright o-suriage Tokubetsu Juyo katana the published commentary states that here "the points of recognition for Ko-Mihara are displayed" (ここに古三原の見どころが表示されている), and then narrows the attribution within the school: "among the school the workmanship of ji and ha is superior, and with the o-kissaki form it is reasonable to appraise it, narrowing in particular, as Masaie" (同派の中でも地刃の出来が優れ、且つ大鋒の形状から、特に絞って正家と鑑するのが妥当である). The bold point and the superior ji are the two criteria on which a Ko-Mihara kiwame is settled onto Masaie himself, where the moderate point reads Masahiro. The school's stream runs on from Ko-Mihara through Mihara and Kai-Mihara down to the Sue-Mihara of late Muromachi, where the Masaie name is cut again in Bingo.
Masaie is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading. The weight of designation behind the name lies not in the highest national tiers, of which he holds none, but in a substantial Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo record: three blades at Tokubetsu Juyo and twenty-one at Juyo, twenty-four in the two tiers together, with a further handful recognized Juyo Bijutsuhin in the prewar rounds. The longest odachi, over a meter and preserved unshortened, drew the highest praise the published record gives him: for so long a blade "the forging shows not the slightest looseness, and the high level of forging skill is apparent" (これほどの長寸でありながらも鍛えに些かも緩みがなく、鍛錬技量の高さが窺え), a piece the judges call this smith's most distinguished work. The provenance recorded against his blades carries the great holders, the Tokugawa, the Date and the Shimazu families and the Imperial House among them; of recorded whereabouts two are institutional, the Yasukuni Shrine odachi and a blade in the Tokugawa Art Museum. None of his work sits in the highest national tiers that never trade, so a Masaie is not wholly beyond reach in the way a top Kamakura name is; but most of the designated blades, signed and unsigned alike, are held rather than traded, and a dated, signed example, scarce to begin with, is among the rarer things a collector of Bingo work could hope to encounter, coming forward only from time to time and with patience.
Sukekuni (助國) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Jūbi, Jūyō. Sukekuni is the Kokubunji-group smith of Bingo Province, his career fixed by a run of dated blades that carry the eras Tokuji, Genko, Karyaku, Gentoku and Kenmu, placing him from the close of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho years. His is one of the standing province problems of the kantei room. Because even his long signatures cut the province only as Bishu (備州), and the Edo-period swordbooks read that single character as Bizen, he was transmitted for centuries as a Bizen Kokubunji smith, and the *Kokon Meizukushi* named him the founder of the Hokke lineage. The published sources now correct this to Bingo for three reasons: late-Kamakura and Nanbokucho Bingo work customarily cut the province as Bishu, with *Bingo no kuni* appearing only from the Muromachi period; the *Koto Meizukushi Taizen* records his residence at Anna Tojo, and the Bingo Kokubunji stood in that Anna district; and the genealogies set this Kokubunji line apart from the Mihara group. The recognition of his hand rests not on shape but on the *ji* and *ha*, for his construction stays orthodox, without the broad *shinogi-ji* and high *shinogi* by which old Mihara announces itself.
His hand is best read as one smith working in three registers that the published sources name again and again. The first and most characteristic is a *suguha* or fine *hoso-suguha* carrying a strong Yamato temperament, and the commentary states it plainly, that 'his style, like that of Mihara works, possesses a Yamato temperament' (その作風は三原物などと同じく大和気質がある). Over an *itame* that flows and tends to *masame*, the grain standing, with *ji-nie* adhering and a whitish *shirake-utsuri* rising, he tempers a narrow *suguha* whose *habuchi* frequently frays into *hotsure*, with *ko-ashi* and *yo* entering, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* running, and *ko-nie* well laid. The *masame-gakari* of his steel is the tell that ties him to Mihara and holds him apart from the pure *itame* of mainstream Bizen, and a reverse inclination, the *saka-gokoro* that slants his *gunome* and *ashi* toward the base, runs through the temper from his earliest dated work.
The *jigane* is where his two traditions meet. Across the Mihara-toned pieces the steel is an *itame* flowing to *masame*, the grain raised, with *ji-nie* and the whitish *utsuri* of Bingo; but on the Bizen-leaning blades the *ji* throws up a mottled, *jifu*-like *utsuri* that the published sources liken to the Unrui group, 'work in a *suguha* manner with a *jifu* reflection that calls to mind the Unrui of Bizen' (備前の雲類を想わせるような地斑映りの立つ直刃仕立ての出来). That *jifu-utsuri* is the single Bizen trait that distinguishes him within the Yamato-influenced Bingo schools. The *boshi* runs straight to a *ko-maru* or finishes in a *yakizume*-toned sweep with *hakikake*, and on the *ji* the published sources find a steel of somewhat dark tone, with *chikei* entering on the better-forged examples.
The third register the commentary names is a somewhat more decorative *midare*, a feature it notes is scarcely seen in old Mihara. Into the *suguha* base he mixes *ko-choji*, *gunome*, angular and pointed elements, widening in places to a *ko-midare*, the whole running *saka-gokoro* with *saka-ashi*, *ashi* and *yo* frequent, *ko-nie* well laid and *yubashiri* appearing, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* within the *ha*. The dated works anchor these registers in time: the Genko 3 *ubu* tachi of 1323 shows the Mihara-toned *suguha* at its clearest, while the rare Karyaku 2 tanto of 1327 carries the same hand at small scale. The published sources read the more animated tachi against the school directly, observing that this mixing of many kinds of teeth into a *suguha* base 'corresponds closely to the Gentoku-dated tachi' and is 'a stylistic mode showing a *midare-ba* scarcely encountered in Ko-Mihara'.
What sets him apart from his neighbours is exactly what the judges name. He stands within the Yamato-influenced Bingo orbit beside the old Mihara smiths, sharing their *suguha* and standing *masame*, yet held apart from them by the more decorative *midare* and by the *jifu*-like *utsuri* recalling Bizen Unrui. The published sources describe his working domain as one 'in which Bizen-*den* and Yamato-*den* are intermingled' (備前伝と大和伝が混在した作域), with the characteristics of Kokubunji Sukekuni shown in both *ji* and *ha*, and for that reason they affirm his many *o-suriage mumei* attributions. Even where a *suguha* piece at first glance recalls Ko-Mihara, the commentary takes care to note that the construction differs, being orthodox rather than the broad-*shinogi* Mihara shape; of one such katana it concludes that its appearance, which 'at first glance recalls old Mihara, expresses one facet of Sukekuni's style' (一見古三原を思わせる出来は助国の一作風を示したもの).
For the collector Sukekuni is a name encountered seldom and held with care. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the Juyo tier, where twenty of his blades are designated, and through the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, which holds three more, among them the Gentoku 1 tachi and a Karyaku 2 tanto. Signed works are extremely few, most of them tachi, and the published sources call surviving tanto by this smith exceedingly rare, 'examples by this maker in tanto form being exceedingly rare' (同工の短刀での遺例は稀有), so a dated piece is prized as research material. His blades have passed through long-held private collections rather than museums: the Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi were held by Saito Makoto and by Takashima Tatsunosuke, and the orikaeshi-mei tachi by Okajima Kichiro, while one Juyo Bijutsuhin blade is recorded as having been 'presented as a memento among the belongings of Ito Hirobumi' (伊藤博文公の遺物として贈られたものという). Held mostly in private hands and seldom traded, a signed and dated Kokubunji Sukekuni comes to light only from time to time, a quiet but well-documented witness to the Yamato-influenced swordmaking of late-Kamakura Bingo.
Chikatsugu (親次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Tokujū. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Kaneyasu (兼安) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. The oldest fixed point in Kaneyasu's record is a small hira-zukuri wakizashi signed Bishu-ju Kaneyasu (備州住兼安) and dated the third month of Ōan 2, that is 1369, the signature cut in five characters down the center of the omote and the date on the reverse. He was a swordsmith of Bingo, of the Hokke Ichijo group that worked in Ashida district, and the published commentary derives the line from the Kokon Meizukushi Taizen (古今銘尽大全), which holds that it belongs to a body of Ashida work standing apart from the better-known Mihara tradition and traces its founding to Sukekuni. That distinction is the first thing to understand about him. He is not, despite the directory label, a Mihara smith proper but a member of the neighboring Hokke line, repeatedly set against Mihara in the very texts that designate his blades; the group was active from the Nanbokucho era into the Muromachi period, and alongside Ichijo, Yukiyoshi, Shigeyasu, Shigeie and Nobukane, Kaneyasu stands among its leading hands, named directly after the founder-figure Ichijo in the roll of survivors.
His hand is the school's hand, and it is a quiet one. Over an itame that flows toward masame along the edge, with mokume worked in here and there, he tempers a low, gentle straight temper, a chu- or hoso-suguha that at times carries the faintest notare and runs alongside a linked string of small gunome. The temper is nioi-dominant with ko-nie gathered along it, the nioiguchi tight and inclined to sink rather than to glow, with fine ashi and yo entering and hotsure breaking the habuchi in places. The published sources put the school manner plainly as a low, calm suguha, or a suguha-toned pattern accompanied by a continuous run of ko-gunome, and Kaneyasu's blades hold to that base almost without exception. He is a smith read not by any flamboyant flourish but by the restraint and evenness of a straight edge that never works itself up into a midare, the small gunome a recurring punctuation along an otherwise still line.
The ji is where his school marks itself most clearly. The itame stands rather than lying flat, the grain visibly raised (肌立ち), and the steel takes on a whitish cast over which a faint shirake-utsuri rises (白け映り), the iron tone running somewhat dark; on the broader katana ji-nie forms and thick chikei enter the standing grain. This pale, slightly adhesive jigane, with flowing hada turning to masame and a frequent yakizume close to the boshi, is what the judges have in mind when they call the work of the line one in which a Yamato temperament can be discerned, summarizing the school as forging itame mixed with flowing grain whose boshi may be finished as yakizume, in which 「帽子は焼詰めることもあるなど、大和気質の窺えるもの」. The boshi itself is read in two forms that the school keeps in parallel: one that runs straight to a yakizume finish, the Yamato tell, and one whose point grows pointed and turns back long, and a given blade is placed in part by which of the two it shows.
Kaneyasu's surviving work falls cleanly into two registers, and the rarer of them is the one signed. The ubu signed pieces are confined to hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi and tanto, wide in the body and thin in the kasane, bearing the Bishu-ju Kaneyasu signature and Ōan dates; they are exceedingly few, the commentary noting that 「兼安有銘の作は経眼したものは僅かに五指を掘するに過ぎず」, no more than can be counted on one hand. One such Ōan 2 wakizashi is praised for showing 「典型的な作風を示して、銘振りも極めてよい」, a typical manner with an exceptionally fine cutting of the signature, and a single signed tachi is called 「すこぶる珍らしく貴重」, exceedingly rare and valuable, since a tachi-form signature from this hand is almost unheard of. The far larger register is the o-suriage mumei katana of grand Nanbokucho shape, shinogi-zukuri with the shinogi tending high, wide-bodied with an o-kissaki or chu-kissaki, attributed den Hokke Kaneyasu. It is on these unsigned, greatly shortened blades that his name now chiefly rests, the attribution resting on the standing whitish itame, the shirake-utsuri and the quiet suguha mixed with ko-gunome that he and his school share. The sword-signature compendia, working from the dated signed pieces, variously assign his activity to Enbun (延文), Shitoku and Oei, but the Ōan dates on his own blades fix him securely within the Nanbokucho passage.
What sets him apart is best stated through his own traits rather than against another school's. One o-suriage mumei katana is described as one that 「一見備中青江物に似た作風を示している」, resembling Bitchu Aoe work at first glance, yet it is kept for Kaneyasu by the elevated shinogi of its construction and a forging that mixes in large mokume, the judges naming these the features that mark it as his. The lesson is the school's whole identity in miniature: a pale, standing, Yamato-tempered straight-temper hand that can be mistaken for its Bitchu and Bingo neighbors and is separated from them by particulars of ji and construction, not by drama of temper. His suguha-cho over a whitish, masame-tending jigane, with the yakizume boshi, is the manner the Hokke line carries from Nanbokucho into Muromachi, and the Yamato character read in that boshi and that grain is precisely the trait that the texts use to hold the Ashida line apart from the Mihara work to which it is forever being compared.
Kaneyasu is a connoisseur's name rather than a collector's quarry, and the record is honest about its scale. The Fujishiro appraisal places him at Chu-jo saku, and his blades on the official record number a dozen, every one of them at the Important Sword tier; there are no National Treasures, no Important Cultural Properties and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them, and the designation record carries no recorded denrai or named former owners to roll out. What this offers a collector is a clear and attainable thing rather than a famous one. A signed Kaneyasu, an ubu hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi or tanto with the five-character mei and an Ōan date, is among the scarcer encounters, the survivors counted on one hand and a signed tachi rarer still. The o-suriage mumei katana attributed to him are the more findable face of his work, several of them designated and praised as 「同派極めの優品」, excellent representative pieces of the school in which the standing pale ji and the quiet, sinking suguha are well shown. These reach the market only from time to time, and when one does it offers the patient student of the koto schools a sound and characteristic example of a Bingo Yamato-influenced hand, the kind of grounded, undramatic blade on which a careful kantei is built rather than a famous signature acquired.
Shigeyasu (重安) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Jūyō. Shigeyasu signed his blades Bishu-ju Shigeyasu (備州住重安), a five-character residence inscription that the published sources read as Bingo Province, and the few of his works that carry a date fall within a narrow span of the Nanbokucho period: a wakizashi of Joji 2 (1363), a naginata-naoshi katana of Oan 2 (1369), and another dated piece of Oan 6 (1373). He is one of the Bingo wakimono of the fourteenth century, placed by the earlier designations among the Mihara hands and by the fuller commentaries among the smiths of the Hokke Ichijo line, and his name belongs to a small group whose surviving signed work is so scarce that each dated blade is treated as documentary material. The published sources note plainly that 現存する有銘の作は極めて少ない, extant signed works by him are extremely few, and it is on that handful of pieces that his hand has to be read.
His characteristic manner is a fine, low, gentle suguha, a hoso-suguha (細直刃) carrying slight ko-ashi and a tight nioiguchi with ko-nie, the temper held deliberately quiet and shallow rather than worked into display. Set beneath it is the feature that most distinguishes his work, an itame that flows strongly toward masame and tends to stand a little (流れ肌, 柾がか), over which a whitish reflection rises, the shirake-utsuri (白け映り) of Bingo steel. The published sources gather these into a portrait of the school's temperament, describing a jigane forged of itame mixed with flowing nagare-hada (流れ肌) that raises a whitish cast and a somewhat sticky surface, a low and gentle suguha, and a boshi that finishes yakizume, and they read in the whole a 大和気質, a Yamato-derived temperament carried in Bingo work. On one tanto the resemblance is close enough that the judges remark it is 手掻物などにも粉れるような出来, workmanship that at first glance might be confused with a Tegai piece, before they settle it with the Ko-Mihara hand.
The jigane on which all of this rests is an itame, at times tightened to ko-itame and at times opened with o-itame (大板目) and mokume, the grain flowing toward the edge and tending to masame, with ji-nie (地沸) gathering and, on the more robust blades, fine chikei and a jifu-like patchiness; the steel can take on a slightly blackish tone, and over it stands the whitish shirake reflection that marks the Bingo jigane. The boshi answers the quiet temper below, running straight into a ko-maru (小丸) or, on the naginata-naoshi, sweeping into a yakizume (焼詰) turn, with on one tachi a faintly pointed return. The construction is of its period: hira-zukuri tanto and wakizashi of slightly elongated, sun-nobi (寸延び) proportions, wide in the mihaba and thin in the kasane, the sori shallow, a large-bodied shape that the published sources read as the period character of the middle Nanbokucho. Carving appears as gomabashi (護摩箸) cut on both faces of one wakizashi, and on the naginata-naoshi a naginata-bi (薙刀樋) finished maru-dome with long companion grooves.
Because the record holds only a small number of blades, all of them signed and all designated at the Juyo level, his work is read less through datable phases than through two manners on one Bingo jigane. The first and prevailing one is the calm hoso-suguha just described, the typical hand of the Hokke and Mihara smiths. The second, seen at its fullest on the latest of the dated pieces, tempers a mixed gunome, round-headed gunome (頭の丸い互の目) and ko-gunome with a little ko-notare, the crests tending to align, ashi entering and nie adhering well; along the habuchi run hotsure (ほつれ) and uchinoke (打のけ) that pass at places into a nijuba (二重刃) appearance, with kinsuji and sunagashi (砂流し) frequent and the nioiguchi sinking. That broader, more active face shows that the same hand could work beyond the restrained suguha when the blade called for it.
What sets Shigeyasu apart is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast: his is the quiet, low suguha of a Bingo wakimono smith, read in the flowing masame-tinged itame and the standing shirake reflection, and closed at the point by a ko-maru or a yakizume turn. The school placement is itself a matter of record, for the published sources, following the Kokon Meizukushi, present the Bingo Hokke Ichijo line as a genealogy distinct from the Mihara tradition, give its founder as Sukekuni, and name Ichijo, Kaneyasu, Shigeyasu, Shigeie and Nobukane among its smiths, while the earlier Juyo papers had read Shigeyasu as a Mihara or Ko-Mihara hand. A late wakizashi signed with the character 康 in place of 安, Bishu-ju Shigeyasu (備州住重康), has no entry in the standard reference works, and the judges assign it to the same Hokke tradition by its residence inscription and its Bingo workmanship, an adjacent name within the one austere school.
Shigeyasu is an uncommon name on the designated record. Five of his blades are held at Juyo Token, every one of them signed, with none rising to the Tokubetsu Juyo level or the higher designation tiers, and no provenance of named owners is recorded among them. These signed Juyo pieces are the only ones a private collector could realistically hope to encounter, and with so few in existence one appears only rarely and as a notable event rather than a regular offering; a dated, signed blade by him, filling as it does a gap the reference works leave open, is sought as much for its documentary value as for its quality. The judges' own summations give the measure of that value. Of the Mihara tachi the published sources say the workmanship in both ji and ha 三原派の特色をよく示しており, clearly displays the characteristic features of the Mihara school; of the Joji-dated wakizashi they call it a piece of high documentary value that plainly expresses the features of Bingo work; and of the Oan 2 naginata-naoshi they note that it conveys a 渋い味わい, a subdued and austere flavor, and that the latest of the dated pieces serves as 銘鑑の欠を補う好資料, useful material that helps make good the lack of documentation in the reference works. A signed blade by Shigeyasu offers, in a single scarce Bingo hand, the quiet Yamato-tinged suguha of the Hokke line set over a flowing, shirake-lit jigane.
Other smiths
Masanobu (正信) — Mainline · 1390-1394. The fixed point in Masanobu's record is a tachi signed Bishu Masanobu and dated Meitoku 5, that is 1394, the long signature cut in fine chisel strokes on the omote and the date carried on the reverse. He was a swordsmith of the Ko-Mihara school in Bingo Province, working at the close of the Nanbokucho period, and a second blade carries the still earlier date of Eiwa 2 (1376), the two dated pieces fixing his activity within the final decades of that age. The published commentary counts him, together with Masaie and Masahiro, among the representative hands of Ko-Mihara, and names him with Masamune of the same group as one of the smiths in whom 「正宗・正信等はその最後を飾る刀工であろう」, those who adorned the finale of the line. The Mihara group arose at the end of the Kamakura period and flourished down to the close of the Muromachi period, and the work of its late-Kamakura-through-Nanbokucho phase is collectively called Ko-Mihara; the strong Yamato temperament of that work is explained by exchange with the Yamato heartland through the many estates of its great temples and shrines, Toji and Rengeo-in among them, that lay within Bingo.
His hand is the school's hand, and it is a quiet one. Over an itame mixed with mokume and flowing nagare-hada that stands rather than lies flat and runs toward masame along the edge, he tempers a low, gentle straight temper, a suguha or naka-suguha that here and there carries a shallow notare and mixes in small ko-gunome and slight ko-midare rather than working itself up into a true midare. Along the habuchi run hotsure, kuichigai-ba and futae-ha, the doubled temper line, with small ashi entering and fine kinsuji and sunagashi threading through; ko-nie gathers on the line, and the nioiguchi is tight and inclined to sink rather than to glow, though on the best blades it brightens and clears. The published sources are candid that the temper is subdued in feeling, yet they hold that 「直刃の出来も地味ながら同派の持前をよく示して」, that the suguha, plain as it is, displays the inherent traits of the school well, and that the workmanship is sound throughout. He is a smith read by the restraint and evenness of a straight edge, the small gunome a recurring punctuation along an otherwise still line.
The ji is where the school marks itself most plainly. The itame stands, the grain visibly raised, and the steel takes on a bluish-black tone over which a whitish shirake-utsuri rises; fine ji-nie adheres, jifu and chikei-like dark lines enter the standing grain, and patchy texture gathers in places. This pale, standing jigane, with the flowing hada turning to masame and the gentle, rounded boshi that runs straight with hakikake to a ko-maru or an o-maru return, is what the judges have in mind when they read a Yamato temperament throughout Mihara work. They put the school manner plainly: compared with Yamato proper the nie of both ji and ha is generally weaker, the mokume stands out and the grain rises, the shirake-utsuri is conspicuous, the nioiguchi inclines to tighten and the boshi turns back in a calm, rounded form. Masanobu's blades hold to that base almost without exception, the bluish-black steel deeply tasteful and the tight-nioiguchi suguha bright and clear on his finest piece.
His surviving work falls into two registers, and the rarer of them is the one signed. The signed pieces are ubu or only lightly shortened tachi cut with a long Bishu Masanobu signature and an Eiwa or Meitoku date, and they are exceedingly few; signed Masanobu, and especially signed-and-dated examples, were thought from old times to have almost no precedent, so much so that among the Edo-period sword reference books one records 「この太刀のみを載せている」, this tachi alone. One such piece is the unusual shobu-zukuri construction, which the published sources grant is encountered from time to time in a Mihara so strongly touched by Yamato. The larger register is the suriage or orikaeshi-mei blade, shinogi-zukuri with the shinogi tending high, on which the folded-back three-character signature or the bare attribution carries his name; it is on these that his work is most often met, and the standing whitish itame, the shirake-utsuri and the futae-ha that he and his school share are what hold them for him. The sword-signature compendia, working from the dated pieces, place his activity in the Eiwa and Meitoku years, securing him within the Nanbokucho passage.
What sets him apart is best stated through his own traits rather than against another school. The published commentary, citing the Shinkan Hidensho that Mihara appearance 「面ぶり備中太刀に似たり」, resembles Bitchu tachi, grants that some of his blades read at first glance like the neighboring Aoe work; yet it keeps them for Mihara, finding that 「鎬高の造り込みや地に現われた白け映り、また刃中の二重刃・喰違刃等に一派の特色を見出し得る」, that in the high-shinogi construction, the shirake-utsuri risen in the ji, and the futae-ha and kuichigai-ba within the ha the characteristics of the line can be discerned. The futae-ha is itself a school habit rather than a personal flourish, for the records note that Masanobu has other extant examples showing it and that his fellow Mihara smiths Masaie and Masahiro work in the same manner. The same texts that praise his blades are honest about his individuality: in his work, they say, 「地刃に同工の特色と云うよりも同派の特色が濃く」, the characteristics of the school are stronger in both ji and ha than any distinctly personal style, so that he is recognized first as a Ko-Mihara hand and only then as Masanobu.
Masanobu is a connoisseur's name rather than a collector's quarry, and the record is honest about its scale. The Toko Taikan values him at a middling figure, and his blades on the official record number four, every one of them at the Important Sword tier; there are no National Treasures, no Important Cultural Properties and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them. What survives carries provenance of the first order: the Meitoku 5 tachi descended in the Maeda house of the Kaga million-koku domain, its mid-Edo black lacquered uchigatana mounting still attached, and the kodachi was transmitted in the Ii house, lords of the Hikone domain, the published sources calling it 「現存稀な古三原正信の在銘作として資料的にも貴重である」, a rare extant signed work by Ko-Mihara Masanobu, precious as documentary material. Most designated blades of this rank are held rather than traded, and a signed and dated Masanobu, of which only a handful survive, reaches the market very rarely indeed; the suriage and orikaeshi-mei pieces are the more findable face of his work, and one appears from time to time, offering the student of the koto schools a sound, characteristic example of a Bingo Yamato-influenced hand, the kind of grounded blade on which a careful kantei is built.
Kageshige (景重) — Mainline · 1375-1381. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masakiyo (政清) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (正宗) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Shigeyoshi (重吉) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tomoshige (共重) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Ariyoshi (有吉) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Masaie (正家) stands alongside Masahiro as one of the two foremost representatives of the Ko-Mihara school, the group of swordsmiths that flourished in Mihara of Bingo Province from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho period. Because this region contained many estates (*shoen*) belonging to major shrines and temples of the Kinai heartland, frequent exchange with Yamato fostered a pronounced Yamato temperament in Mihara workmanship. At the same time, certain works display an Aoe-like manner, suggesting influence from smiths of neighboring Bitchu Province. Dated examples bearing the Teiji and Sadaji era inscriptions indicate that successive generations worked under this name, with the lineage traceable to the end of the Kamakura period around the Karyaku and Tokuji eras.
Masaie's forging typically shows *itame-hada* with areas of *mokume* mixed in, tending toward *hada-dachi*; *ji-nie* and *chikei* appear frequently, while the steel takes on a somewhat dark, iron-colored tone with a *midare-utsuri*-like effect. His *hamon* is characteristically a *chu-suguha* tempered in *nie-deki*, with *ashi* entering well, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* appearing within the tempered area. A slight *hotsure*-like aspect along the *habuchi* and the presence of *yubashiri* clearly display the Yamato-tradition traits absorbed by this school. The *boshi* is rendered *sugu*-cho with *hakikake*, turning in *komaru* with a long return. Where Masahiro's works often have ordinary proportions with *chu-kissaki*, Masaie is frequently seen in examples of bold construction culminating in a large *kissaki*.
Masaie's oeuvre encompasses forms ranging from *hira-zukuri* wakizashi to powerfully built *odachi* of exceptional length that embody the characteristic Nanbokucho period aesthetic. Even in blades of great dimension, his forging shows not the slightest looseness, from which his high level of skill can be inferred. His straight *hamon* is executed without any breakdown, and the internal activity observable within the tempered area constitutes qualities well worth savoring. Signed works by Masaie are comparatively rare among surviving examples, and blades that preserve their *ubu* nakago hold exceptionally high documentary value for understanding both this smith's individual manner and the original form of Nanbokucho-era swords.
Masaie (正家) — Mainline · 1306-1308. Masaie (正家) is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Mihara school of Bingo Province and one of the representative figures of the group known as Ko-Mihara, which flourished from the end of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho period. According to *meikan* and other reference works on smith lineages, Masaie was active around the Showa (1312--1317) or Shochu (1324--1326) eras, and his line continued down into the Muromachi period. Within the Ko-Mihara group, Masaie stands alongside Masahiro as the school's most distinguished name. Works of the Mihara school display pronounced Yamato character, belonging firmly to the *Yamato-den* tradition centered in Bingo Province. An Imperial Collection tachi bearing his signature has been described as representing the highest level of Ko-Mihara craftsmanship, with even Masahiro having scarcely any work of such caliber.
The distinguishing traits of Masaie's work may be seen in several key technical features. The *jigane* typically shows *ko-itame-hada* tightly forged, with fine *ji-nie* adhering and a characteristic whitish *utsuri* appearing in the ground metal---a hallmark of Ko-Mihara production. The *hamon* favors *chu-suguha*, sometimes with a slight admixture of small *gunome*, tempered in a *nioi*-based manner with the *nioiguchi* tending toward tightness and *ko-nie* present along the border. Fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* frequently appear within the tempered zone. Whereas many works by Masahiro are of *chu-kissaki*, Masaie is often encountered in examples with a bold and imposing *o-kissaki*, lending his blades a particularly powerful *sugata*.
Signed works by Masaie of early date are extremely rare, making authenticated examples of considerable scholarly value. His blades consistently demonstrate sound preservation, with both *ji* and *ha* described as notably *kenzen* in official evaluations. Among blades attributed to Ko-Mihara, his work is singled out as especially superior, and those examples bearing the large *kissaki* and characteristic *boshi* make the attribution to Masaie fully persuasive. His contribution to the founding of one of Bingo Province's most important sword-making traditions secures his place among the significant smiths of the late Kamakura period.
Masakiyo (正清) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Masamune (政宗) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1390-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nagakane (長包) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Nobuhiro (延廣) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Noritada (則忠) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Shigemitsu (重光) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Suetsugu (李次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tatsubo (辰房) — Mainline · 1389-1390. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Tsugusada (次貞) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bingo Mihara School.
Phase 2 · Sue-Mihara (末三原) · 1394 – 1596
Where Ko-Mihara closes at the end of the Nanbokuchō period, Sue-Mihara takes up the Bingo tradition through the Muromachi era. The setsumei place the later production in the same Mihara orbit but spread across several named hands and affiliated branches: Kai Mihara Masamori, whose Muromachi katana often carry the long "Mihara-jū Kai ___" signature; and the closely tied Hokke Ichijō line, whose founder Ichijō is traditionally called a son of Mihara Masaie and whose generations continued from the Ōei era into the late Muromachi. Within that affiliated group the corpus names Nobukane, Yoshitsugu, and the joint-signing Ichijō Morie and Ichijō Moriyuki, working at Kusado (Kusado Sengen) in Bingo. Several setsumei stress that the Hokke Ichijō reckoning is genealogically uncertain, said variously to branch from Mihara or from Kokubunji, which marks the looser, more diffuse character of the school in its later chapter.
The later workmanship the setsumei describe keeps the Yamato base of the early school but states it in a coarser, more standing-grain register. The forging remains *itame* mixed with *mokume* and flowing grain (*nagare*), now repeatedly noted as *hada-dachi* (standing grain) and, in one *tantō*, "somewhat coarse" with the steel turning *masame* toward the *mune*. A whitish cast persists: *shirake-utsuri* is singled out in the Ōei Nobukane *tantō*, while other blades show only a faint or shadowy *utsuri*-like effect and a darkish, "metallic" steel color. The tempering moves from the school's quiet *suguha* toward more open *midare*: a *chū-suguha* varied with small *gunome*, *ko-gunome* run together into continuous *midare*, *gunome* mixed with pointed (*togari*) elements, and edges showing *hotsure*, *sunagashi*, and a subdued (*shizumi*) *nioiguchi*. The sugata follows Muromachi form, with *sakizori* added to the curve and a *chū-kissaki*. Against the refined early Ko-Mihara, with its tighter *nioiguchi* and restrained finish, these later blades read as looser and plainer, the *Yamato-den* footing now worn shallower; the corpus is thin, so this contrast rests on the handful of traits the setsumei actually record rather than on a full stylistic survey.
For kantei, the setsumei separate Sue-Mihara from Ko-Mihara chiefly by the loosening of the ground and the opening of the temper: standing, occasionally coarse *itame*; faint or merely shadowy *utsuri* rather than a clear cast; and *gunome*-laced *midare* in place of quiet *suguha*. Where the Hokke Ichijō hand is present, the setsumei note one consistent point of difference, that its *nie* in both *ji* and *ha* runs a step stronger than ordinary Mihara, with the *bōshi* becoming pointed and turning back deeply. Named smiths supply the anchors: Masamori for the two-character Kai Mihara rarity against his usual long signatures, and the Ichijō hands, including a *mumei* katana appraised *den* Ichijō under a Hon'ami Kōchū *origami*. The dated works, in the Ōei and Chōroku eras, carry the documentary weight here, fixing the later phase to Muromachi Bingo and to the Kusado smiths of Kusado Sengen.