Attached to Taima-dera in the Yamato hills, the smiths of the Taima school forged under monastic patronage — and worked, like temple artisans, largely without signing. Founded by Kuniyuki in the late Kamakura and carried through the Nanbokuchō by Aritoshi, Tomokiyo, and Tomoyuki, the line survives almost entirely through unsigned blades read by kiwame. Beneath a subdued, contemplative surface the Taima hand hides a wealth of activity: a suguha tempered over standing masame, broken by hotsure, nijūba, and kuichigai-ba, lit with kinsuji and sunagashi and a hakikake bōshi ending in yakizume — restraint on the surface, brilliance within.
Era
1280 — 1450
Members
74
Kokuhō
0
Jūbun
0
Jūbi
0
Tokujū
3
Jūyō
72
For Sale
3
74smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi3Tokujū72Jūyō
The Yamato Taima School (当麻) Lineage
The The Yamato Taima School (当麻), active 1280–1450 in Yamato Province across 74 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 0 Jūbun, 0 Jūbi, 3 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 72 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Yamato Taima School (当麻) · 1280 – 1450
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Tokujū, Jūyō. Aritoshi is a swordsmith of the Taima school of Yamato, working in the late Kamakura period. His real date is fixed not by the reference compendia, which place the name around the Bun'ei era, but by a surviving tachi dated Einin 6 (1298); the published sources note repeatedly that no Bun'ei-dated work has ever been seen, while the Einin piece makes his period of activity clear. The name is recorded across two generations. The first signs in two characters, Aritoshi, and the second in three, Naga Aritoshi, understood as an abbreviation of Nagahyoe-no-jo Aritoshi and placed around the Kenmu years at the threshold of Nanbokucho, with one account deriving the *Naga* from the Hasebe house. The published sources keep the division of the two generations open, calling it a matter that still requires study. He belongs to the same Yamato world as Tegai and the other Taima hands, a tradition of flowing steel and a *nie* *suguha*.
His is a *suguha* hand, but a particular one, and the particularity is its tell. Over and over the published commentary settles on the same edge: a *suguha* or *suguha-cho*, often with a shallow *notare* and a little *ko-gunome* set into it, into which run *hotsure* along the *habuchi*, *kuichigai-ba*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and, above all, a recurring *nijuba*, the doubled temper line, together with *uchi-noke*. On the Einin-dated first-generation work this doubling is almost continuous, and the judges single it out as unusual even within Yamato, one Taima katana being described as 「大和物でも珍らしい程に二重刃の著るしい作」, a piece in which the *nijuba* is conspicuous to a degree rare even among Yamato works. Of his manner as a whole the published sources say plainly that the tightly forged *ko-itame*, with *masame* not much in evidence, and the *ko-nie* *suguha* carrying its near-constant *nijuba*, make for a style 「当麻物としてはやや異風」, somewhat idiosyncratic for Taima work. That idiosyncrasy is precisely how he is known.
The *jigane* is the steady foundation beneath that edge. It is an *itame* that flows strongly and inclines toward *masame*, with thick *ji-nie*, fine *chikei* entering, and at times a *nie-utsuri* standing in the *ji*; where the forging tightens into *ko-itame* the grain stills and the *masame* recedes, as on the dated piece, while on the broader *suriage* blades the *hada* stands a little and the flow is more open. The construction is the Yamato one, a broad and rather high *shinogi-ji*, the *sori* often deep at the hips, and a *bo-hi* frequently carved through. Above this the *boshi* runs straight with vigorous *hakikake*, turning in a small *ko-maru* or finishing in a *yakitsume*, at times tending toward *nie-kuzure*, and the *nijuba* sometimes carries up into the point as well.
The record divides cleanly in two. On one side stand the few signed works, the documentary core, by which everything else is measured; the published sources prize them, calling the Tokubetsu Juyo signed *tachi* 「数少ない有俊在銘中の優品」, a fine example among the small number of signed Aritoshi works, and valuing even a *gaku-mei* fragment as precious reference material because signed Taima blades are so rare. On the other side stands the body of his record, the *o-suriage mumei* *katana* attributed to him from era, school and these Yamato tells. The two-generation question runs through the signed and unsigned alike: the manner of the signature differs from blade to blade, and the workmanship divides between a quieter, more archaic register and a busier one, so the judges leave the count of hands open for further study rather than forcing a single line.
Within Yamato he is set apart by exactly what the judges name when they confirm an attribution. His prominent *nijuba* and *uchi-noke*, riding a flowing *itame-masame* *jigane*, distinguish his *suguha* from the plainer Taima and Tegai hands, so that on an unsigned blade rich in those activities the commentary concludes 「有俊と鑑することが最も妥当」, that judging it Aritoshi is the most appropriate conclusion among Yamato makers. The same restraint cuts the other way: where the *jiba* is good but the edge quiet and without his doubled line, the attribution is offered only as plausible. The temper is calm and the impression subdued, and the published sources read that plainness as a virtue rather than a want, calling one Tokubetsu Juyo *tachi* a work that, 「いかにも大和物らしい地味な中に味わいの深い作風」, presents within an unmistakably Yamato plainness a deeply flavored and engaging style.
For the collector Aritoshi is a rare and quiet Yamato name rather than a celebrated one. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; the *Toko Taikan* places his value in the middle ranks. His designated record runs instead through the higher modern tiers, two blades at Tokubetsu Juyo and the rest, some forty in all, at Juyo, and within that number signed pieces can be counted on one hand. His blades are held in institutions with their own established provenance, among them the Chido Museum and the Tokugawa Art Museum, with the remainder in private hands of largely unrecorded whereabouts. Because so few were ever signed and so little of the record can trade, a signed Aritoshi comes to light only seldom; a *suriage mumei* katana papered to him is the more usual encounter, and a privately held example of either is a notable thing for a collector to meet, a document of how the Taima school worked at the close of the Kamakura age.
Mitsusuke (光夫) — Mainline · 1375-1379. Tokujū. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Nobunaga is recorded in the published sources as a smith of the Yamato Taima school who, at the start of the Muromachi period, removed to Asako in Echizen, where the same name continued for several generations under the collective title Asako Taima. The Taima group was one of the five Yamato traditions, the temple smiths of Taima-dera, and Nobunaga carried its masame-leaning steel and nie-laden temper north into Hokuriku. There the work took on a second character. The published commentary on a tanto designated in 2023 names it outright, finding in the forging both the steel of the Hokuriku makers and the temperament of Yamato, 「北陸物の特徴と大和気質が看取される」. His prime years are placed around the Oei era, and the designated record gathers six blades, all signed with a bold two-character 信長 and overwhelmingly tanto, so that he is known less as one documented hand than as the manner of a northern Taima line held across generations.
The make that most distinguishes his work is an angular gunome-midare. The published sources fix it in a single repeated sentence, that his style resembles the Fujishima line of Echizen and Kaga, 「藤島一派に似て」, with an angular gunome predominating, 「角ばる互の目乱れが多く」, and they say so again of the Kashu Fujishima manner with the same words, 「角張る互の目乱れが多く」. The square-shouldered teeth run linked together with ko-notare and small gunome, and the habuchi frays as it goes, hotsure and nijuba opening along the edge while sunagashi sweeps the ha and kinsuji enter. On a tanto of the twenty-fourth session the same hand works gunome mixed with ko-notare, the nie thick, the sunagashi and kinsuji frequent, and the published sources call it a superior work of the smith, 「同工の優れた作である」. The boshi is the school's other tell, most often brushed into hakikake, 「帽子は掃きかけていることが多い」, turning back ko-maru or to a point.
Under this temper lies a forging that reads two ways at once. It is an itame mixed with mokume and a flowing nagare-hada, standing open rather than tight, the ji-nie gathering well and chikei entering, the steel inclining to a darkened tone the commentary calls kane-black. That standing, blackish jigane is the Hokuriku side of the inheritance, while the masame-gokoro mixed near edge and ridge and the quiet nie of the suguha pieces keep the Yamato side visible. A kodachi of the twenty-fifth session adds a faint shirake-utsuri rising over the ji and a habuchi leaning saka on the lower ura, a touch of the misty old reflection on otherwise northern steel. The tanto of the sixty-ninth session sets the whole jigane out at its most open, the grain standing with mokume and nagare and the kane darkening, and it is on that blade that the published sources read the Hokuriku character and the Yamato temperament together.
Against the angular standard the published sources mark a quieter register, noting that suguha and shallow notare are also among the work. A tanto of the twenty-second session is a chu-suguha, the nioiguchi drawn tight with ko-nie and a touch of yakikomi near the machi, well forged and sound, the school in its calm key. A wakizashi of the twenty-fourth session takes a shallow notare instead, laid with hotsure, nijuba, frequent sunagashi and kinsuji, and the commentary singles out exactly this manner as the very feature of the smith, that the blade tempers a notare ha and shows Nobunaga's character, 「のたれの刃を焼いて信長の特色をみせ」. The two registers are not finally separate, and the latest tanto proves it: katakiriba on the omote, hira-zukuri on the ura, its omote breaking into a boxed gunome with a suggestion of choji while its ura runs a shallow notare, a single blade in which two manners are shown at once, 「一口で二様の作域が示された」. Because not one of the six is dated, this manner-reading is how the line is ordered, the kodachi judged not to fall below early Muromachi serving as the chief anchor.
What sets Nobunaga apart is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than from his model. The resemblance to Fujishima is real and the sources insist on it, but the discriminators are the angular gunome run linked with a frayed habuchi, the standing dark steel that turns kane-black, and the hakikake boshi, the cluster that marks a northern Taima blade and separates it from the tighter Yamashiro-leaning suguha of the parent Taima at home. A same-name smith worked in Kaga, and the published sources are careful to keep the two apart, recording that the relationship between them is not clear. The signature itself is part of the kantei: all six designated blades carry the two-character 信長, four on ubu nakago and two shortened, the form almost always tanto, and the commentary observes that genuinely signed long pieces are uncommon, 「信長有銘の作品はめずらしく」.
The designated record runs to six blades, all of them in the Juyo tier and none raised to the higher designations above it, and the toko-taikan valuation sits in the middle of the field, so Nobunaga is a connoisseur's name rather than a headline one. His standing rests instead on a single celebrated mounting. The kodachi of the twenty-fifth session is housed in a Higo koshirae copied faithfully after the Nobunaga mounting once held by Hosokawa Sansai, the blade within a shortened but genuinely two-character-signed tachi that the published sources praise for showing the period color of early Muromachi well, 「室町初期の時代色をよく示した」, and they prize it the more because his signed long work is so rare. Provenance is otherwise thin in his record, the Sansai association the one firmly grounded thread. For a private collector the practical picture follows from the numbers: the surviving designated pieces sit in the Juyo and lower tiers rather than locked away as cultural property, so an Asako Taima tanto is not beyond reach, but only a handful are on record and one comes to market rarely, a signed long blade rarer still, so that meeting one is a matter of patience.
Tomokiyo (友清) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Jūyō. Among the five extant blades carrying the attribution to Tomokiyo, only one is signed: a shortened kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri tachi that keeps the mei Yamato no kuni Taima Tomo, cut off below the third character, and is recorded in the Kōzan oshigata. The published sources call it one of the few signed works of the school and a precious resource for its study, and it is on this single tachi that every one of the mumei attributions to Tomokiyo is argued. Tomokiyo was a swordsmith of the Yamato Taima school active in the Nanbokuchō period, the school being the contingent of smiths attached to Taima-dera in Yamato whose founder was Kuniyuki and which flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era. The signature reference works record several smiths of the name across three generations, the first a son of Kuniyuki active around the Gennō era of the late Kamakura, with same-named smiths following in the Nanbokuchō Ryakuō era and the early Muromachi Ōei, while the surviving blades fixed by appraisal are read as the Nanbokuchō Tomokiyo. What the record makes plain about the school is the scarcity of signatures: the Taima smiths, being attached to the temple, naturally left few signed works, so that the line comes down largely as unsigned pieces fixed by kiwame.
His is the Taima manner, and the most constant feature across his surviving work is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake. On four of the five blades the point is brushed in this way, finishing at times in a ko-maru, at times in yakizume without a turnback, and at times going midare-komi to a point or rising flame-like, the Yamato-Taima way of stopping the temper that holds across the signed tachi and the mumei katana alike. Over a quiet line he builds his hamon: a suguha base waved only shallowly into notare, into which small gunome enter, with at times ko-chōji as well, the disorder always slight and worked over the straight line rather than displacing it. The habuchi frays into hotsure, breaks into kuichigai-ba, doubles into nijūba and lifts into uchinoke, while ashi and yō enter the tempered area and the nioi runs deep. Through the ha the nie lies thick, with kinsuji and sunagashi flashing repeatedly and the nioiguchi bright and clear. It is a restrained temper carried with abundant activity, the quality the appraisers read when they call the mumei pieces a clear showing of Yamato work and above all of the Taima school.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows overall and, near the edge and in places, gathers into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with ji-nie laid thick and dust-fine over it and chikei entering the grain frequently, the steel clear. On the signed tachi the same forging tightens, and over it rises a nie-utsuri, the reflection that on this smith is a product of nie rather than of the Bizen midare-utsuri; the published sources describe the anchor blade as one that forges an itame tightly knit with a rising utsuri and tempers a suguha-chō into which small gunome are mixed. On the mumei katana the masame-leaning forging is most pronounced, the ji-nie laid in fine dust and the chikei frequent, and it is there that the Taima character is judged most strongly manifest in both ji and ha. The temper across the corpus stays a suguha-chō, on the signed tachi mixed with kaku-ha-style gunome, on the later katana departing at times into a shallow notare with small gunome, but it never abandons the calm base from which the Yamato activity is read.
The corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he comes down to us. The signed tachi is the small fixed point, an early piece in kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri with shallow sori and an extended chū-kissaki, keeping only the partial mei. Against it stand the Nanbokuchō katana, wide-bodied blades cut down to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated kissaki and from the Taima activity at its strongest. Two of these show the Enbun-Jōji construction, broad in the body with little taper from base to point and a great kissaki, and the published sources find in that shape a commonality with the signed Tomokiyo tachi that makes the attribution sound. On one of the later katana the activity departs the quiet base far enough that the judges single it out, writing that compared with the usual appraisals to this smith a variation is seen in the hamon, and that it is a blade of genuine interest. The method by which these mumei blades reach his name is stated without disguise: they show a construction and a ji-ha closely resembling the signed tachi, so that the present work, in reliance upon that same tachi, is to be judged Taima Tomokiyo.
His distinction is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast with the other Yamato schools. The flowing masame-leaning itame, the thick dust-fine ji-nie and frequent chikei, the suguha-chō with small gunome brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and the conspicuous ashi and yō within a bright, nie-laden edge are the marks the appraisers read as Taima, and on the elongated wide-bodied katana as Tomokiyo in particular. He stands among the other Taima names the signature works list yet whose signed blades scarcely survive, known almost wholly through unsigned attributions and the single partial signature, and no successor line is drawn for him, the surviving body too thin to carry the school forward through his hand.
The whole of Tomokiyo's recorded output stands at the highest civilian level of designation, five blades among the Important Sword tier and none higher, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them, and the Fujishiro appraisal places his workmanship at the jō-jō saku level. There is no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon, and no institutional holder is named in the published record, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions and a handful of signed survivals. What a collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the wide ō-suriage katana cut down from the school's grander Nanbokuchō blades, the single wakizashi, and above all the signed tachi prized first as documentary evidence of so rare a hand. Such pieces are held far more often than traded; the mumei katana may from time to time be met with by a patient collector, while the signed tachi that anchors the whole remains among the rarest things a student of the Taima school could hope to handle.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Jūyō. Among the five extant blades carrying Tomoyuki's attribution, only one is signed in full: a hira-zukuri tantō cut with the large four-character mei Taima Tomoyuki, which the published sources call an exceptionally valuable example as documentary material precisely because signed work by this smith is so scarce. Tomoyuki was a swordsmith of the Yamato Taima school active in the Nanbokuchō period, the school being the contingent of smiths attached to Taima-dera in Yamato whose founder was Kuniyuki and which flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era and on into the Muromachi. One tradition holds that Tomoyuki was a grandson of Kuniyuki. The school's antiquity is fixed by the dated tachi of Aritoshi, transmitted as being of this lineage, which bears an inscription of Einin 6 (1298), so that the production of the line is understood to reach back earlier still. What the record makes plain about Tomoyuki himself is the rarity of his hand: the published sources state outright that his signed works are exceedingly rare, and that most of the school survives as unsigned pieces fixed by appraisal.
His is the Taima manner, and the most constant feature across the whole of his surviving work is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake, most often ending in yakizume without a turnback. The phrase the published sources use of his tantō, that the point is brushed and finishes in yakizume, recurs in one form or another on every blade in the corpus, from the tachi to the great katana to the dated ken. Over a quiet line he builds his temper: a suguha base waved only shallowly into notare, into which enter ko-gunome, small ko-chōji, nijūba and kuichigai-ba, with hotsure unravelling along the habuchi. The activity within the ha is the part the judges single out. Even among works given to the Taima school, they write, the working of ashi and yō inside the tempered area is conspicuous, the ha-nie thick and brightly clear, with kinsuji and sunagashi flashing through it repeatedly. It is in that abundant glittering nie, on the signed tantō, that the published sources say one may perceive Tomoyuki's capability.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows, gathering near the edge into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with thick ji-nie laid over it and chikei entering the grain. On the dated ken the forging tightens into a well-knit masame-gokoro with fine ji-nie throughout, the phrase the appraisers set down as masame well-forged. On his finest katana the same jigane carries a tendency to stand open and raises a nie-utsuri, the reflection that on this smith is a product of nie rather than of the Bizen midare-utsuri, and it is there, the published sources judge, that the characteristics of the Taima school are most strongly manifest in both ji and ha. The temper on that blade is a suguha-chō mixed with small chōji and small gunome, the edge breaking into hotsure, kuichigai-ba and yubashiri, the nioiguchi bright and clear.
The surviving corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he comes down to us. The Nanbokuchō katana are wide-bodied blades cut down to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated chū-kissaki and from the Taima activity at its strongest, for the texts are candid that on a shortened mumei blade no individuality singling out Tomoyuki can be discerned, even while there is no disagreement that it is a masterpiece of the school from the Nanbokuchō. Against these stand the few ubu signed pieces that anchor him. The tantō is a wide hira-zukuri with uchizori, carrying a suken on the omote and a shōbu-hi on the ura. The ken is a ryō-shinogi blade dated Shōchū 1 (1324), with a two-character signature on the omote and the date on the ura, and the published sources frame it within a standing scholarly problem: signed Yamato ken are few, and the texts can cite only a Shigeyoshi Nyūdō of Genkō 4, a Norizane of Shikkake, a Kanetoshi of Tegai and a small number of others, concluding that the study of Yamato ken remains to be awaited.
The lineage question is left expressly open, and the candour of the record on this point is itself characteristic of how thin the documentary base is. The name Tomoyuki, the published sources note, appears in the sword-signature reference works among the Yamato Senjuin group as well as within the Taima line, and one early entry adds that there is also a work of his bearing a Bunwa-era date. On the dated ken the judges allow that the piece is Yamato beyond doubt, yet observe that a ken tends to thin out the distinctive traits of a particular lineage, and so reserve the precise descent for future study. His distinction is best drawn not by contrast with the other Yamato schools but by his own grounded traits: the flowing masame-leaning itame, the suguha-based notare brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and the conspicuous ashi and yō within a bright, nie-laden edge are the marks the appraisers read as Taima and, on the elongated katana, as Tomoyuki in particular.
The whole of Tomoyuki's recorded output stands at the highest civilian level of designation, five blades among the Important Sword tier and none higher, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them. There is no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon, and no institutional holder is named in the published record, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions and a handful of signed survivals. What a collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the katana and tachi cut down from the school's grander blades, the signed tantō prized first as documentary evidence, and the dated ken with its gold-nashiji cloud-and-dragon sankō-zuka mounting. Such pieces are held far more often than traded, and a signed example in particular, valued as it is for fixing so rare a hand, comes to the open market seldom and stands as a landmark of Yamato work when it does.
Toshinaga (俊長) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. Toshinaga worked in Yamato Province across the late Kamakura and Nanbokucho periods, signing his blades Amaro Toshinaga, and the five designated works that carry his name fix him as a Taima smith of that age. Taima is one of the five Yamato schools, a body of swordsmiths rooted in the temple milieu of Taima-dera, and Toshinaga belongs to its later, Nanbokucho-period hand. He is transmitted since old times as a disciple of Takagi Sadamune, but the published sources do not let that account stand unexamined. Judging from his extant signed tachi and tanto, they write, the pupillage is difficult to recognize, *korai Takagi Sadamune no deshi to sarete iru ga genson suru zaimei no tachi tanto kara sore to mitome-gataku, dojidai no mono to omowareru*, and they place him instead as a smith of the same general period as Sadamune. Every one of his five blades on record is a mumei attribution, so that what is known of him is the recognized Toshinaga hand rather than a body of signed standards, and that hand is read in the Yamato coloration of his steel.
The feature that fixes his work is the masame that runs through the itame of his jigane. The steel is forged in *itame* mixed with *mokume*, gathering *ji-nie* and threaded with *chikei*, and into it runs a tendency toward *masame*, the straight grain rising through the surface and at times opening into *hada-dachi* and mottled *jifu*. The published sources name this directly as the constant of his work, that the forging carries a masame tendency, the hamon frays into *hotsure* with *nijuba*, and the boshi sweeps into *hakikake*, *kitae ni wa masame-ki ga ari, hamon wa hotsurete nijuba kakari, boshi mo hakikakeru nado shite sotai ni Yamato-iro ga mirareru tokoro ni tokucho ga aru*. The masame in the ji and the swept boshi above it are the two things his blades share whatever the temper between them, and they are the Yamato evidence by which a mumei blade is brought to his name.
That temper is worked in two registers. In the calmer of them the hamon is a *suguha-cho* or *chu-suguha* base carrying *ko-notare* and small *gunome*, with *kuichigai-ba* crossing the habuchi, *hotsure* fraying it, and strong *nie* that runs at times to a coarser grain, *nie-suji* and *kinsuji* playing within the band. This restrained manner is the one that resembles Sadamune, and it is set on a wide *shinogi-zukuri* tachi, often shortened to *o-suriage*. In the fuller register he takes *gunome-midare* as the principal mode, mixing in small *gunome* and small *midare*, fraying repeatedly into *hotsure* with *nie*, threading *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and scattering *tobiyaki*, while the boshi enters *midare-komi* and is brushed powerfully into *hakikake*. This manner is carried on wide, *sun-nobi* tanto and wakizashi, several built in *katakiriba-zukuri*, and it is the one the published sources judge filled with vigor; of one tanto worked thick in *nie* they write that the manner in which the *nie* gathers within the ha is splendid and the blade as a whole full of spirit, *hachu atsuku niezuku sama wa migoto de ari, sotai ni haki ni tonda ikko de aru*.
The debate over his name is in the published commentary itself, and it turns on the Sadamune resemblance. In his tanto, the sources note, the jigane shows *masame* prominently and the boshi tends to *hakikake*, while his tachi display a construction with high *shinogi*, so that a Yamato character can be discerned, *tanto ni miru jihada wa masame ga yoku araware boshi ga hakikake, tachi wa shinogi ga takai tsukurikomi wo shimeshi, Yamato-fu ga mitomerareru*. From this the appraisal proceeds by a single logic, stated plainly on the Nanbokucho katana shortened to o-suriage: at a glance the blade appears in the manner of Takagi Sadamune, yet a Yamato coloration is added to it, and so it is appropriate to appraise the work as Amaro Toshinaga, *ikken Takagi Sadamune-fu de sore ni Yamato-iro ga kami sareta deki to natte ori, Amaro Toshinaga to kansuru no ga dato de aru*. The Sadamune comparison is therefore not a trait borrowed onto his blades but the very baseline against which they are read; what the judges look for is the Yamato evidence laid over a Sadamune-like base, and where they find the masame, the hotsure with nijuba, and the swept boshi, the attribution is made.
His place in the school follows from this. Toshinaga is a Taima smith whose hand sits close enough to Sadamune that the old tradition made him Sadamune's pupil, and the published sources, declining to confirm that descent, keep him as a contemporary working the Yamato manner of the period. His distinction within that company is grounded in his own blades, the masame-bearing itame and the swept, fraying boshi, rather than in any single comparison; the Sadamune likeness is what his work must be told apart from, and the Yamato coloration is what tells it apart. A further register of his work is the carving, esoteric in character and varied across his blades. A *bonji* with *koshi-hi* and *soe-hi* stands on one wakizashi, a relief-carved *sanko-ken* set within the hi on another, *su-ken* and *gomabashi* on a tanto, and *futasuji-hi* carved kaki-nagashi on the shinogi-zukuri katana, the Buddhist motifs according with the Yamato temple world from which the Taima smiths came.
The connoisseurship around Toshinaga is that of a recognized Yamato hand whose surviving record is small. His designated work numbers five blades, all at the Juyo level, with no National Treasure, no Important Cultural Property, and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them, and none carries a recorded denrai, so that no daimyo provenance attaches to his name in this corpus and the owners on record are private holders rather than museums or shrines. His finer pieces are judged sound in both ji and ha and of good workmanship, one mumei wakizashi called a fine piece whose manner is strongly tied to his signed examples, *zaimei no deki ni tsuyoku musubareru sakufu wo shimeshita kahin de aru*, and one tanto called splendid in the thick nie within the ha and full of vigor. For a collector this places him among the quietly attainable Nanbokucho names rather than the celebrated ones. A mumei Toshinaga of either manner, the calm suguha-cho that reads toward Sadamune or the vigorous nie-laden gunome-midare with its swept boshi and esoteric carving, is a Yamato blade that comes to market only from time to time and rewards a patient eye, a sound and capably made work by a Taima smith whom the published record sets beside Sadamune himself.
Kuniyuki (國行) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Jūyō. Kuniyuki is regarded as the founder of the Taima group of Yamato Province and was active during the late Kamakura period. Among works of the Taima group, extant signed examples are few; only a small number survive with signatures by Kuniyuki and Aritoshi, while almost all others are works attributed as *mumei* appraisals. His two-character signature appears in two modes: one rendered in *kaisho* (formal block script) within the *kunigamae* enclosure, and another in *gyosho* (semi-cursive) form. Both varieties are considered extremely rare, and any *zaimei* tachi by this smith commands particular scholarly attention.
Kuniyuki's forging is a well-worked *itame-hada* mixed with *masame*, often showing areas of flowing grain and thick *ji-nie* with *chikei* appearing throughout. His *hamon* is typically *suguha*-based, gently *notare* and mixed with *choji* or small *gunome*, tending at times toward *ko-midare*. The *habuchi* characteristically shows *hotsure*, while within the tempered area *sunagashi* runs frequently, interspersed with *kinsuji*. The *nioiguchi* is bright and clear. His *boshi* tends toward *sugu*, turning *hakikake* or ending in *yakizume* — a disposition considered typical of Yamato workmanship. Activities such as *chikei* and *kinsuji* intermix freely, giving a lively effect to the steel.
Kuniyuki occupies a position of particular importance as the progenitor of the Taima lineage within the broader Yamato tradition. His work demonstrates the defining characteristics of Yamato-den forging — the prominent *masame* tendency, the bright and clear *ji* and *ha* described as *akaruku saeru*, and the restrained yet animated temper line — while displaying a refinement and individuality that distinguishes his hand from later Taima smiths. The rarity of signed examples only heightens the significance of each surviving blade, and his best works are noted for their *kenzen* condition and sound preservation.
Other smiths
Kunikiyo (國清) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kuniyuki (國行) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Kuniyuki is regarded as the founding master of the Taima school, one of the five great traditions of Yamato Province, and his activity is placed in the late Kamakura period. While sword compendia list many smiths of this group, extant signed works are exceedingly few; only a small number survive bearing signatures by Kuniyuki and Aritoshi, and most examples are *mumei* pieces identified through appraisal. The school flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho era, producing blades that embody the essential character of the Yamato tradition.
The construction of Kuniyuki's surviving works displays the hallmarks of Yamato craftsmanship with pronounced clarity. Wide *shinogi-ji* and a high *shinogi-suji* plainly manifest the tradition's structural principles, while the *jihada* — *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume* or *masame* — is consistently well-forged from base to tip. The *hamon* is characteristically *suguha*-based, with *hotsure* appearing along the *habuchi*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* intermingling to produce lively activity, and the *boshi* tending toward *hakikake* ending in *yakizume* — features the NBTHK identifies as "Yamato's traditional method." In certain works, a somewhat rough *nie* is mixed into the temper, introducing what the NBTHK describes as "an element of Soshu temperament," a quality consistent with the older attributions by the Hon'ami family for blades of this group.
Despite the rarity of signed examples, the designated works confirm Kuniyuki as a smith of genuine accomplishment. A tachi retaining a two-character signature following *suriage* is praised as displaying his characteristic features "conspicuously" and is described as "an excellent work." The *ji* and *ha* across his corpus are noted for being "bright and clear," with *chikei* and *kinsuji* interweaving to give the steel a vibrant quality. These qualities affirm the Taima school's standing among the five Yamato traditions and Kuniyuki's role as its defining voice.
Tomonaga (友長) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Tomoyuki of the Yamato Taima school comes down through four designated blades, three of them wide katana cut greatly down and one an unshortened tantō, and on not one of them does his own signature survive. The Taima group was the band of swordsmiths affiliated with Taima-dera in Yamato, flourishing from the middle of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokuchō era, and its founder was Kuniyuki, of whom several reliably signed works survive, some inscribed simply Taima. The published sources transmit Tomoyuki as a grandson of Kuniyuki and place him as a Nanbokuchō smith of the line, noting that other work of his is known, including an example carrying a Bunwa-era date. The scarcity of his signature is itself part of the record: the texts state that the small number of signed Taima works owes to the smiths' dependent standing under the temple, so that the school survives mostly as unsigned pieces fixed by appraisal.
The most constant feature of his hand is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake before turning in a small ko-maru or ending in yakizume without a turnback. That swept finish recurs across the corpus, on each of the great katana and on the tantō alike, and it is the Yamato-Taima trait the appraisers lean on. Over a quiet line he builds his temper. A medium suguha-chō carries ko-ashi and breaks in its lower half into a small midare, into which enter pointed togariba, gunome and a shallow notare, the habuchi unravelling into hotsure with ko-nie adhering. On the tantō the line narrows to a hoso-suguha with a tightened nioiguchi, hotsure and uchinoke appearing. On the widest of the late katana the activity deepens, the nie running deep with frequent sunagashi and kinsuji entering, the nioiguchi drawing tight above the monouchi while showing a slight clouded urumi on the ura.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows and, toward the edge, gathers into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with ji-nie laid over it throughout and chikei entering the grain of the tantō. It is this masame mixed into a flowing itame, taken together with the hotsure, uchinoke and kuichigai-ba along the edge and the brushed bōshi, that the published sources read on the late katana as 「大和物中当麻の特色」, the character of Taima within the Yamato tradition. On that blade the workmanship of both ji and ha is judged good, the published record noting plainly that 「地刃の出来がよく」, and the same wide-bodied construction with its extended chū-kissaki is what carries the attribution.
The surviving corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he is known. The Nanbokuchō katana are wide-bodied blades shortened to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated chū-kissaki together with the Taima jiba, for the texts are candid that on a shortened mumei blade 「個性は看取せられない」, no individuality singling out Tomoyuki can be discerned, even while there is no disagreement that the piece is 「南北朝期の同派の優作」, a superior work of the school from the Nanbokuchō. Against these stands the single ubu tantō, kanmuri-otoshi on the omote and hira-zukuri on the ura, thick in kasane with uchizori, which the published sources say 「大和物の特色をよく示し」, clearly displays the features of Yamato workmanship; on it a soe-hi accompanies a naginata-hi, and 「薙刀樋に添樋」, the companion groove beside the naginata-hi, is named as a Taima trait on kanmuri-otoshi construction.
The lineage question is left open, and the candour of the record on this point reflects how thin the documentary base for him is. He survives almost wholly as ō-suriage mumei katana fixed by appraisal, the texts observing that 「在銘の少ないのはその隷属関係による」, the rarity of signatures following from the temple dependency, and that 「多くは無銘の極めもの」, most pieces are unsigned and transmitted by kiwame. No successor line is drawn through him, the surviving body being too thin to extend the school forward. His distinction is best taken not by contrast with the other Yamato lines but by his own grounded traits: the flowing masame-leaning itame, the suguha-based temper brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and on the wide katana the deep nie with its sunagashi and kinsuji are the marks the appraisers read as Taima and, where the body is wide and the kissaki extended, as Tomoyuki in particular, so that 「友行の所伝は首肯される」, the tradition attributing the blade to him may be accepted.
The whole of his recorded output stands at the level of Important Sword and no higher, four blades among that tier, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them and no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon. The blades on record pass through private hands in Tokyo, Chiba and Wakayama rather than through any named institution, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions. What a private collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the wide katana cut down from the school's grander Nanbokuchō blades and the rare ubu tantō with its kanmuri-otoshi construction and accompanying grooves. Such pieces are held far more often than traded, and one given to Tomoyuki, valued for fixing so seldom-signed a hand, comes to the open market only on occasion and stands as a sound example of Nanbokuchō Yamato work when it does.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arimitsu (有光) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arimitsu (有光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arinori (有法) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Ario (有王) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有利) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Ariyoshi (有吉) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Fujihachi (藤八) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Iemasa (家政) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekiyo (包清) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (兼國) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (兼國) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (包國) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (包國) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Mitsutomo (光友) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Naganobu (永延) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nakajiro (中次郎) — Mainline · 1235-1238. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1428-1429. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobuyoshi (信吉) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Sueyuki (末行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Sueyuki (末行) — Mainline · 1457-1460. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Taima (當麻) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tohachi (藤八) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tohachi (藤八) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomohoshi (友法師) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomokiyo (友清) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomomitsu (友光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomonaga (友長) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomonori (友則) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoshige (友重) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoshige (友重) — Mainline · 1688-1704. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotada (友忠) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友利) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友俊) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友俊) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyoshi (友吉) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyoshi (友吉) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (才光) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (才光) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsugutsune (次恒) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Live·Taima lineage
当麻
The Yamato Taima School
Attached to Taima-dera in the Yamato hills, the smiths of the Taima school forged under monastic patronage — and worked, like temple artisans, largely without signing. Founded by Kuniyuki in the late Kamakura and carried through the Nanbokuchō by Aritoshi, Tomokiyo, and Tomoyuki, the line survives almost entirely through unsigned blades read by kiwame. Beneath a subdued, contemplative surface the Taima hand hides a wealth of activity: a suguha tempered over standing masame, broken by hotsure, nijūba, and kuichigai-ba, lit with kinsuji and sunagashi and a hakikake bōshi ending in yakizume — restraint on the surface, brilliance within.
Era
1280 — 1450
Members
74
Kokuhō
0
Jūbun
0
Jūbi
0
Tokujū
3
Jūyō
72
For Sale
3
74smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi3Tokujū72Jūyō
The Yamato Taima School (当麻) Lineage
The The Yamato Taima School (当麻), active 1280–1450 in Yamato Province across 74 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 0 Jūbun, 0 Jūbi, 3 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 72 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Yamato Taima School (当麻) · 1280 – 1450
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Tokujū, Jūyō. Aritoshi is a swordsmith of the Taima school of Yamato, working in the late Kamakura period. His real date is fixed not by the reference compendia, which place the name around the Bun'ei era, but by a surviving tachi dated Einin 6 (1298); the published sources note repeatedly that no Bun'ei-dated work has ever been seen, while the Einin piece makes his period of activity clear. The name is recorded across two generations. The first signs in two characters, Aritoshi, and the second in three, Naga Aritoshi, understood as an abbreviation of Nagahyoe-no-jo Aritoshi and placed around the Kenmu years at the threshold of Nanbokucho, with one account deriving the *Naga* from the Hasebe house. The published sources keep the division of the two generations open, calling it a matter that still requires study. He belongs to the same Yamato world as Tegai and the other Taima hands, a tradition of flowing steel and a *nie* *suguha*.
His is a *suguha* hand, but a particular one, and the particularity is its tell. Over and over the published commentary settles on the same edge: a *suguha* or *suguha-cho*, often with a shallow *notare* and a little *ko-gunome* set into it, into which run *hotsure* along the *habuchi*, *kuichigai-ba*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and, above all, a recurring *nijuba*, the doubled temper line, together with *uchi-noke*. On the Einin-dated first-generation work this doubling is almost continuous, and the judges single it out as unusual even within Yamato, one Taima katana being described as 「大和物でも珍らしい程に二重刃の著るしい作」, a piece in which the *nijuba* is conspicuous to a degree rare even among Yamato works. Of his manner as a whole the published sources say plainly that the tightly forged *ko-itame*, with *masame* not much in evidence, and the *ko-nie* *suguha* carrying its near-constant *nijuba*, make for a style 「当麻物としてはやや異風」, somewhat idiosyncratic for Taima work. That idiosyncrasy is precisely how he is known.
The *jigane* is the steady foundation beneath that edge. It is an *itame* that flows strongly and inclines toward *masame*, with thick *ji-nie*, fine *chikei* entering, and at times a *nie-utsuri* standing in the *ji*; where the forging tightens into *ko-itame* the grain stills and the *masame* recedes, as on the dated piece, while on the broader *suriage* blades the *hada* stands a little and the flow is more open. The construction is the Yamato one, a broad and rather high *shinogi-ji*, the *sori* often deep at the hips, and a *bo-hi* frequently carved through. Above this the *boshi* runs straight with vigorous *hakikake*, turning in a small *ko-maru* or finishing in a *yakitsume*, at times tending toward *nie-kuzure*, and the *nijuba* sometimes carries up into the point as well.
The record divides cleanly in two. On one side stand the few signed works, the documentary core, by which everything else is measured; the published sources prize them, calling the Tokubetsu Juyo signed *tachi* 「数少ない有俊在銘中の優品」, a fine example among the small number of signed Aritoshi works, and valuing even a *gaku-mei* fragment as precious reference material because signed Taima blades are so rare. On the other side stands the body of his record, the *o-suriage mumei* *katana* attributed to him from era, school and these Yamato tells. The two-generation question runs through the signed and unsigned alike: the manner of the signature differs from blade to blade, and the workmanship divides between a quieter, more archaic register and a busier one, so the judges leave the count of hands open for further study rather than forcing a single line.
Within Yamato he is set apart by exactly what the judges name when they confirm an attribution. His prominent *nijuba* and *uchi-noke*, riding a flowing *itame-masame* *jigane*, distinguish his *suguha* from the plainer Taima and Tegai hands, so that on an unsigned blade rich in those activities the commentary concludes 「有俊と鑑することが最も妥当」, that judging it Aritoshi is the most appropriate conclusion among Yamato makers. The same restraint cuts the other way: where the *jiba* is good but the edge quiet and without his doubled line, the attribution is offered only as plausible. The temper is calm and the impression subdued, and the published sources read that plainness as a virtue rather than a want, calling one Tokubetsu Juyo *tachi* a work that, 「いかにも大和物らしい地味な中に味わいの深い作風」, presents within an unmistakably Yamato plainness a deeply flavored and engaging style.
For the collector Aritoshi is a rare and quiet Yamato name rather than a celebrated one. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; the *Toko Taikan* places his value in the middle ranks. His designated record runs instead through the higher modern tiers, two blades at Tokubetsu Juyo and the rest, some forty in all, at Juyo, and within that number signed pieces can be counted on one hand. His blades are held in institutions with their own established provenance, among them the Chido Museum and the Tokugawa Art Museum, with the remainder in private hands of largely unrecorded whereabouts. Because so few were ever signed and so little of the record can trade, a signed Aritoshi comes to light only seldom; a *suriage mumei* katana papered to him is the more usual encounter, and a privately held example of either is a notable thing for a collector to meet, a document of how the Taima school worked at the close of the Kamakura age.
Mitsusuke (光夫) — Mainline · 1375-1379. Tokujū. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Jūyō. Nobunaga is recorded in the published sources as a smith of the Yamato Taima school who, at the start of the Muromachi period, removed to Asako in Echizen, where the same name continued for several generations under the collective title Asako Taima. The Taima group was one of the five Yamato traditions, the temple smiths of Taima-dera, and Nobunaga carried its masame-leaning steel and nie-laden temper north into Hokuriku. There the work took on a second character. The published commentary on a tanto designated in 2023 names it outright, finding in the forging both the steel of the Hokuriku makers and the temperament of Yamato, 「北陸物の特徴と大和気質が看取される」. His prime years are placed around the Oei era, and the designated record gathers six blades, all signed with a bold two-character 信長 and overwhelmingly tanto, so that he is known less as one documented hand than as the manner of a northern Taima line held across generations.
The make that most distinguishes his work is an angular gunome-midare. The published sources fix it in a single repeated sentence, that his style resembles the Fujishima line of Echizen and Kaga, 「藤島一派に似て」, with an angular gunome predominating, 「角ばる互の目乱れが多く」, and they say so again of the Kashu Fujishima manner with the same words, 「角張る互の目乱れが多く」. The square-shouldered teeth run linked together with ko-notare and small gunome, and the habuchi frays as it goes, hotsure and nijuba opening along the edge while sunagashi sweeps the ha and kinsuji enter. On a tanto of the twenty-fourth session the same hand works gunome mixed with ko-notare, the nie thick, the sunagashi and kinsuji frequent, and the published sources call it a superior work of the smith, 「同工の優れた作である」. The boshi is the school's other tell, most often brushed into hakikake, 「帽子は掃きかけていることが多い」, turning back ko-maru or to a point.
Under this temper lies a forging that reads two ways at once. It is an itame mixed with mokume and a flowing nagare-hada, standing open rather than tight, the ji-nie gathering well and chikei entering, the steel inclining to a darkened tone the commentary calls kane-black. That standing, blackish jigane is the Hokuriku side of the inheritance, while the masame-gokoro mixed near edge and ridge and the quiet nie of the suguha pieces keep the Yamato side visible. A kodachi of the twenty-fifth session adds a faint shirake-utsuri rising over the ji and a habuchi leaning saka on the lower ura, a touch of the misty old reflection on otherwise northern steel. The tanto of the sixty-ninth session sets the whole jigane out at its most open, the grain standing with mokume and nagare and the kane darkening, and it is on that blade that the published sources read the Hokuriku character and the Yamato temperament together.
Against the angular standard the published sources mark a quieter register, noting that suguha and shallow notare are also among the work. A tanto of the twenty-second session is a chu-suguha, the nioiguchi drawn tight with ko-nie and a touch of yakikomi near the machi, well forged and sound, the school in its calm key. A wakizashi of the twenty-fourth session takes a shallow notare instead, laid with hotsure, nijuba, frequent sunagashi and kinsuji, and the commentary singles out exactly this manner as the very feature of the smith, that the blade tempers a notare ha and shows Nobunaga's character, 「のたれの刃を焼いて信長の特色をみせ」. The two registers are not finally separate, and the latest tanto proves it: katakiriba on the omote, hira-zukuri on the ura, its omote breaking into a boxed gunome with a suggestion of choji while its ura runs a shallow notare, a single blade in which two manners are shown at once, 「一口で二様の作域が示された」. Because not one of the six is dated, this manner-reading is how the line is ordered, the kodachi judged not to fall below early Muromachi serving as the chief anchor.
What sets Nobunaga apart is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than from his model. The resemblance to Fujishima is real and the sources insist on it, but the discriminators are the angular gunome run linked with a frayed habuchi, the standing dark steel that turns kane-black, and the hakikake boshi, the cluster that marks a northern Taima blade and separates it from the tighter Yamashiro-leaning suguha of the parent Taima at home. A same-name smith worked in Kaga, and the published sources are careful to keep the two apart, recording that the relationship between them is not clear. The signature itself is part of the kantei: all six designated blades carry the two-character 信長, four on ubu nakago and two shortened, the form almost always tanto, and the commentary observes that genuinely signed long pieces are uncommon, 「信長有銘の作品はめずらしく」.
The designated record runs to six blades, all of them in the Juyo tier and none raised to the higher designations above it, and the toko-taikan valuation sits in the middle of the field, so Nobunaga is a connoisseur's name rather than a headline one. His standing rests instead on a single celebrated mounting. The kodachi of the twenty-fifth session is housed in a Higo koshirae copied faithfully after the Nobunaga mounting once held by Hosokawa Sansai, the blade within a shortened but genuinely two-character-signed tachi that the published sources praise for showing the period color of early Muromachi well, 「室町初期の時代色をよく示した」, and they prize it the more because his signed long work is so rare. Provenance is otherwise thin in his record, the Sansai association the one firmly grounded thread. For a private collector the practical picture follows from the numbers: the surviving designated pieces sit in the Juyo and lower tiers rather than locked away as cultural property, so an Asako Taima tanto is not beyond reach, but only a handful are on record and one comes to market rarely, a signed long blade rarer still, so that meeting one is a matter of patience.
Tomokiyo (友清) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Jūyō. Among the five extant blades carrying the attribution to Tomokiyo, only one is signed: a shortened kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri tachi that keeps the mei Yamato no kuni Taima Tomo, cut off below the third character, and is recorded in the Kōzan oshigata. The published sources call it one of the few signed works of the school and a precious resource for its study, and it is on this single tachi that every one of the mumei attributions to Tomokiyo is argued. Tomokiyo was a swordsmith of the Yamato Taima school active in the Nanbokuchō period, the school being the contingent of smiths attached to Taima-dera in Yamato whose founder was Kuniyuki and which flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era. The signature reference works record several smiths of the name across three generations, the first a son of Kuniyuki active around the Gennō era of the late Kamakura, with same-named smiths following in the Nanbokuchō Ryakuō era and the early Muromachi Ōei, while the surviving blades fixed by appraisal are read as the Nanbokuchō Tomokiyo. What the record makes plain about the school is the scarcity of signatures: the Taima smiths, being attached to the temple, naturally left few signed works, so that the line comes down largely as unsigned pieces fixed by kiwame.
His is the Taima manner, and the most constant feature across his surviving work is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake. On four of the five blades the point is brushed in this way, finishing at times in a ko-maru, at times in yakizume without a turnback, and at times going midare-komi to a point or rising flame-like, the Yamato-Taima way of stopping the temper that holds across the signed tachi and the mumei katana alike. Over a quiet line he builds his hamon: a suguha base waved only shallowly into notare, into which small gunome enter, with at times ko-chōji as well, the disorder always slight and worked over the straight line rather than displacing it. The habuchi frays into hotsure, breaks into kuichigai-ba, doubles into nijūba and lifts into uchinoke, while ashi and yō enter the tempered area and the nioi runs deep. Through the ha the nie lies thick, with kinsuji and sunagashi flashing repeatedly and the nioiguchi bright and clear. It is a restrained temper carried with abundant activity, the quality the appraisers read when they call the mumei pieces a clear showing of Yamato work and above all of the Taima school.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows overall and, near the edge and in places, gathers into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with ji-nie laid thick and dust-fine over it and chikei entering the grain frequently, the steel clear. On the signed tachi the same forging tightens, and over it rises a nie-utsuri, the reflection that on this smith is a product of nie rather than of the Bizen midare-utsuri; the published sources describe the anchor blade as one that forges an itame tightly knit with a rising utsuri and tempers a suguha-chō into which small gunome are mixed. On the mumei katana the masame-leaning forging is most pronounced, the ji-nie laid in fine dust and the chikei frequent, and it is there that the Taima character is judged most strongly manifest in both ji and ha. The temper across the corpus stays a suguha-chō, on the signed tachi mixed with kaku-ha-style gunome, on the later katana departing at times into a shallow notare with small gunome, but it never abandons the calm base from which the Yamato activity is read.
The corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he comes down to us. The signed tachi is the small fixed point, an early piece in kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri with shallow sori and an extended chū-kissaki, keeping only the partial mei. Against it stand the Nanbokuchō katana, wide-bodied blades cut down to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated kissaki and from the Taima activity at its strongest. Two of these show the Enbun-Jōji construction, broad in the body with little taper from base to point and a great kissaki, and the published sources find in that shape a commonality with the signed Tomokiyo tachi that makes the attribution sound. On one of the later katana the activity departs the quiet base far enough that the judges single it out, writing that compared with the usual appraisals to this smith a variation is seen in the hamon, and that it is a blade of genuine interest. The method by which these mumei blades reach his name is stated without disguise: they show a construction and a ji-ha closely resembling the signed tachi, so that the present work, in reliance upon that same tachi, is to be judged Taima Tomokiyo.
His distinction is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast with the other Yamato schools. The flowing masame-leaning itame, the thick dust-fine ji-nie and frequent chikei, the suguha-chō with small gunome brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and the conspicuous ashi and yō within a bright, nie-laden edge are the marks the appraisers read as Taima, and on the elongated wide-bodied katana as Tomokiyo in particular. He stands among the other Taima names the signature works list yet whose signed blades scarcely survive, known almost wholly through unsigned attributions and the single partial signature, and no successor line is drawn for him, the surviving body too thin to carry the school forward through his hand.
The whole of Tomokiyo's recorded output stands at the highest civilian level of designation, five blades among the Important Sword tier and none higher, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them, and the Fujishiro appraisal places his workmanship at the jō-jō saku level. There is no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon, and no institutional holder is named in the published record, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions and a handful of signed survivals. What a collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the wide ō-suriage katana cut down from the school's grander Nanbokuchō blades, the single wakizashi, and above all the signed tachi prized first as documentary evidence of so rare a hand. Such pieces are held far more often than traded; the mumei katana may from time to time be met with by a patient collector, while the signed tachi that anchors the whole remains among the rarest things a student of the Taima school could hope to handle.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Jūyō. Among the five extant blades carrying Tomoyuki's attribution, only one is signed in full: a hira-zukuri tantō cut with the large four-character mei Taima Tomoyuki, which the published sources call an exceptionally valuable example as documentary material precisely because signed work by this smith is so scarce. Tomoyuki was a swordsmith of the Yamato Taima school active in the Nanbokuchō period, the school being the contingent of smiths attached to Taima-dera in Yamato whose founder was Kuniyuki and which flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era and on into the Muromachi. One tradition holds that Tomoyuki was a grandson of Kuniyuki. The school's antiquity is fixed by the dated tachi of Aritoshi, transmitted as being of this lineage, which bears an inscription of Einin 6 (1298), so that the production of the line is understood to reach back earlier still. What the record makes plain about Tomoyuki himself is the rarity of his hand: the published sources state outright that his signed works are exceedingly rare, and that most of the school survives as unsigned pieces fixed by appraisal.
His is the Taima manner, and the most constant feature across the whole of his surviving work is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake, most often ending in yakizume without a turnback. The phrase the published sources use of his tantō, that the point is brushed and finishes in yakizume, recurs in one form or another on every blade in the corpus, from the tachi to the great katana to the dated ken. Over a quiet line he builds his temper: a suguha base waved only shallowly into notare, into which enter ko-gunome, small ko-chōji, nijūba and kuichigai-ba, with hotsure unravelling along the habuchi. The activity within the ha is the part the judges single out. Even among works given to the Taima school, they write, the working of ashi and yō inside the tempered area is conspicuous, the ha-nie thick and brightly clear, with kinsuji and sunagashi flashing through it repeatedly. It is in that abundant glittering nie, on the signed tantō, that the published sources say one may perceive Tomoyuki's capability.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows, gathering near the edge into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with thick ji-nie laid over it and chikei entering the grain. On the dated ken the forging tightens into a well-knit masame-gokoro with fine ji-nie throughout, the phrase the appraisers set down as masame well-forged. On his finest katana the same jigane carries a tendency to stand open and raises a nie-utsuri, the reflection that on this smith is a product of nie rather than of the Bizen midare-utsuri, and it is there, the published sources judge, that the characteristics of the Taima school are most strongly manifest in both ji and ha. The temper on that blade is a suguha-chō mixed with small chōji and small gunome, the edge breaking into hotsure, kuichigai-ba and yubashiri, the nioiguchi bright and clear.
The surviving corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he comes down to us. The Nanbokuchō katana are wide-bodied blades cut down to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated chū-kissaki and from the Taima activity at its strongest, for the texts are candid that on a shortened mumei blade no individuality singling out Tomoyuki can be discerned, even while there is no disagreement that it is a masterpiece of the school from the Nanbokuchō. Against these stand the few ubu signed pieces that anchor him. The tantō is a wide hira-zukuri with uchizori, carrying a suken on the omote and a shōbu-hi on the ura. The ken is a ryō-shinogi blade dated Shōchū 1 (1324), with a two-character signature on the omote and the date on the ura, and the published sources frame it within a standing scholarly problem: signed Yamato ken are few, and the texts can cite only a Shigeyoshi Nyūdō of Genkō 4, a Norizane of Shikkake, a Kanetoshi of Tegai and a small number of others, concluding that the study of Yamato ken remains to be awaited.
The lineage question is left expressly open, and the candour of the record on this point is itself characteristic of how thin the documentary base is. The name Tomoyuki, the published sources note, appears in the sword-signature reference works among the Yamato Senjuin group as well as within the Taima line, and one early entry adds that there is also a work of his bearing a Bunwa-era date. On the dated ken the judges allow that the piece is Yamato beyond doubt, yet observe that a ken tends to thin out the distinctive traits of a particular lineage, and so reserve the precise descent for future study. His distinction is best drawn not by contrast with the other Yamato schools but by his own grounded traits: the flowing masame-leaning itame, the suguha-based notare brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and the conspicuous ashi and yō within a bright, nie-laden edge are the marks the appraisers read as Taima and, on the elongated katana, as Tomoyuki in particular.
The whole of Tomoyuki's recorded output stands at the highest civilian level of designation, five blades among the Important Sword tier and none higher, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them. There is no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon, and no institutional holder is named in the published record, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions and a handful of signed survivals. What a collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the katana and tachi cut down from the school's grander blades, the signed tantō prized first as documentary evidence, and the dated ken with its gold-nashiji cloud-and-dragon sankō-zuka mounting. Such pieces are held far more often than traded, and a signed example in particular, valued as it is for fixing so rare a hand, comes to the open market seldom and stands as a landmark of Yamato work when it does.
Toshinaga (俊長) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Jūyō. Toshinaga worked in Yamato Province across the late Kamakura and Nanbokucho periods, signing his blades Amaro Toshinaga, and the five designated works that carry his name fix him as a Taima smith of that age. Taima is one of the five Yamato schools, a body of swordsmiths rooted in the temple milieu of Taima-dera, and Toshinaga belongs to its later, Nanbokucho-period hand. He is transmitted since old times as a disciple of Takagi Sadamune, but the published sources do not let that account stand unexamined. Judging from his extant signed tachi and tanto, they write, the pupillage is difficult to recognize, *korai Takagi Sadamune no deshi to sarete iru ga genson suru zaimei no tachi tanto kara sore to mitome-gataku, dojidai no mono to omowareru*, and they place him instead as a smith of the same general period as Sadamune. Every one of his five blades on record is a mumei attribution, so that what is known of him is the recognized Toshinaga hand rather than a body of signed standards, and that hand is read in the Yamato coloration of his steel.
The feature that fixes his work is the masame that runs through the itame of his jigane. The steel is forged in *itame* mixed with *mokume*, gathering *ji-nie* and threaded with *chikei*, and into it runs a tendency toward *masame*, the straight grain rising through the surface and at times opening into *hada-dachi* and mottled *jifu*. The published sources name this directly as the constant of his work, that the forging carries a masame tendency, the hamon frays into *hotsure* with *nijuba*, and the boshi sweeps into *hakikake*, *kitae ni wa masame-ki ga ari, hamon wa hotsurete nijuba kakari, boshi mo hakikakeru nado shite sotai ni Yamato-iro ga mirareru tokoro ni tokucho ga aru*. The masame in the ji and the swept boshi above it are the two things his blades share whatever the temper between them, and they are the Yamato evidence by which a mumei blade is brought to his name.
That temper is worked in two registers. In the calmer of them the hamon is a *suguha-cho* or *chu-suguha* base carrying *ko-notare* and small *gunome*, with *kuichigai-ba* crossing the habuchi, *hotsure* fraying it, and strong *nie* that runs at times to a coarser grain, *nie-suji* and *kinsuji* playing within the band. This restrained manner is the one that resembles Sadamune, and it is set on a wide *shinogi-zukuri* tachi, often shortened to *o-suriage*. In the fuller register he takes *gunome-midare* as the principal mode, mixing in small *gunome* and small *midare*, fraying repeatedly into *hotsure* with *nie*, threading *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and scattering *tobiyaki*, while the boshi enters *midare-komi* and is brushed powerfully into *hakikake*. This manner is carried on wide, *sun-nobi* tanto and wakizashi, several built in *katakiriba-zukuri*, and it is the one the published sources judge filled with vigor; of one tanto worked thick in *nie* they write that the manner in which the *nie* gathers within the ha is splendid and the blade as a whole full of spirit, *hachu atsuku niezuku sama wa migoto de ari, sotai ni haki ni tonda ikko de aru*.
The debate over his name is in the published commentary itself, and it turns on the Sadamune resemblance. In his tanto, the sources note, the jigane shows *masame* prominently and the boshi tends to *hakikake*, while his tachi display a construction with high *shinogi*, so that a Yamato character can be discerned, *tanto ni miru jihada wa masame ga yoku araware boshi ga hakikake, tachi wa shinogi ga takai tsukurikomi wo shimeshi, Yamato-fu ga mitomerareru*. From this the appraisal proceeds by a single logic, stated plainly on the Nanbokucho katana shortened to o-suriage: at a glance the blade appears in the manner of Takagi Sadamune, yet a Yamato coloration is added to it, and so it is appropriate to appraise the work as Amaro Toshinaga, *ikken Takagi Sadamune-fu de sore ni Yamato-iro ga kami sareta deki to natte ori, Amaro Toshinaga to kansuru no ga dato de aru*. The Sadamune comparison is therefore not a trait borrowed onto his blades but the very baseline against which they are read; what the judges look for is the Yamato evidence laid over a Sadamune-like base, and where they find the masame, the hotsure with nijuba, and the swept boshi, the attribution is made.
His place in the school follows from this. Toshinaga is a Taima smith whose hand sits close enough to Sadamune that the old tradition made him Sadamune's pupil, and the published sources, declining to confirm that descent, keep him as a contemporary working the Yamato manner of the period. His distinction within that company is grounded in his own blades, the masame-bearing itame and the swept, fraying boshi, rather than in any single comparison; the Sadamune likeness is what his work must be told apart from, and the Yamato coloration is what tells it apart. A further register of his work is the carving, esoteric in character and varied across his blades. A *bonji* with *koshi-hi* and *soe-hi* stands on one wakizashi, a relief-carved *sanko-ken* set within the hi on another, *su-ken* and *gomabashi* on a tanto, and *futasuji-hi* carved kaki-nagashi on the shinogi-zukuri katana, the Buddhist motifs according with the Yamato temple world from which the Taima smiths came.
The connoisseurship around Toshinaga is that of a recognized Yamato hand whose surviving record is small. His designated work numbers five blades, all at the Juyo level, with no National Treasure, no Important Cultural Property, and no Tokubetsu Juyo among them, and none carries a recorded denrai, so that no daimyo provenance attaches to his name in this corpus and the owners on record are private holders rather than museums or shrines. His finer pieces are judged sound in both ji and ha and of good workmanship, one mumei wakizashi called a fine piece whose manner is strongly tied to his signed examples, *zaimei no deki ni tsuyoku musubareru sakufu wo shimeshita kahin de aru*, and one tanto called splendid in the thick nie within the ha and full of vigor. For a collector this places him among the quietly attainable Nanbokucho names rather than the celebrated ones. A mumei Toshinaga of either manner, the calm suguha-cho that reads toward Sadamune or the vigorous nie-laden gunome-midare with its swept boshi and esoteric carving, is a Yamato blade that comes to market only from time to time and rewards a patient eye, a sound and capably made work by a Taima smith whom the published record sets beside Sadamune himself.
Kuniyuki (國行) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Jūyō. Kuniyuki is regarded as the founder of the Taima group of Yamato Province and was active during the late Kamakura period. Among works of the Taima group, extant signed examples are few; only a small number survive with signatures by Kuniyuki and Aritoshi, while almost all others are works attributed as *mumei* appraisals. His two-character signature appears in two modes: one rendered in *kaisho* (formal block script) within the *kunigamae* enclosure, and another in *gyosho* (semi-cursive) form. Both varieties are considered extremely rare, and any *zaimei* tachi by this smith commands particular scholarly attention.
Kuniyuki's forging is a well-worked *itame-hada* mixed with *masame*, often showing areas of flowing grain and thick *ji-nie* with *chikei* appearing throughout. His *hamon* is typically *suguha*-based, gently *notare* and mixed with *choji* or small *gunome*, tending at times toward *ko-midare*. The *habuchi* characteristically shows *hotsure*, while within the tempered area *sunagashi* runs frequently, interspersed with *kinsuji*. The *nioiguchi* is bright and clear. His *boshi* tends toward *sugu*, turning *hakikake* or ending in *yakizume* — a disposition considered typical of Yamato workmanship. Activities such as *chikei* and *kinsuji* intermix freely, giving a lively effect to the steel.
Kuniyuki occupies a position of particular importance as the progenitor of the Taima lineage within the broader Yamato tradition. His work demonstrates the defining characteristics of Yamato-den forging — the prominent *masame* tendency, the bright and clear *ji* and *ha* described as *akaruku saeru*, and the restrained yet animated temper line — while displaying a refinement and individuality that distinguishes his hand from later Taima smiths. The rarity of signed examples only heightens the significance of each surviving blade, and his best works are noted for their *kenzen* condition and sound preservation.
Other smiths
Kunikiyo (國清) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kuniyuki (國行) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Kuniyuki is regarded as the founding master of the Taima school, one of the five great traditions of Yamato Province, and his activity is placed in the late Kamakura period. While sword compendia list many smiths of this group, extant signed works are exceedingly few; only a small number survive bearing signatures by Kuniyuki and Aritoshi, and most examples are *mumei* pieces identified through appraisal. The school flourished from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho era, producing blades that embody the essential character of the Yamato tradition.
The construction of Kuniyuki's surviving works displays the hallmarks of Yamato craftsmanship with pronounced clarity. Wide *shinogi-ji* and a high *shinogi-suji* plainly manifest the tradition's structural principles, while the *jihada* — *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume* or *masame* — is consistently well-forged from base to tip. The *hamon* is characteristically *suguha*-based, with *hotsure* appearing along the *habuchi*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* intermingling to produce lively activity, and the *boshi* tending toward *hakikake* ending in *yakizume* — features the NBTHK identifies as "Yamato's traditional method." In certain works, a somewhat rough *nie* is mixed into the temper, introducing what the NBTHK describes as "an element of Soshu temperament," a quality consistent with the older attributions by the Hon'ami family for blades of this group.
Despite the rarity of signed examples, the designated works confirm Kuniyuki as a smith of genuine accomplishment. A tachi retaining a two-character signature following *suriage* is praised as displaying his characteristic features "conspicuously" and is described as "an excellent work." The *ji* and *ha* across his corpus are noted for being "bright and clear," with *chikei* and *kinsuji* interweaving to give the steel a vibrant quality. These qualities affirm the Taima school's standing among the five Yamato traditions and Kuniyuki's role as its defining voice.
Tomonaga (友長) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Tomoyuki of the Yamato Taima school comes down through four designated blades, three of them wide katana cut greatly down and one an unshortened tantō, and on not one of them does his own signature survive. The Taima group was the band of swordsmiths affiliated with Taima-dera in Yamato, flourishing from the middle of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokuchō era, and its founder was Kuniyuki, of whom several reliably signed works survive, some inscribed simply Taima. The published sources transmit Tomoyuki as a grandson of Kuniyuki and place him as a Nanbokuchō smith of the line, noting that other work of his is known, including an example carrying a Bunwa-era date. The scarcity of his signature is itself part of the record: the texts state that the small number of signed Taima works owes to the smiths' dependent standing under the temple, so that the school survives mostly as unsigned pieces fixed by appraisal.
The most constant feature of his hand is the bōshi, which runs straight and is then swept with hakikake before turning in a small ko-maru or ending in yakizume without a turnback. That swept finish recurs across the corpus, on each of the great katana and on the tantō alike, and it is the Yamato-Taima trait the appraisers lean on. Over a quiet line he builds his temper. A medium suguha-chō carries ko-ashi and breaks in its lower half into a small midare, into which enter pointed togariba, gunome and a shallow notare, the habuchi unravelling into hotsure with ko-nie adhering. On the tantō the line narrows to a hoso-suguha with a tightened nioiguchi, hotsure and uchinoke appearing. On the widest of the late katana the activity deepens, the nie running deep with frequent sunagashi and kinsuji entering, the nioiguchi drawing tight above the monouchi while showing a slight clouded urumi on the ura.
The jigane is the Yamato tell. He forges an itame that flows and, toward the edge, gathers into masame, so that the steel stands somewhat open, with ji-nie laid over it throughout and chikei entering the grain of the tantō. It is this masame mixed into a flowing itame, taken together with the hotsure, uchinoke and kuichigai-ba along the edge and the brushed bōshi, that the published sources read on the late katana as 「大和物中当麻の特色」, the character of Taima within the Yamato tradition. On that blade the workmanship of both ji and ha is judged good, the published record noting plainly that 「地刃の出来がよく」, and the same wide-bodied construction with its extended chū-kissaki is what carries the attribution.
The surviving corpus divides by construction rather than by period, and the division is itself a fact about how he is known. The Nanbokuchō katana are wide-bodied blades shortened to ō-suriage, their attribution argued from the markedly elongated chū-kissaki together with the Taima jiba, for the texts are candid that on a shortened mumei blade 「個性は看取せられない」, no individuality singling out Tomoyuki can be discerned, even while there is no disagreement that the piece is 「南北朝期の同派の優作」, a superior work of the school from the Nanbokuchō. Against these stands the single ubu tantō, kanmuri-otoshi on the omote and hira-zukuri on the ura, thick in kasane with uchizori, which the published sources say 「大和物の特色をよく示し」, clearly displays the features of Yamato workmanship; on it a soe-hi accompanies a naginata-hi, and 「薙刀樋に添樋」, the companion groove beside the naginata-hi, is named as a Taima trait on kanmuri-otoshi construction.
The lineage question is left open, and the candour of the record on this point reflects how thin the documentary base for him is. He survives almost wholly as ō-suriage mumei katana fixed by appraisal, the texts observing that 「在銘の少ないのはその隷属関係による」, the rarity of signatures following from the temple dependency, and that 「多くは無銘の極めもの」, most pieces are unsigned and transmitted by kiwame. No successor line is drawn through him, the surviving body being too thin to extend the school forward. His distinction is best taken not by contrast with the other Yamato lines but by his own grounded traits: the flowing masame-leaning itame, the suguha-based temper brushed into a hakikake bōshi, and on the wide katana the deep nie with its sunagashi and kinsuji are the marks the appraisers read as Taima and, where the body is wide and the kissaki extended, as Tomoyuki in particular, so that 「友行の所伝は首肯される」, the tradition attributing the blade to him may be accepted.
The whole of his recorded output stands at the level of Important Sword and no higher, four blades among that tier, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them and no recorded provenance through the daimyō houses to draw upon. The blades on record pass through private hands in Tokyo, Chiba and Wakayama rather than through any named institution, which is consistent with a smith known almost entirely through unsigned attributions. What a private collector might realistically encounter is therefore confined to that small designated body, the wide katana cut down from the school's grander Nanbokuchō blades and the rare ubu tantō with its kanmuri-otoshi construction and accompanying grooves. Such pieces are held far more often than traded, and one given to Tomoyuki, valued for fixing so seldom-signed a hand, comes to the open market only on occasion and stands as a sound example of Nanbokuchō Yamato work when it does.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arimitsu (有光) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arimitsu (有光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Arinori (有法) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Ario (有王) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有利) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Aritoshi (有俊) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Ariyoshi (有吉) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Fujihachi (藤八) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Iemasa (家政) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekiyo (包清) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (兼國) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (兼國) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (包國) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Kanekuni (包國) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Mitsutomo (光友) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Naganobu (永延) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nakajiro (中次郎) — Mainline · 1235-1238. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobukiyo (信清) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1428-1429. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobunaga (信長) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Nobuyoshi (信吉) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Sueyuki (末行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Sueyuki (末行) — Mainline · 1457-1460. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Taima (當麻) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tohachi (藤八) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tohachi (藤八) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomohoshi (友法師) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomokiyo (友清) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomomitsu (友光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomonaga (友長) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomonori (友則) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoshige (友重) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoshige (友重) — Mainline · 1688-1704. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotada (友忠) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友利) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友俊) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotoshi (友俊) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomotsuna (友綱) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyoshi (友吉) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyoshi (友吉) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tomoyuki (友行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (才光) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (才光) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshimitsu (利光) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.
Tsugutsune (次恒) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Yamato Taima School.