The wave that named an age. From Soboro Sukehiro’s rustic beginnings, his adopted heir Tsuda Sukehiro perfected the tōranba — the billowing temper line that defines Osaka shintō — and died at forty-six having signed some of the most prized blades of the entire shintō era. With Sukenao the line ran to the 1690s: three smiths, and a papered legacy few whole schools can match.
The The Settsu Sukehiro School (助広), active 1624–1700 in Settsu Province across 2 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 1 Jūbun, 8 Jūbi, 10 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 148 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Settsu Sukehiro School (助広) · 1624 – 1700
Sukehiro (助廣) — Mainline · 1657-1682. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. The second-generation Sukehiro, the Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, was born at Uchide village in Settsu Province, the present Ashiya, in Kan'ei 14 (1637), his common name Jinnojo. He studied under the first-generation smith called the Soboro Sukehiro, and after his teacher's death he became his adopted son and succeeded as the second generation. In Meireki 3 (1657) he received the court title Echizen no Kami, and in Kanbun 7 (1667) he was retained as house smith by Aoyama Inaba no Kami Munetoshi (青山因幡守宗俊), the governor of Osaka Castle; he died in Tenna 2 (1682) at the young age of forty-six. The first generation was a pupil of the first Kawachi no Kami Kunisuke and so stood in the Osaka-Ishido choji tradition, from which the second generation's earliest work descends before he broke away. His name rests on one invention. The published sources state that he came to found the distinctive temper called toran-midare (濤瀾乱), the regular large gunome cresting like ocean swells, and they place him with Inoue Shinkai of Osaka and Nagasone Kotetsu of Edo among the masters of the age.
The full and famous manner is the toran-ba. Over a tightly forged ko-itame the published sources record a large gunome-midare that takes a billowing, turbulent-wave appearance, opened at the base by a short straight yakidashi; the nioi runs deep, ko-nie adheres thickly, ashi enter, sunagashi and kinsuji run through, and tobiyaki-like jewels are at times tempered along the upper half. The nioiguchi, the sources return to again and again, is bright and clear. The published record names this manner his own creation outright and describes its sweep: that he founded the toran and won universal acclaim, a development that exerted great influence not only in his own time but on later generations and on the swordsmiths of the Shinshinto age. The texts read his development as a single arc, stated almost verbatim across his blades: in the early period a choji-midare in the Ishido manner, then a turn to gunome-midare, and at last the founding of the toran that is uniquely his.
The forging beneath the temper is the second pillar of his hand. The published sources describe a ko-itame that is most tightly packed, the steel clear, with ji-nie applied thickly in a fine, dustlike manner and fine chikei entering well. It is a bright and well-ordered jigane, and the sources find in it, with the temper above, the source of his renown: the precise clarity of the jigane and the deep, bright character of the nioiguchi. Alongside the celebrated toran runs a suguha he handled with equal mastery. The published sources, having named the toran, add that apart from it his suguha is also exceedingly skilled, and they describe it as a chu-suguha carrying a shallow notare, often a five-fold undulation that the judges treat as a point of appreciation peculiar to him. There too the nioi is deep, ko-nie thick and finely even, with kinsuji and sunagashi within, and the boshi runs straight and turns in ko-maru, the point often showing hakikake and a somewhat deeper temper that the sources read as his habitual hand.
The chronology of his work turns on a single date, read straight off the nakago. The published sources record that from the second month of Enpo 2 (1674) he changed the earlier angular kaku-Tsuda signature, cut in gyosho, to the cursive maru-Tsuda in sosho, a change that followed a Konoe-style calligraphy bestowed through his domain; the world calls the earlier form kaku-Tsuda (角津田) and the later maru-Tsuda (丸津田), so the form of the signature alone dates a blade before or after that line. The dense dated inscriptions of the Enpo years give his toran a tight year-by-year chronology, from the youthful, vigorous toran of the Kanbun thirties to the fully realized pieces of the late Enpo and Tenna years. Of the manner of these two registers the sources are candid about the standing of his suguha: while the brilliant toran is his fame, there are those who praise the suguha the more, the published sources writing that some hold his straight temper above the showier wave (華麗な濤瀾よりも直刃の方をより称讃するむきもある). The two-character signature, the sources note, belongs only to his late work and is exceedingly rare; carved blades are rarer still, his oeuvre carrying horimono only seldom and then by a specialist carver, the Osaka carver Nagasaka Yuhoken named in connection with his and Sukenao's blades.
Within the school he is the founder of the toran and one of the twin masters of Osaka Shinto. The published sources set his suguha repeatedly beside that of Inoue Shinkai of the same province and call the two a twin peak, the discriminator named outright: the nie of Sukehiro's straight temper is finer in particle and more evenly arranged, and from the edge toward the ji there appears a minute activity the sources liken to the look of finely torn hosho paper, 「奉書紙を裂いたような細かな働きが顕著に看取される」. They measure him against his own teacher as well: handling the Soboro Sukehiro's rare suguha in his own bright, clear nioiguchi, he is judged the master who surpassed his teacher, 「師父にまさる名工である」. And they place him against Edo: with Nagasone Kotetsu he is 「古来、新刀中の東西の両横綱とも称せられている」. His foremost pupil was Tsuda Sukenao, who carried the toran forward, and the manner he founded shaped the Osaka swords of his day and after.
In Fujishiro's grading he is Sai-jo saku, the highest rank, and in the Toko Taikan his valuation stands among the very highest of the Shinto smiths. The weight of designation behind his name is heavy: among the blades on record one is an Important Cultural Property, with six in the Tokubetsu Juyo tier and the great body of his work, some eighty-nine pieces, in the Juyo tier; he has no National Treasure on record. The richest provenance gathers, as one would expect, around his patron: many of his finest pieces descend in the Aoyama house of the Osaka castle governors, among them the great tachi dated Enpo 6 named Murasame (村雨), forged at Munetoshi's order and long secretly held in the family, said to have been brought out only at the prayers for rain, its blade bearing the Sanskrit characters for Daiitoku Myo-o (大威徳明王) and Marishiten (摩利支天). Through the same house passed the celebrated collaborative katana of Enpo 3 by Sukehiro and Inoue Shinkai, which Kamata Gyomyo later praised in his Shinto Bengi (新刀弁疑). His provenance otherwise rests largely with long-private collections rather than named institutions. Of his designated works on record, almost all sit in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers and so are held more than traded; a Sukehiro of the first quality, and above all an Aoyama piece, comes to a private collector only rarely, a landmark when it does.
Sukenao (助直) — Mainline · 1668-1693. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sukenao was born in Kan'ei 16 (1639) at Takagi in Yasu District of Ōmi Province, common name Magotarō, and his dated blades run from Kanbun 8 (1668) to Genroku 6 (1693), the year he turned fifty-five. The published sources record that he first entered the school of the first-generation Soboro Sukehiro and then perfected his craft under the second, Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, that he married into the house as Sukehiro's brother-in-law and so prefixed the Tsuda surname to his signature, and that after the master died in Tenna 2 (1682) he succeeded to that place and took up permanent residence in Osaka. He signs in several settled forms, Tsuda Ōmi no Kami Sukenao, Ōmi no Kami Takagi-jū Sukenao, and the plainer Sukenao, often adding the Genroku or Tenna date and his birthplace of Gōshū Takagi. Among the Tsuda pupils he is the one whose hand stands closest to the master, and the published commentary on a Tokubetsu Jūyō from his very latest years calls it 「師の助広と区別し難いほどの上出来」, so well made as to be difficult to tell apart from Sukehiro, displaying fully matured technique.
The manner for which Sukenao is known is the *tōran-midare*, the surging large-wave temper the published sources say he inherited from his master, who first established it. He opens the edge at the base with a straight *suguha yakidashi*, the Osaka Shintō start, then raises a body of large *gunome* mixed with *chōji* and *ko-notare* that rolls into the wave, long *ashi* entering, the *nioi* exceptionally deep, *ko-nie* thickly adhered, *sunagashi* and fine *kinsuji* running through, and at times a few *tobiyaki* above the line. The *nioiguchi* is bright and clear, and it is this brilliance, deep and lucid with well-gathered *ko-nie*, that the judges read as approaching Sukehiro. Where a difference shows it is in the *sugata*: his katana tend to run broad in body with a thick *kasane* and a *chū-kissaki* drawn slightly long, a more robust and dignified shape than the master's, so that even when the wave rivals Sukehiro the bearing remains his own.
The *jigane* is the constant beneath all his work. He forges a tightly packed *ko-itame* in which the *ji-nie* gathers densely and finely, a dust-like field with *chikei* entering and the steel clear, the bright Osaka *jigane* on which the wave is set. On the finest pieces the published sources describe a *ji* and *ha* both thickly covered in *nie* and clear throughout, and one Tokubetsu Jūyō is praised in exactly these terms, its forging a dense *ko-itame* with fine dust-like *ji-nie* adhering thickly and *chikei* entering, the whole called 「地刃に助直の特色と美点が十二分に示されている」, the distinctive features and merits of Sukenao fully manifested in both *ji* and *ha*. The *bōshi* across his blades runs straight to a *ko-maru* with a short return, sometimes with *hakikake*, the calm finish that closes even his most active tempers.
Beside the full *tōran* the published sources name two further registers, so that his oeuvre is read in three faces rather than one. The first is a *gunome-midare* and *notare*, the large *gunome* standing without rising fully into the wave, mixed with *ko-notare* and at times pointed elements, deep in *nioi* and well adhered in *ko-nie*. The second is a quiet *suguha*, at times a *hiro-suguha*, which he handled with skill even as the wave remained his renown. A Jūyō from Enpō 3, made while he was still working in his native Takagi, is tempered in a broad *suguha* with a tendency to *nagare* and *ko-gunome* at the *yakidashi*, and the published commentary, granting it is calm, adds 「流石に堂々たる出来である」, that it is dignified work all the same. On one dated *wakizashi* the judges note that he 「他にこの脇指の如く直刃も巧みにこなしている」, handles *suguha* with great skill beyond his usual wave. The carving on his blades stays to a simple *bō-hi*; the devotional *kurikara* and *hataboko* that appear on a few of his pieces were cut by horimono specialists such as Nagasaka Yūhōken, not by his own hand.
What sets Sukenao apart within the Tsuda line is the closeness of the resemblance held in check by his own shape. The published sources repeatedly read his finest blades as rivalling the master, one Tokubetsu Jūyō called 「一見師助広を髣髴とさせる助直の秀作」, an excellent work that at a glance calls Sukehiro to mind, while noting that his body runs broader than the master's and conveys a more imposing presence. He stands, then, as the faithful heir who carried the *tōran-midare* forward after Sukehiro's early death rather than as an innovator, the brightness of his *nioiguchi* and the robustness of his *sugata* the marks that distinguish his hand from the source it descends from. The three registers, the surging wave, the *gunome notare*, and the calm *suguha*, are the published record's own division of his work, and in each he is held to be a superior hand.
Sukenao is graded Jō-jō saku by Fujishiro and ranks among the leading names of Osaka Shintō. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the higher modern tiers, with four blades at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and the larger body at Jūyō, sixty-three across the two tiers in all, almost all of them signed and many dated. His provenance is recorded in only a few cases, among them a blade once held in the Imperial collection and another from the Matsudaira Chikahiro line, the rest of recorded whereabouts unrecorded. Because so few of his blades change hands, and because most designated work of his standing is held rather than traded, a signed and dated Sukenao comes to market only from time to time, a katana in his full *tōran-midare* the more sought when it does; a privately held example, broad in body and bright in *nioiguchi*, is a fine thing for a collector to encounter, the work of the pupil who came closest of all to Tsuda Sukehiro.
Live·Sukehiro lineage
助広
The Settsu Sukehiro School
The wave that named an age. From Soboro Sukehiro’s rustic beginnings, his adopted heir Tsuda Sukehiro perfected the tōranba — the billowing temper line that defines Osaka shintō — and died at forty-six having signed some of the most prized blades of the entire shintō era. With Sukenao the line ran to the 1690s: three smiths, and a papered legacy few whole schools can match.
The The Settsu Sukehiro School (助広), active 1624–1700 in Settsu Province across 2 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 1 Jūbun, 8 Jūbi, 10 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 148 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Settsu Sukehiro School (助広) · 1624 – 1700
Sukehiro (助廣) — Mainline · 1657-1682. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. The second-generation Sukehiro, the Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, was born at Uchide village in Settsu Province, the present Ashiya, in Kan'ei 14 (1637), his common name Jinnojo. He studied under the first-generation smith called the Soboro Sukehiro, and after his teacher's death he became his adopted son and succeeded as the second generation. In Meireki 3 (1657) he received the court title Echizen no Kami, and in Kanbun 7 (1667) he was retained as house smith by Aoyama Inaba no Kami Munetoshi (青山因幡守宗俊), the governor of Osaka Castle; he died in Tenna 2 (1682) at the young age of forty-six. The first generation was a pupil of the first Kawachi no Kami Kunisuke and so stood in the Osaka-Ishido choji tradition, from which the second generation's earliest work descends before he broke away. His name rests on one invention. The published sources state that he came to found the distinctive temper called toran-midare (濤瀾乱), the regular large gunome cresting like ocean swells, and they place him with Inoue Shinkai of Osaka and Nagasone Kotetsu of Edo among the masters of the age.
The full and famous manner is the toran-ba. Over a tightly forged ko-itame the published sources record a large gunome-midare that takes a billowing, turbulent-wave appearance, opened at the base by a short straight yakidashi; the nioi runs deep, ko-nie adheres thickly, ashi enter, sunagashi and kinsuji run through, and tobiyaki-like jewels are at times tempered along the upper half. The nioiguchi, the sources return to again and again, is bright and clear. The published record names this manner his own creation outright and describes its sweep: that he founded the toran and won universal acclaim, a development that exerted great influence not only in his own time but on later generations and on the swordsmiths of the Shinshinto age. The texts read his development as a single arc, stated almost verbatim across his blades: in the early period a choji-midare in the Ishido manner, then a turn to gunome-midare, and at last the founding of the toran that is uniquely his.
The forging beneath the temper is the second pillar of his hand. The published sources describe a ko-itame that is most tightly packed, the steel clear, with ji-nie applied thickly in a fine, dustlike manner and fine chikei entering well. It is a bright and well-ordered jigane, and the sources find in it, with the temper above, the source of his renown: the precise clarity of the jigane and the deep, bright character of the nioiguchi. Alongside the celebrated toran runs a suguha he handled with equal mastery. The published sources, having named the toran, add that apart from it his suguha is also exceedingly skilled, and they describe it as a chu-suguha carrying a shallow notare, often a five-fold undulation that the judges treat as a point of appreciation peculiar to him. There too the nioi is deep, ko-nie thick and finely even, with kinsuji and sunagashi within, and the boshi runs straight and turns in ko-maru, the point often showing hakikake and a somewhat deeper temper that the sources read as his habitual hand.
The chronology of his work turns on a single date, read straight off the nakago. The published sources record that from the second month of Enpo 2 (1674) he changed the earlier angular kaku-Tsuda signature, cut in gyosho, to the cursive maru-Tsuda in sosho, a change that followed a Konoe-style calligraphy bestowed through his domain; the world calls the earlier form kaku-Tsuda (角津田) and the later maru-Tsuda (丸津田), so the form of the signature alone dates a blade before or after that line. The dense dated inscriptions of the Enpo years give his toran a tight year-by-year chronology, from the youthful, vigorous toran of the Kanbun thirties to the fully realized pieces of the late Enpo and Tenna years. Of the manner of these two registers the sources are candid about the standing of his suguha: while the brilliant toran is his fame, there are those who praise the suguha the more, the published sources writing that some hold his straight temper above the showier wave (華麗な濤瀾よりも直刃の方をより称讃するむきもある). The two-character signature, the sources note, belongs only to his late work and is exceedingly rare; carved blades are rarer still, his oeuvre carrying horimono only seldom and then by a specialist carver, the Osaka carver Nagasaka Yuhoken named in connection with his and Sukenao's blades.
Within the school he is the founder of the toran and one of the twin masters of Osaka Shinto. The published sources set his suguha repeatedly beside that of Inoue Shinkai of the same province and call the two a twin peak, the discriminator named outright: the nie of Sukehiro's straight temper is finer in particle and more evenly arranged, and from the edge toward the ji there appears a minute activity the sources liken to the look of finely torn hosho paper, 「奉書紙を裂いたような細かな働きが顕著に看取される」. They measure him against his own teacher as well: handling the Soboro Sukehiro's rare suguha in his own bright, clear nioiguchi, he is judged the master who surpassed his teacher, 「師父にまさる名工である」. And they place him against Edo: with Nagasone Kotetsu he is 「古来、新刀中の東西の両横綱とも称せられている」. His foremost pupil was Tsuda Sukenao, who carried the toran forward, and the manner he founded shaped the Osaka swords of his day and after.
In Fujishiro's grading he is Sai-jo saku, the highest rank, and in the Toko Taikan his valuation stands among the very highest of the Shinto smiths. The weight of designation behind his name is heavy: among the blades on record one is an Important Cultural Property, with six in the Tokubetsu Juyo tier and the great body of his work, some eighty-nine pieces, in the Juyo tier; he has no National Treasure on record. The richest provenance gathers, as one would expect, around his patron: many of his finest pieces descend in the Aoyama house of the Osaka castle governors, among them the great tachi dated Enpo 6 named Murasame (村雨), forged at Munetoshi's order and long secretly held in the family, said to have been brought out only at the prayers for rain, its blade bearing the Sanskrit characters for Daiitoku Myo-o (大威徳明王) and Marishiten (摩利支天). Through the same house passed the celebrated collaborative katana of Enpo 3 by Sukehiro and Inoue Shinkai, which Kamata Gyomyo later praised in his Shinto Bengi (新刀弁疑). His provenance otherwise rests largely with long-private collections rather than named institutions. Of his designated works on record, almost all sit in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers and so are held more than traded; a Sukehiro of the first quality, and above all an Aoyama piece, comes to a private collector only rarely, a landmark when it does.
Sukenao (助直) — Mainline · 1668-1693. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sukenao was born in Kan'ei 16 (1639) at Takagi in Yasu District of Ōmi Province, common name Magotarō, and his dated blades run from Kanbun 8 (1668) to Genroku 6 (1693), the year he turned fifty-five. The published sources record that he first entered the school of the first-generation Soboro Sukehiro and then perfected his craft under the second, Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, that he married into the house as Sukehiro's brother-in-law and so prefixed the Tsuda surname to his signature, and that after the master died in Tenna 2 (1682) he succeeded to that place and took up permanent residence in Osaka. He signs in several settled forms, Tsuda Ōmi no Kami Sukenao, Ōmi no Kami Takagi-jū Sukenao, and the plainer Sukenao, often adding the Genroku or Tenna date and his birthplace of Gōshū Takagi. Among the Tsuda pupils he is the one whose hand stands closest to the master, and the published commentary on a Tokubetsu Jūyō from his very latest years calls it 「師の助広と区別し難いほどの上出来」, so well made as to be difficult to tell apart from Sukehiro, displaying fully matured technique.
The manner for which Sukenao is known is the *tōran-midare*, the surging large-wave temper the published sources say he inherited from his master, who first established it. He opens the edge at the base with a straight *suguha yakidashi*, the Osaka Shintō start, then raises a body of large *gunome* mixed with *chōji* and *ko-notare* that rolls into the wave, long *ashi* entering, the *nioi* exceptionally deep, *ko-nie* thickly adhered, *sunagashi* and fine *kinsuji* running through, and at times a few *tobiyaki* above the line. The *nioiguchi* is bright and clear, and it is this brilliance, deep and lucid with well-gathered *ko-nie*, that the judges read as approaching Sukehiro. Where a difference shows it is in the *sugata*: his katana tend to run broad in body with a thick *kasane* and a *chū-kissaki* drawn slightly long, a more robust and dignified shape than the master's, so that even when the wave rivals Sukehiro the bearing remains his own.
The *jigane* is the constant beneath all his work. He forges a tightly packed *ko-itame* in which the *ji-nie* gathers densely and finely, a dust-like field with *chikei* entering and the steel clear, the bright Osaka *jigane* on which the wave is set. On the finest pieces the published sources describe a *ji* and *ha* both thickly covered in *nie* and clear throughout, and one Tokubetsu Jūyō is praised in exactly these terms, its forging a dense *ko-itame* with fine dust-like *ji-nie* adhering thickly and *chikei* entering, the whole called 「地刃に助直の特色と美点が十二分に示されている」, the distinctive features and merits of Sukenao fully manifested in both *ji* and *ha*. The *bōshi* across his blades runs straight to a *ko-maru* with a short return, sometimes with *hakikake*, the calm finish that closes even his most active tempers.
Beside the full *tōran* the published sources name two further registers, so that his oeuvre is read in three faces rather than one. The first is a *gunome-midare* and *notare*, the large *gunome* standing without rising fully into the wave, mixed with *ko-notare* and at times pointed elements, deep in *nioi* and well adhered in *ko-nie*. The second is a quiet *suguha*, at times a *hiro-suguha*, which he handled with skill even as the wave remained his renown. A Jūyō from Enpō 3, made while he was still working in his native Takagi, is tempered in a broad *suguha* with a tendency to *nagare* and *ko-gunome* at the *yakidashi*, and the published commentary, granting it is calm, adds 「流石に堂々たる出来である」, that it is dignified work all the same. On one dated *wakizashi* the judges note that he 「他にこの脇指の如く直刃も巧みにこなしている」, handles *suguha* with great skill beyond his usual wave. The carving on his blades stays to a simple *bō-hi*; the devotional *kurikara* and *hataboko* that appear on a few of his pieces were cut by horimono specialists such as Nagasaka Yūhōken, not by his own hand.
What sets Sukenao apart within the Tsuda line is the closeness of the resemblance held in check by his own shape. The published sources repeatedly read his finest blades as rivalling the master, one Tokubetsu Jūyō called 「一見師助広を髣髴とさせる助直の秀作」, an excellent work that at a glance calls Sukehiro to mind, while noting that his body runs broader than the master's and conveys a more imposing presence. He stands, then, as the faithful heir who carried the *tōran-midare* forward after Sukehiro's early death rather than as an innovator, the brightness of his *nioiguchi* and the robustness of his *sugata* the marks that distinguish his hand from the source it descends from. The three registers, the surging wave, the *gunome notare*, and the calm *suguha*, are the published record's own division of his work, and in each he is held to be a superior hand.
Sukenao is graded Jō-jō saku by Fujishiro and ranks among the leading names of Osaka Shintō. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the higher modern tiers, with four blades at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and the larger body at Jūyō, sixty-three across the two tiers in all, almost all of them signed and many dated. His provenance is recorded in only a few cases, among them a blade once held in the Imperial collection and another from the Matsudaira Chikahiro line, the rest of recorded whereabouts unrecorded. Because so few of his blades change hands, and because most designated work of his standing is held rather than traded, a signed and dated Sukenao comes to market only from time to time, a katana in his full *tōran-midare* the more sought when it does; a privately held example, broad in body and bright in *nioiguchi*, is a fine thing for a collector to encounter, the work of the pupil who came closest of all to Tsuda Sukehiro.