On the Bitchū coast, apart from neighbouring Bizen, the Aoe smiths forged a tradition of their own — known for a distinctive dark sumihada jigane and slender, elegant tachi. Across three phases the line ran from the founding Ko-Aoe masters through the peak of Chū-Aoe and into the long Sue-Aoe twilight.
The The Bitchū Aoe School (青江), active 1100–1500 in Bitchū Province across 412 documented smiths: 5 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 43 Jūbun, 41 Jūbi, 54 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 219 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ko-Aoe (古青江) · 1100 – 1235
The Ko-Aoe school flourished in the lower basin of the Takahashi River in Bitchu Province, forging swords at the districts of Koi and Manju in a region long renowned as a source of iron. The school is traditionally held to have begun with Yasutsugu around the Joan era (1171-1175), and works produced from the end of the Heian period through approximately the mid-Kamakura period are distinguished as Ko-Aoe, with production continuing under the broader Aoe designation through the late Nanbokucho era. The representative smiths of this early lineage -- Yasutsugu, Moritsugu, Sadatsugu, Tsunetsugu, Kanetsugu, Toshitsugu, Suketsugu, Tametsugu, Shigetsugu, and Tsugutada among them -- share the character "tsugu" as a common element in their names, forming an unusually cohesive dynastic identity. A distinct sub-lineage, the Senoo group, stood apart from this main line: led by Masatsune and Yukizane, the Senoo smiths forged to the east toward Bizen and rarely incorporated the "tsugu" character. Sadatsugu was counted among the *goban-kaji* serving Retired Emperor Go-Toba, and the *Shinkan Hiden-sho* assigns the name the highest valuation among Aoe works: "Bitchu workmanship, the finest, fifteen kan."
The Ko-Aoe technical vocabulary is remarkably consistent across its many smiths. The *kitae* is built on *itame-hada* intermixed with *mokume*, the grain standing conspicuously to produce *chirimen-hada* -- the tightly compressed, crepe-like surface texture that is the school's most recognizable trait. Patches of *jifu* and *ji-madara* mottle the ground steel, while fine *ji-nie* adheres thickly with *chikei* interwoven; a dark-toned *sumi-hada* may appear amid the standing grain. *Utsuri* manifests in several forms across the school's corpus: *midare-utsuri*, *jifu-utsuri*, and in certain works by Tsunetsugu, tiered bands suggestive of *dan-utsuri*. The *hamon* is predominantly *suguha*-based, mixed with *ko-midare*, *ko-choji*, and *ko-gunome*; *ko-nie* adheres well, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through the hardened edge, while the *nioiguchi* characteristically tends toward *shizumi* -- a subdued, sinking quality -- or in certain smiths appears bright and clear. The *boshi* typically turns in *ko-maru*, sometimes with *hakikake*. Tang conventions provide critical diagnostic markers distinguishing Ko-Aoe from contemporary Ko-Bizen: bold *o-sujikai* file marks, deeply cut *machi*, and signatures placed on the *haki-ura* side in characteristically thick chisel work. The NBTHK consistently observes that compared with Bizen works of the same era, Ko-Aoe productions "convey a somewhat quieter and more subdued taste" -- the restrained, astringent *shibui* character that defines the school's aesthetic.
Yet within this disciplined restraint, individual members demonstrated striking range. Yasutsugu's most celebrated tachi -- transmitted as an heirloom of the Shimazu family and counted among the legendary *Tenka Goken* -- displays a flamboyant *midare-ba* of extraordinary vitality that rivals anything produced in the Bizen tradition, while Sadatsugu's finest works invite comparison with National Treasure-class examples. The later Osumi no Gon no Suke Sadatsugu developed a bold personal manner, broadening the *yakihaba*, concentrating nie to produce *shima-ba*-like scenery, and tempering the boshi with deep *kaeri* -- features that overflow with vigor. Kanetsugu is praised for almost no unevenness of workmanship across his corpus, while Moritoshi's forging is singled out as tighter and better refined than is typical even within this exacting school. The Senoo branch, represented by Masatsune and Yukizane, carried a flavor somewhat resembling Bizen work while maintaining the characteristic chirimen-hada and o-sujikai file marks that identify the hand as unmistakably Bitchu. Across its full productive span, the Ko-Aoe school stands as one of the foundational pillars of the Japanese sword tradition: a lineage whose refined *suguha* aesthetic, distinguished crepe-textured forging, and quietly astringent taste secured Bitchu swords their ancient reputation and continue to command the deepest respect in the study of classical swordsmithing.
Masatsune (正恒) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Masatsune is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bitchū, working from the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura, and the published sources name him the representative smith of the Senoo line. Following the *Genki Mekiki-sho* and the *Kokon Meizukushi*, they divide the old swordsmiths of Bitchū into the Aoe smiths, who as a rule sign with the character Tsugu, and the Senoo smiths, who descend from Noritaka and forged at Senoo, east of Aoe toward Bizen. Among the Senoo hands (Koreshige, Yasuie, Hirotsune, Tsunemasa, Moritsune, Yukimasa) Masatsune alone survives in some number: his examples "are not few, while extant works by the other smiths are rare"[[c:1]]. The *Meikan* enters the first-generation Ko-Aoe Masatsune in the Ken'ei era, yet extant blades descend no later than the early Kamakura, and the sources add that more than one smith seems to have used the name, with a range of signing manners.
His recognized blade is the slender tachi of classical, graceful shape, high in *koshizori* with pronounced *funbari*, several still signed with the two-character *mei*. The temper is a quiet one: a *chū-suguha* or narrow *suguha* base into which *ko-midare* and small *ko-chōji* enter, with *ashi* and *yō* well inside, *ko-nie* well attached, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* in places. The *nioiguchi* is at times tight, but the published sources state the usual case plainly: "in most, compared with Ko-Bizen, the *nioiguchi* is somewhat subdued and the grain stands"[[c:2]]. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns back in a small *ko-maru*, now and then narrowing toward a *yakizume*-like finish. Read against the Ko-Bizen Masatsune it resembles, his work is called "somewhat plainer, with an astringent, subdued taste"[[c:3]].
The *jigane* carries the Bitchū character. He forges a *ko-itame*, well packed on the finest blades, standing a little in places and mixed with *mokume*, with *ji-nie* and fine *chikei*. Through it run the speckled *jifu* that the sources call *chirimen-hada*, at times with clear *sumihada*, and a *jifu*-style or quiet irregular *utsuri* rises. The tang is filed in *ō-sujikai*, and the sources state that on the Ko-Aoe Masatsune the filing is always *ō-sujikai*. These three points, the crepe-like *jifu*, the *mokume* in the forging and the original *ō-sujikai* filing, are the ones the newer designations name again and again as the marks of the Senoo Masatsune.
The resemblance to Ko-Bizen runs close enough that the sources concede that "among them are works almost indistinguishable from Ko-Bizen"[[c:4]]. Several tachi show how the question is settled: each looks at first sight close to Ko-Bizen Masatsune and is re-read on the evidence of its *jigane* and original filing. One of them carried an origami by Hon'ami Kōyū of the Genbun era for the Bizen Masatsune, and at its Tokubetsu Jūyō designation the sources conclude that it "is properly judged the Bitchū Senoo Masatsune"[[c:5]]. The signature, too, is placed on either face, the *haki-omote* or the *haki-ura*, where the Senoo smiths otherwise favour the *tachi-mei*. Beside the signed tachi stand the *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him, judged by the same *jigane*, quiet *suguha* and *ko-maru* turnback. The dating the sources leave open: because the name passed through several hands and extant works run earlier than the *Meikan*'s Ken'ei date, one signed tachi was designated as a blade merely bearing the signature, the question deferred to future study.
Within the Senoo line he is its representative and the one whose hand is most often read. The published sources call his work "archaic and deeply flavored"[[c:6]], preserving the refined bearing of the transition from late Heian to early Kamakura, and on one *ubu* signed tachi judge it "the most archaic in character among works of this name"[[c:7]]. Of a later Jūyō tachi they write that it is "a truly archaic blade, with a moist quality in the *jigane* and *hamon*, and of high dignity"[[c:8]], and they name a tachi at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū as the typical work of the smith.
His record is fuller than the old view of a rare name allows. Twenty of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, four of them Tokubetsu Jūyō, of which two are called especially well made among his works; three more were designated Jūyō Bijutsuhin before the war, one signed tachi, which the entry judges Ko-Aoe as tradition holds, is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, and the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū tachi, dedicated to the shrine by the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune, is a National Treasure. Six further signed tachi, their plates dating them to the Kamakura period, are Important Cultural Properties, held among others by the Kumano Hayatama Taisha, the Takisan Tōshōgū and the Shirotori Jinja. Several retain their original tang and signature, which the sources call "especially valuable for remaining *ubu* and signed"[[c:9]], and one Jūyō tachi they name "one representative work of Ko-Aoe Masatsune"[[c:10]]. One *kodachi* was formerly held by the Arisugawa-no-miya princely family, and a Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi survives in an early-Meiji *handachi* mounting with fittings by Fuchikawa Kazunori. Most of these blades are held rather than traded, and a signed Senoo Masatsune comes to market only seldom; a privately held example remains a notable thing for a collector to encounter.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1211-1213. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Yasutsugu (康次) of Bitchū worked in the Ko-Aoe group in the early Kamakura period, around the Kenryaku era (about 1211 to 1213), and is transmitted in the *meikan* records as a son of Moritsugu; the National Treasure commentary instead calls him the son of the Ko-Aoe smith Tsunetsugu. He is not the later Echizen Shintō Yasutsugu, whose name is written with different characters; he belongs instead to the old Aoe smiths who forged along the lower Takahashi river in the districts of Ko'i and Manju, the group the published sources count, from the late Heian period to about the middle of Kamakura, as Ko-Aoe. Among that group the NBTHK names him a representative smith, together with Moritsugu, Sadatsugu and Tsunetsugu. His standing rests on two very different kinds of work under one hand. The everyday Yasutsugu is restrained, what the published commentary on his usual manner calls "a small *midare-ba* in which the *ko-nie* adheres well"[[c:1]]. The famous Yasutsugu is the broad, flamboyant exception, of which the National Treasure tachi that Ashikaga Yoshiaki presented to Shimazu Yoshihisa, lord of Satsuma, is the type.
His characteristic hand is the quiet one. Over a *shinogi-zukuri* tachi of high *koshizori* with strong *funbari* at the base, he tempers a *chū-suguha* very shallowly broken by *ko-midare*, *ko-chōji* and a little *ko-gunome*. The *nioiguchi* tends subdued and sunk, with fine *ko-nie* well attached, *ashi* and *yō* entering frequently and *kinsuji* playing here and there. The published sources describe this register as having, even within its plainness, a deep quiet elegance that shows the Ko-Aoe character, "a deep refinement within the subdued tone, presenting the characteristic Ko-Aoe flavor"[[c:2]]. Against the contemporary Bizen blades, the same commentary adds, the Aoe work reads "somewhat more restrained and austere in taste"[[c:3]]. A distinct sub-manner runs the *suguha* narrow, a *hoso-suguha* repeatedly overlaid with *yubashiri* in a *nijūba*-like effect, with the *ko-nie* again well attached.
The *jigane* is read first, for it carries the school. He forges *itame* mixed with *mokume*, the grain standing a little, taking on the crepe-silk *chirimen-hada* that is the Aoe *jigane*, with patchy *jifu* mixed in and clear *sumi-hada* appearing, the *ji-nie* fine and a faint *utsuri* sometimes rising. On the more worked blades the reflection clarifies into a distinct *midare-utsuri*. The *bōshi* runs *sugu* or *midare-komi* with a *ko-maru* return, sometimes almost *yakizume*. The signature is itself a kantei point and a school marker. Yasutsugu cuts a two-character *mei* low on the *haki-ura* of an *ō-sujikai* filed *nakago*, below the *mekugi-ana* and set toward the *mune*; the published record notes that placing the signature on the *haki-ura* is one of the things that "differs from Ko-Bizen and the like"[[c:4]]. The chisel is generally fine. As Honma observed of the school, "for Ko-Aoe, the chisel of Yasutsugu's signature is not excessively thick"[[c:5]], though on at least one shortened tachi the two characters are cut large with a thick chisel at the *nakago-jiri*, on the *haki-omote*, and on the *ubu* tang of the National Treasure the *mei* is cut large at the middle of the *haki-ura*.
The two registers sit within essentially one Ko-Aoe manner. Most signed pieces are the restrained suguha and ko-midare, kept on *ubu* tangs with the two-character *mei*; the published commentary calls an *ubu*, signed tachi by this smith precious, since most of what survives is shortened. The great signed exception is the National Treasure itself. Its commentary calls it the longest blade of the Aoe school, wide, with a high *koshizori* and an *ikubi-kissaki*, an imposing form. On the omote its temper mixes *chōji* and *ko-midare* with a reverse-slanting feeling, while the ura shows *ko-midare* with a little *ko-chōji* and some *nijūba*; the width varies, *ashi* and *yō* enter frequently, *nie* is plentiful and *kinsuji* run here and there. The commentary calls the *hamon* "o-deki, mixing large and small patterns, and flamboyant"[[c:6]]. The bonji, the *kurikara* in its sword-shaped *hitsu* and the standing Fudō carved on the blade are later work, thought to have been cut for devotion before the Muromachi period. The mumei attributions hang on this second, flamboyant register: a wide *ko-midare* worked with *ko-chōji*, *ko-gunome* and small *tobiyaki*, the *habuchi* widening toward the *monouchi*, the *ha* full of *nie* with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running freely. The published sources are explicit that this is where his name is anchored, that as the Shimazu National Treasure exemplifies, "unusually for Ko-Aoe work, Yasutsugu can at times be seen producing flamboyant workmanship rich in activity" (島津家伝来の太刀(国宝)に代表されるように古青江物としては珍らしく華やかで働きの多い出来), so that a mumei blade carrying that brilliance is reasonably specified to him. One Jūyō *katana*, greatly shortened, is attributed on exactly this reasoning, its broad notare-based temper rich in *tobiyaki* and reflection. The school itself the published sources place to about the middle of Kamakura as Ko-Aoe, after which it turns toward the *nioi*-based suguha and *saka-chōji* of its Nanbokuchō masters; Yasutsugu sits at the early core of that line, read in the same generation as Tsunetsugu, Tsugunao, Suketsugu and Kanetsugu.
What distinguishes him within his own group is read off his grounded traits, not by borrowing another smith's. The crepe-silk *chirimen-hada* with its *jifu* and *sumi-hada* is the Aoe ji that the published commentary names a principal point of interest of the tradition, and Yasutsugu shows it conspicuously; the subdued, sunk *nioiguchi* over fine *ko-nie* is his calm temper; and the *haki-ura* two-character signature in a fine chisel is the placement and hand by which his own blades are told. His masterwork sets the upper bound of the whole group. Of the Shimazu tachi the published sources write that its *midare-ba* is "of a workmanship without parallel as Ko-Aoe, flamboyant"[[c:7]], a blade "ranked among the Tenka Go-ken, the long heirloom tachi of the Shimazu family"[[c:8]] alongside the Dōjigiri Yasutsuna and the Ō-Kanehira. That a single early Aoe smith stands at once for the quiet base of the group and for its most celebrated exception is the whole of his standing.
Yasutsugu is *Jō saku* in Fujishiro's grading, with a *Tōkō Taikan* valuation near the top of the old smiths. The weight of designation behind his name is real but narrow: ten designated works are on record: one National Treasure; one Important Cultural Property, a tachi that is also recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, where a second tachi of his is entered as well; two Important Art Objects; and five blades across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, one Tokubetsu Jūyō and four Jūyō. The provenance recorded against his work is distinguished, six blades carrying a history through Ashikaga Yoshiaki and the Shimazu of the National Treasure tachi, the Kuroda of Chikuzen who held the imposing Tokubetsu Jūyō *ubu* tachi, the Yamauchi house, the Tanzan Shrine, and the Ōkura collections, his Important Art Object passing from the Ōkura Shūkokan to the Ōkura Cultural Foundation. Of recorded whereabouts two of his blades are held by public institutions, the Tokyo National Museum and the Ōkura Museum of Art, the rest in long-held private hands. His National Treasure and Important Cultural Property are patrimony, preserved and never traded; the few designated blades in private hands come to market only rarely, and a signed, *ubu* tachi by him is among the scarcer things an early-Kamakura collector could encounter.
Kanetsugu (包次) — Mainline · 1211-1213. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Kanetsugu (包次) is one of the best-known smiths of Ko-Aoe, the early stratum of the Aoe school of Bitchu Province, which the published sources trace to Yasutsugu around the Joan era (1171-1175). Works no later than roughly the middle of Kamakura are set apart under the name Ko-Aoe, and Kanetsugu is counted among its representative hands beside Moritsugu, Tametsugu, Tsugie, Tsugatada, Sadatsugu, Yasutsugu, Tsunetsugu, Toshitsugu, Suketsugu and Shigetsugu, most of whom carry the character 'tsugu'[[c:1]] as the common element of their names. The reference works place him in the line descending from Sadatsugu[[c:2]]; the older compendia name him a son of Moritsugu or of Sadatsugu[[c:3]]. He worked from the end of Heian into the early to middle Kamakura, before the slanting saka-choji idiom that would later define the flamboyant Aoe of Nanbokucho. Among Ko-Aoe smiths a comparatively large number of his works survive[[c:4]], so that his is one of the clearest signed records of the school's quiet early manner.
His is the restrained pole of Aoe. The temper is a suguha base carrying small undulations and small clove (直刃 with 小乱れ and 小丁子), with ko-nie well-adhering, hada-karami within the ha and sunagashi (砂流し) interwoven, the boshi straight turning back in ko-maru (小丸). The published descriptions praise the consistency of his hand above its drama: in his swordmaking there is, they write, almost no unevenness, and many examples are of fine quality[[c:5]]. The Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, deep in curvature, carries small midare with ko-choji over a chirimen forging mixed with sumi-hada and a kijimomo tang with bold o-sujikai file marks; in all respects, the notes conclude, it fully manifests the characteristic features of this school and smith, leaving nothing to be desired[[c:6]]. On a slender, ko-kissaki tachi of archaic and elegant form[[c:7]] the suguha runs narrow, tending to hotsure (ほつれ), with nijuba-like yubashiri (二重刃) and kinsuji (金筋) crossing both ji and ha.
The jigane is the school's own: itame mixed with mokume (板目 with 杢), standing somewhat in a fine, granular texture the references call chirimen (縮緬肌), with ji-nie applied and clear patches of sumi-hada (澄肌) in the ji. The published commentary makes this the school's tell, the mokume prominent and the surface slightly standing, often called crepe-like, with patches of jifu (地斑) mixed in, the tempering ranging from quiet suguha to small irregularity. Against the Bizen tradition the judges draw the distinction by feel: compared with contemporary Bizen work the overall impression, they write, is somewhat more subdued and astringent in savor[[c:8]]. The reflection in the ji is often only a suggestion: on the Owari Tokugawa tachi the itame stands, mixed with mokume and sumi-hada, with a suggestion of utsuri[[c:9]], while on his finest pieces a vivid *midare-utsuri* rises.
One coherent Ko-Aoe hand is read across two registers rather than across periods, the default the quiet signed tachi above, a suguha to ko-midare. On the connoisseur pieces the ji speaks louder: the Juyo tachi of 2003 is forged in ko-itame with ko-mokume, overall fine yet standing, with dust-fine ji-nie thickly applied, fine chikei (地景) interwoven, patch-like jifu in places and a vivid midare reflection (乱れ映り) standing out, its temper a suguha base with a small gunome feeling (小互の目), the nioiguchi (匂口) tight and tending to subdue. The judges single this blade out as more thoroughly refined in its forging than is usual even within the school[[c:10]], and, since it signs on the omote like the Itsukushima tachi, hold it of high documentary value for the study of the smith[[c:11]]. The kinzogan-attributed katana shows the same register from the other side: clear patchy reflection (地斑映り), a bright nioiguchi, ko-gunome with small notare (小のたれ). Here the attribution is upheld from the work itself, the published commentary noting that the small notare in the hardened edge is a trait found in Kanetsugu's signed pieces[[c:12]], so that the tradition of attribution to this smith is entirely appropriate[[c:13]]. Aoe signatures, the references add, are cut boldly even on tachi as two-character mei (二字銘) on the ura in the manner of katana-mei.
Within Aoe, Kanetsugu stands at the early, quiet pole of the school, before the slanting saka-choji and saka-ashi the later Aoe masters of Nanbokucho made their signature; that slant is absent from his work, and the calm small midare on a suguha base is the early register it would later displace. His sumi-hada and chirimen jihada are the school ji shared with the wider Aoe line, while his quiet suguha and the consistency of his hand mark him within it. The judges set Ko-Aoe apart from Ko-Bizen by feel and by craft, the bold two-character mei on the ura and the o-sujikai file marks among the points of difference they name[[c:14]]. No individual pupil is recorded. The compendia treat the Kanetsugu name as transmitted from the early through the late Kamakura period, so the signed mei spans more than one generation, the surviving signed and gold-inlaid work treated as one transmitted hand rather than split among them.
He is graded Jo-jo saku by Fujishiro and rated 1,500 in the Toko Taikan. The weight of designation behind his name far exceeds the size of his surviving record: four of his blades are Important Cultural Properties, with one at Tokubetsu Juyo and three at Juyo beneath them, so that the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers together hold four. Eight of the surviving blades are signed, none unsigned, an unusually clean record for so early a smith. The traceable holders run to long-held patrimony rather than the market. A signed tachi at Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) is an Important Cultural Property, the rare exception in carrying its mei on the omote where Ko-Aoe generally signs on the ura. The plates of the other three record signed tachi at the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures, in the Kyoto National Museum and in a private collection in Aichi, all tempered in *ko-midare* or a *suguha* with *ko-midare*. Another signed tachi descended in the Owari Tokugawa house, was certified Juyo Bijutsuhin in 1939, and is held by the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation and the Tokugawa Art Museum. The gold-inlaid katana survives with two large kirikomi (切り込み) struck into its edge, by which the published commentary recalls its martial use[[c:15]]. For a private collector the Important Cultural Properties are heritage, held in a shrine, museums and long-private collections and never to trade; of his Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo blades a handful are on record, and one comes to open hands only rarely, a landmark of early Bitchu work when it does.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Tsunetsugu is one of the representative smiths of the Ko-Aoe school of Bitchu, the older Aoe that forged along the lower Takahashi river in a province the records praise for its swords from the close of the Heian period. The published sources name him plainly: "Tsunetsugu is a representative smith of Ko-Aoe"[[c:1]], held by one tradition to be the son of Moritsugu and the younger brother of Sadatsugu, and counted, the same commentary writes, "together with Sadatsugu and Tsugiie among the ban-kaji of the cloistered sovereign Go-Toba"[[c:2]]. The name is not that of a single hand. Judging from the manner of signing, the NBTHK reckons there were "two or three of the same name within Ko-Aoe"[[c:3]], and elsewhere that "several smiths worked through the Kamakura period"[[c:4]] under it, so the published record treats Tsunetsugu as a representative name carried as a mainstay of the Aoe forge from the opening of Kamakura down into the Nanbokucho, rather than as one biography. Among the Tsunetsugu-name *meibutsu* stands the Juzumaru, one of the Tenka-Goken, famous as the protective *tachi* of the priest Nichiren, and the published commentary notes that this raises the name higher still.
His is the calmest *suguha* of the early Aoe hands. The signed *tachi* read on one consistent manner: a *suguha*-based *ha* that the published sources describe as "a suguha tone leaning shallowly into notare"[[c:5]], with *ko-midare* and at times *ko-choji* mixed in. *Ashi* and *yo* run into it constantly, and the *nie* is strong and well laid, with *sunagashi* sweeping through and *kinsuji* appearing in places. The *boshi* answers the temper, going straight and turning back in a small *ko-maru*. It is a quiet, even temper, the least flamboyant of the Aoe quartet, and its discipline is the first thing that marks his hand: where the Aoe brethren let the *midare* run, his stays close to the line, the activity carried inside it as *ashi*, *yo* and the occasional *ko-choji* rather than along its crest.
The *jigane* is the Bitchu steel, and the published record dwells on it: of one signed *tachi* the NBTHK writes that, the activity within the *ha* aside, "the jigane in particular is splendid"[[c:6]]. It is a *ko-itame* that stands a little, mixed with *mokume*, working up to the crepe-like surface the sources call *chirimen* (the same *tachi* is recorded as "showing a chirimen tendency", 縮緬風を呈し). Fine *ji-nie* gathers across it and *chikei* enter. On many blades the iron is broken by *jifu* and the clear patches the school knew as *sumihada*, and a faint *utsuri* rises in it, on the *o-suriage* pieces a *nie-utsuri* and, on the broader late work, *utsuri* standing in streaks toward the *shinogi*. A reverse tendency surfaces on a minority of blades, *saka-ashi* and even *saka-choji* mixed on the *ura*, a within-school tell that runs quieter in him than in his Aoe brethren. The whole is the speckled, deeply flavored *jigane* the NBTHK calls Aoe character, "quiet in tone, yet possessed of deep interest and savor"[[c:7]].
The work falls into two registers that the published descriptions keep distinct. The first is the signed core: *ubu* or lightly shortened *tachi* in *shinogi-zukuri* with *koshizori* and a *ko-kissaki*, carrying a thick-chiseled two-character signature, the chisel-work so heavy the NBTHK calls strokes of this boldness rare. The placement is itself a kantei point, for the published commentary records that the signature falls now on the *haki-omote*, now on the *haki-ura*, and observes by way of reference that within Ko-Aoe the line descending from Masatsune signs *tachi-mei* on the front while the Sadatsugu group cuts to the back. The second register is the *o-suriage mumei* and *shu-mei* work attributed to the name, read as later Tsunetsugu: a *katana* bearing a red-lacquer "Aoe Tsunetsugu" attribution beside a Kanbun-era Hon'ami Kotsune *origami*, and the two unsigned *Juyo Bijutsuhin* blades, one judged late Kamakura, one Nanbokucho Aoe, which mark the later end of the line. Against this the NBTHK is candid that the multiplicity of hands leaves questions: of one signed *tachi* it allows that there is "some doubt regarding the inscription, leaving room for further study".
The published sources are equally careful to keep him apart from his homonyms. The same commentary that praises his *jigane* notes that "the name is found among the Ko-Bizen group as well"[[c:8]], both reckoned skilled, and the appraisal of the Ko-Aoe pieces is steadied by their own evidence rather than by the name alone: the *o-sujikai* file marks the NBTHK calls the prescribed Aoe convention, the bold thick-chiseled two characters, the speckled *jifu* and *sumihada* in the *ji*, and the disciplined *suguha* with its reverse-tending *ashi*. His tachi are placed against the wider Aoe field by these grounded marks, not by contrast with another school: the calm of his temper, the crepe-like Bitchu *jigane* and the bold signature set his Ko-Aoe work apart, and the records read the same hand across the early Kamakura to Nanbokucho span the name covers.
Fujishiro grades Tsunetsugu *Jo-jo saku*, and the Toko Taikan values his work among the upper rank of the early Aoe names. The designations behind the name sit high: one of his *tachi* is Tokubetsu Juyo, with six at Juyo, three Important Cultural Properties, and two prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin among the unsigned work. No blade under the code is a National Treasure, so the patrimony preserved in trust is the three Important Cultural Properties, while the tradeable standing rests on that Tokubetsu Juyo and the Juyo tier. The provenance roll is notable for so old a name: blades carry histories through the Kishu Tokugawa family, the Uesugi family, the Tsuchiya family, and the Arima family, and the Hon'ami Kotsune *origami* of Kanbun 8 fixes the *shu-mei* katana's appraisal in the seventeenth century. Of recorded whereabouts a handful are held in public institutions and a shrine, with others in long-private hands. A signed Ko-Aoe Tsunetsugu reaches the market only rarely; when one of the Tokubetsu Juyo or Juyo blades does appear it is a landmark for the collector of the older Bitchu schools, encountered with patience rather than sought, and the Juzumaru itself, a designated cultural property held in trust, is never among them.
Moritoshi (守利) — Mainline · 1224-1225. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. Moritoshi is a smith of the Ko-Aoe, the early Bicchū line that forged along the lower Takahashi River around the estates of Koi and Manju, working from the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura, dated by the swordbooks to about the Gen'nin era of 1224. The published sources give him a leading place in that line, naming him "together with Yasutsugu, Sadatsugu and Tsunetsugu one of the representative smiths of Ko-Aoe"[[c:1]]. A National Treasure tachi carries his two-character signature, and the Important Cultural Properties and the higher modern ranks carry it again, yet extant signed works are few; his record is almost wholly the signed tachi, several still in their original tang, and the foundation of what is known about him.
His characteristic hand is a quiet one. Over an *itame* mixed with *mokume*, often a *ko-itame* that stands a little so the published sources call it finely *hada-dachi*, he lays a *suguha* base into which *ko-midare*, *ko-chōji* and small *gunome* enter, with occasional angular *ha*; *ashi* and *yō* enter well, *ko-nie* adheres, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through. The temper is not the flamboyant clove-flower of the contemporary Bizen but a calm, small irregular line, and on the plainer pieces the *nioiguchi* tends toward *shizumi*, a subdued, settled feeling. The published sources read the whole as resembling the neighbouring Ko-Bizen and yet, "compared with Ko-Bizen, somewhat more restrained, yet possessing a distinctive, astringent flavor"[[c:2]].
The *jigane* is where his school speaks most clearly. The forging stands a little and turns blackish in tone, taking on the crepe-like *chirimen-hada* of the old Bicchū steel; dense fine *ji-nie* adheres, *chikei* enter frequently, and through the surface run the speckled *jifu* and patches of clear *sumihada*. In the darker bands an irregular *jifu-utsuri* stands out, and on the finest blades a *mizukage* rises at the *machi*. His is the speckled, sober reflection of Aoe rather than a clear bright one, and the published sources treat this *jigane*, standing and crepe-like, as the very thing that separates his work from the Ko-Bizen it otherwise recalls. The *bōshi* runs straight to a small *ko-maru*, at times with a little *hakikake*.
His work survives in essentially one register, the signed tachi, in width from slender to broad and finishing in a *ko-kissaki* or compact *chū-kissaki*, with high *koshizori* and strong *funbari*; one *ubu kodachi* survives, signed and carrying a *bonji* at the *koshimoto*. Within that one manner the published sources mark a top group. On the finest signed tachi and the *kodachi* the forging is, in their words, "more refined than is ordinary for the school"[[c:3]], the *ji-nie* densely and thickly applied, both *ji* and *ha* richly worked, the *suguha* deep in *nioi* and thick in *nie* rather than subdued; one such Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi is called a work of outstanding (*shushoku*) level, broad and bold in shape and sound in condition. The tang preserves the school's habits: *ō-sujikai* file marks, the signature cut on the *ha-ura*, and the smith's own chisel tell, the character 利 set a little closer to the *mune* than 守.
What sets him apart from his neighbours the judges name directly. A Bizen line also signed Moritoshi, but a Kanagawa tachi is appraised thus: "although there are smiths in Bizen who used the same signature, this work is judged the Moritoshi of Ko-Aoe"[[c:4]], and the basis is exactly his own traits, the standing *chirimen-hada*, the quiet *suguha* with its *shizumi*-toned *nioiguchi*, the *ō-sujikai* file marks and the *ha-ura* signature. His bright *chikei* and speckled *jifu-utsuri* over a subdued *suguha* place him within Ko-Aoe beside Yasutsugu, Sadatsugu and Tsunetsugu, and his quiet manner marks him out from the showier Bizen of the same years; the published sources hold his blades to demonstrate the points of appreciation of the school plainly, one Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi singled out as a piece in which "the characteristic features of Ko-Aoe are well shown."
For the collector he is a rare early name, graded Jō saku by Fujishiro. His finest blade is a National Treasure, held with the Important Cultural Properties and the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks as patrimony rather than as anything that trades; the National Treasure tachi descends from the Ōkōchi family, lords of the Toyohashi domain, and his blades are preserved in long-held collections and institutions with their own documented provenance, among them Atsuta Jingū and the Seikadō Bunko, and one katana, an attribution to him rather than a signed work, belongs to the temple Rendaiji. Only a small number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers beyond the protected pieces: two Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi and five further blades at Jūyō, seven in all. The published sources call surviving signed examples rare, an *ubu* and signed blade "valuable as reference material even among this smith's now-scarce works." A privately held signed Ko-Aoe Moritoshi comes to light only seldom, and to encounter one is a notable thing, a quiet document of how Bicchū forged beside the more brilliant Bizen.
Tametsugu (爲次) — Mainline · 1184-1210. Kokuhō, Jūbi, Jūyō. Tametsugu is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bicchu working in the early Kamakura period, and his name carries one of the celebrated objects of the whole tradition: the National Treasure tachi known as Kitsunegasaki, transmitted in the Kikkawa family. He is the maker the published sources reach for when they describe the early Bicchu manner, the steel of the province before the main Aoe line settled into the look the later centuries made famous. The records place him close in time to the Ko-Bizen smiths of the same generation, the *meikan* transmitting him as a son of Moritsugu active around the Jogen era (the National Treasure commentary calls him Moritsugu's pupil), his extant work descending no later than the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura. With Hira-Aoe and the great mid-Kamakura Aoe still ahead of him, he stands among the first hands whose blades let the school be recognized at all.
The Kitsunegasaki itself, which its commentary calls "the finest masterpiece among Tametsugu's works"[[c:1]], is a wide, thick tachi with a high *koshizori*, *funbari*, strong *saki-zori* and an *ikubi-kissaki*. Its *ko-itame* mixed with *ko-mokume* is well packed with fine *ji-nie* and the dark *jifu* called *sumihada*. The upper half of its temper is wider, *suguha*-toned with fine *choji* and frequent small *ashi*; the lower half is a little narrower, a *ko-midare* with *ko-choji* and *ko-gunome*, the *nioiguchi* bright and "the nie lying fine as smoke"[[c:2]]. The *boshi* crumbles in *nie* toward a *ko-maru*, and a small two-character *mei* is cut on the *ha-ura* of the *ubu* tang over *o-sujikai* file marks. Around it stand the slender signed tachi, several still in their original tang with the two-character mei cut on the *ha-ura*, high in *koshizori* with strong *funbari* and a small or medium point, one keeping the *kiji-momo* tang of an old blade. The tell of the hand is the *jigane*. Over an *itame* mixed with *mokume* that stands a little and carries *ji-nie*, the published sources find the speckled *chirimen-hada* of the Aoe *jigane*, patches of clear *sumihada*, and a quiet suggestion of *utsuri*. *Sumihada* is named on six of his seven blades, the National Treasure among them. On more than one blade the description runs almost word for word, the forging becoming *chirimen-hada*, *sumihada* mixed in, an impression of reflection across the surface, and it is this crepe-like, clear-steeled *jigane*, rather than the temper, that the judges name as the school's mark on his blades.
Upon that *jigane* the temper divides in two, and the division is the spine of his record. Among the slender tachi, the one the sources call the oldest of the three Juyo Bijutsuhin pieces wears a deliberately calm hand: a *ko-nie suguha* into which *ko-midare* is mixed, *ashi* entering, the *nioiguchi* on a companion piece overall subdued, the *boshi* running straight to a *ko-maru* above a tang filed in *o-sujikai*. The later group, set a little after the National Treasure because the signature is cut in larger characters, is broader in the body and more vigorous in the *ha*: a *nie-deki ko-midare* gathering *choji*, in one Juyo blade returning in places to a *suguha* base with *ashi* well in and the edge full of *nie*, *hotsure*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, in a Jubi blade widening at the center into a large *midare*. The published commentary calls this manner forceful and full of spirit, and the *boshi* there finishes not in a round but in *yakizume*.
The central question around him is one the sources refuse to close, and it is more interesting than any single feature. Examining the three Important Art Object tachi together, the judges hold all three to be Ko-Aoe yet write that 'they cannot at once be declared the work of the same hand'[[c:3]], that the oldest of them is the most archaic, and even of that one that 'it cannot be decisively identified with the celebrated National Treasure Kitsunegasaki Tametsugu'[[c:4]]. The manner of the signature differs blade to blade; the workmanship shades from the quiet early *suguha* to the later, showier *ko-midare*. A later Juyo paper puts the matter plainly, 'Tametsugu was the son of Ko-Aoe Moritsugu, and several smiths bore the same name'[[c:5]], and singles out one folded-back two-character signature for 'the strongly struck chisel that marks the Ko-Aoe signature'[[c:6]]. Whether one smith changed across a working life or several smiths shared the name is left, in the institution's own words, to further study, which is exactly why the *ubu*, signed pieces are prized as documentary material for the school.
What sets him apart he shares with no neighbour in quite the same combination. Against the plainer *itame* of the Ko-Bizen smiths of the same years, his is the *chirimen-hada* *jigane* with *sumihada* and a suggestion of *utsuri*; against the flamboyant *choji-midare* the main Aoe line would later make its signature, his earliest hand is a quiet *suguha*. The published sources affirm his blades from precisely these two things, writing that 'the *jigane* and *hamon* clearly display the characteristic features of the Ko-Aoe group'[[c:7]] and that 'the archaic manner of workmanship is not later than the early Kamakura period'[[c:8]]. He is read, in short, by the old Bicchu steel and the calm of the early edge, the school caught at its beginning.
For the collector he is, before anything else, the maker of a National Treasure, and that fixes the terms. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. The Kitsunegasaki, the *go* tachi long held by the Kikkawa house and now in the Kikkawa Historical Museum, is patrimony preserved, not a thing that trades. By the house tradition it is the sword Kikkawa Kojiro Tomokane wore in 1200, when on the Kamakura shogunate's order he struck down Kajiwara Kagetoki's band at Kitsunegasaki in Suruga, and its commentary calls it extremely well preserved[[c:9]]; a Juyo paper calls it a sword that predates Shoji 2. Its black-lacquer tachi mounting is prized in its own right as a fine early-Kamakura koshirae. Beyond it his record is small and largely held: three signed tachi of the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, one passing through Iwasaki Koyata to the Seikado Bunko, one through Ninomiya Kojun to the Sano Art Museum and another formerly with Matsumoto Kenjiro, and three blades designated Juyo in the modern era. With a single locked National Treasure and only a handful of designated blades on record, a signed Ko-Aoe Tametsugu of recorded whereabouts is a rare thing to meet; one comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example would be, for a collector of early work, among the more memorable things to encounter, a document of how the Bicchu school began.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. Sadatsugu worked in Bitchū at the end of the Heian and in the early Kamakura period as one of the representative smiths of Ko-Aoe. The published sources explain that Bitchū was known from early times as an iron-producing province, and that the Aoe smiths forged and flourished in the districts of Ko'i and Manju on the lower Takahashi River; the work of the school from the end of the Heian to about the middle of the Kamakura period is called Ko-Aoe. They name Sadatsugu with Moritsugu, Yasutsugu and Tsunetsugu as its representative smiths. Since the *Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi* he has been transmitted as one of the *ban-kaji* who served the cloistered sovereign Go-Toba In[[c:1]], and the same name was carried on down to the Nanbokuchō period. The commentary holds Ko-Aoe Sadatsugu to be known for a particularly high level of skill within the school, yet adds that his surviving works are extremely few, a handful that can be counted on the fingers.
His recognized hand is the slender tachi in *shinogi-zukuri* with *iori-mune*. The two signed tachi of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers are both shortened, yet both keep a high *koshizori* and a compact *ko-kissaki*. The published sources find an archaic dignity in that shape, and of the later of the two they write that the slender tachi with its high koshizori is graceful and carries a sense of refinement. The National Treasure tachi keeps the form uncut: its tang is *ubu*, and it is a slender tachi with a high *koshizori*, *funbari* and a *ko-kissaki*, inclining slightly forward toward the tip in what the published sources call a graceful shape[[c:2]].
The jigane is the constant of his work, and *jifu* is recorded on three of his four blades. On the two shortened tachi it is a well-packed *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume* that stands a little into the crepe-like texture called *chirimen-hada*, with ji-nie adhering well, fine chikei and patches of *jifu*. The National Treasure is a well-packed *ko-itame* with thick ji-nie, jifu and chikei, and a faint *utsuri*; its commentary names the jifu *sumi-hada*. Of the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, first designated Juyo in the tenth session, the published sources write that the chirimen-hada shows the mark of the school[[c:3]]. They describe Ko-Aoe work in general the same way: a jigane in which the mokume stands out, often mixed with jifu, under a temper that is well formed in nie and, compared with contemporary Bizen work, somewhat plain and astringent in taste[[c:4]].
Over that jigane the temper stays close to a suguha base. On the National Treasure it is a *suguha*-toned ko-midare with small ashi and yō and kinsuji, rich in variation within the ha, the nioiguchi deep and bright, and the bōshi undulates slightly before turning back round. On the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi it is a ko-midare mixing chōji and gunome, with ashi and sunagashi, a bright nioiguchi, ko-nie and kinsuji in places. The published sources call it comparatively florid for the school, yet showing the quality of its age. The later Juyo tachi carries a ko-midare with ko-chōji that rises and falls a little, ashi and yō frequent and nie thick, spilling into the ji in places with *nijūba*, *yubashiri*, kinsuji and sunagashi. On the earlier Juyo record of the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi the bōshi runs straight and turns back in a large-round on the omote and a small-round on the ura, with a little hakikake.
The tang carries the rest of the evidence. Ko-Aoe smiths cut the mei on the *ha-ura* and finish the tang in large *ō-sujikai* file marks, and the published sources note that the ha-ura signature is a point of difference from Ko-Bizen[[c:5]]. On the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi the two-character mei is fluent and cut with a fine chisel mixed with reverse strokes. The later Juyo tachi is an exception, an exceptionally rare example in which Sadatsugu cut his signature on the obverse[[c:6]], authentic yet a little different in manner from his usual hand. The published record leaves open which of the several Sadatsugu was the earliest and the one meant by the ban-kaji tradition. It calls the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, by both workmanship and signature, the most precious single blade for resolving that question[[c:7]]. The National Treasure commentary, for its part, notes several Aoe smiths named Sadatsugu from the end of the Heian to the Nanbokuchō period and identifies the maker of its tachi as the Sadatsugu who served as ban-kaji[[c:8]].
Fujishiro ranks him Jō-jō saku. His record is crowned by a National Treasure tachi, transmitted in the Sō family, lords of the Tsushima domain, and now in a private collection in Tokyo. Its commentary holds that it shows the features of Ko-Aoe well, the jifu, the archaic ko-midare and the ha-ura signature, and that it is moreover of fine workmanship and well preserved[[c:9]]. The NBTHK compares the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi with the National Treasure Sadatsugu transmitted in the Sō Count family of Tsushima[[c:10]]. He also has an Important Cultural Property katana with a gold-inlaid attribution and the meibutsu name Ko-Aoe, its plate giving a *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume* and a *suguha* mixed with *ko-gunome*. Only two of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. Of the later one the NBTHK writes that, among the rare signed works of this smith, it is valuable also as reference material[[c:11]]. Of recorded whereabouts, his blades include holdings in the Sano Art Museum and the Aomori City Museum. With so few signed pieces outside the national designations, a signed Ko-Aoe Sadatsugu comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example is among the rarer things a collector of early Bitchū work could encounter.
Toshitsugu (俊次) — Mainline · 1211-1213. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Toshitsugu is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bicchū, working in the early Kamakura period and transmitted in the reference works as a son either of Ko-Aoe Moritsugu or of Tsuguiye, with the Meikan placing his activity about the Kenryaku era. The Aoe school grew up in the iron country of the lower Takahashi river, around the villages of Aoe and Manju, and the published sources reserve the name Ko-Aoe for the work of the school that does not descend later than roughly the middle of the Kamakura period. Within that early body Toshitsugu stands as one of the names by which the manner is recognized, though the published commentary returns again and again to a single fact about him: that his signed work scarcely survives. The NBTHK states plainly that of this smith "extant signed works are exceedingly few"[[c:1]], and it is against that scarcity that each surviving blade is weighed.
His characteristic hand is the tachi, several still bearing a bold two-character signature cut on the ha-ura, one of them ubu with high koshizori and a small kissaki, the rest shortened yet keeping the old tachi carriage with marked funbari, one running to an ikubi-leaning point. Over the steel he sets a deliberately quiet temper. The base is a chū-suguha or a plain suguha into which ko-midare, ko-chōji and small gunome enter, ashi and yō coming in well, the nioiguchi deep in nioi with thick ko-nie, kinsuji and sunagashi running through it. On one broad, long tachi the temper is a suguha tone with a shallow notare, a kuichigai-ba near the koshimoto and a bright, clear nioiguchi. The bōshi runs straight to a small ko-maru, and on the finest signed tachi turns back from suguha into a fuller ō-maru sweep.
Toshitsugu forges a ko-itame, in places an itame mixed with mokume that flows and stands a little, with ji-nie adhering and chikei entering, and through it run the patchy jifu and the crepe-like surface the published sources name a chirimen jihada, calling the texture in so many words a "crepe-like grain"[[c:2]]. A faint utsuri stands over that jigane on his signed pieces. On his most refined attributed work the reflection becomes his particular note: a suji-utsuri gathers near the edge while a midare-utsuri rises toward the back, and the two together give the layered, stepped dan-utsuri that sets those blades apart. The published sources read the whole of this Ko-Aoe manner as quieter than the Bizen work of the same day, "somewhat more subdued, with an astringent depth of flavor when compared with contemporary Bizen"[[c:3]].
His record divides into two faces. The first is the signed tachi already described, the foundation of any judgment of his hand. The second is the o-suriage mumei katana gold-inlaid Kōfū, broad in body with little taper from base to tip, thick in kasane, deeply curved, ending in a compact chū-kissaki, the jigane standing overall with minute ji-nie and the suji- and midare-utsuri that read as dan-utsuri. Because that powerful shape and those features bind it so closely to the signed Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi of the thirteenth session, the published sources judge it the work of the same smith. The file marks on the tang are a large ō-sujikai, named a point of appreciation for the school, and the commentary notes that many Ko-Aoe smiths, Toshitsugu among them, cut the signature on the ha-ura rather than the customary omote, calling the "large sujikai file marks a point of appreciation for this group"[[c:4]].
Toshitsugu is recognized by his own traits: the suguha-based ko-midare over the chirimen jigane, deep in nioi and thick in ko-nie, and on the attributed katana the stepped dan-utsuri. The thirteenth-session tachi is held up not merely as a good Toshitsugu but as a high point of the school as a whole, the NBTHK naming it "an outstanding piece not only among this smith's works but within the Aoe group itself"[[c:5]]; of an earlier Jūyō tachi the same body of commentary says that a piece of such quality "has no equal elsewhere"[[c:6]] among his surviving signed work. His standing rests less on volume than on the height of the few that remain.
For the collector Toshitsugu is a rare early name carried at a high rank. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through an Important Cultural Property, a tachi held at Dazaifu Tenmangū in Fukuoka, a prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin now in the Sano Art Museum, two Tokubetsu Jūyō and two Jūyō, six designated works in all on the official record. The plate of the Important Cultural Property gives a *shinogi-zukuri* tachi with a *mitsu-mune*, forged in *itame* and tempered in a *suguha* mixed with *ko-midare*. The signed pieces are the precious ones, the published sources prizing the ubu tachi for keeping its original tang and signature; the o-suriage mumei katana, secured to him by its bond to the signed Tokubetsu Jūyō, is the other way his hand reaches a collection. With only a handful of blades across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, and most of them held rather than traded, a signed Ko-Aoe Toshitsugu comes to light only seldom; a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter.
Tsugutada (次忠) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. Tsugutada is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bicchu. The published sources place him at the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura, traditionally around the Joei era, and record him as a son of Tsugie or of Yasutsugu. The Aoe school is said to begin with Yasutsugu around the Joan era and to have forged at Ko-i and Manju in the lower basin of the Takahashi River, and its work down to about the middle of the Kamakura period is called Ko-Aoe. Within that group he is "one of the representative smiths"[[c:1]], yet his surviving work is scarce: "extant signed tachi by Tsugutada number only two or three"[[c:2]].
The published sources describe the Ko-Aoe manner as close to contemporary Bizen work but quieter. The jihada often stands in a fine, crisp grain, "what is called chirimen-hada"[[c:3]], the hamon is based on suguha with ko-midare in ko-nie-deki, and the nioiguchi tends to sink. Against Bizen work the whole has "a somewhat subdued and astringent flavor"[[c:4]]. His blades carry that description closely.
The forging is itame mixed with mokume, standing somewhat, with ji-nie and the patchy jifu for which Aoe jigane is known; a faint utsuri rises on the finer pieces. The temper is quiet: a shallow notare or a suguha-toned line mixed with ko-midare and ko-gunome, at times ko-choji, the nie well adhered, with sunagashi and frequent kinsuji. On one tachi the yakiba is narrow and the nioiguchi "tends toward shizumi"[[c:5]]. The boshi runs straight to a ko-maru or carries a scatter of nie. The tangs are filed in o-sujikai, and the two characters are cut large with a thick chisel on the haki-ura, the side Bicchu smiths sign; on one tachi the sources note that the signature sits unusually above the mekugi-ana.
The form is the period tachi stated plainly: high koshizori with funbari and a compact chu-kissaki or a ko-kissaki. The Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of the 11th session, ubu and long, is "a large-scale work by Ko-Aoe Tsugutada"[[c:6]]. Its first glance is gentle and calm, but the sources find that the nie adheres well and the subdued ji and ha carry an antique fragrance. Several cuts above the monouchi and an arrow wound, they add, speak of martial exploits in ages past.
The Naruse-family tachi of the 54th session is the fullest statement of his hand. Its itame with mokume takes a chirimen-like texture with a little sumihada and a faint utsuri. The temper drops away at the base in yakiotoshi, runs as a fine suguha with hotsure, uchinoke and yubashiri in the lower half, and turns to ko-midare near the middle, with kinsuji and sunagashi and the nioiguchi again sinking. Surveying his work, the sources find "a plain and somewhat rustic feeling"[[c:7]], and call this blade "a superior example in which Tsugutada's austere and deeply flavored style is well expressed"[[c:8]], of high documentary value for so rarely signed a smith.
His designated record holds one Important Cultural Property, one Tokubetsu Juyo and three Juyo, and a further signed tachi, formerly of the Tanzan Shrine, is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection. Its entry repeats that "signed works by Tsugutada are extremely few"[[c:9]], and judges that, though a little less polished in manner than the better-known names, he was "a smith of considerable skill within the school"[[c:10]]. The Important Cultural Property is a signed tachi whose plate records an itame forging with a small notare mixed with ko-midare, the same quiet temper. With signed blades this few and most of them long held, a signed Tsugutada comes to market only seldom.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1225-1227. Jūbun, Jūyō. The published sources open the Aoe record with a document older than any blade: the early eleventh-century Shin Sarugakki, listing the notable products of the provinces, already names "the swords of Bicchu"[[c:1]]. The Aoe smiths of the lower Takahashi River basin inherited that reputation, the work up to about the middle of the Kamakura period being called Ko-Aoe and the later work through the Nanbokucho period Aoe. Sadatsugu is "a representative smith of the Aoe forges"[[c:2]], and the name was carried on within the school down to the Nanbokucho period.
The same sources are frank about what that means for the name. Among works signed Sadatsugu there are signatures in a small manner, signatures of ordinary proportion, and others that look somewhat later, so that the smith "is thought not to have been one man"[[c:3]]. The signed tachi of the 22nd Juyo session, with its small-style two-character mei, is read as a work "of a somewhat later date even within Ko-Aoe"[[c:4]].
That tachi gives the type. It is shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, deep in sori, with a chu-kissaki. The signature sits on the ha-ura near the nakago-jiri, toward the mune, on an ubu tang filed in steep o-sujikai. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, inclining to masame toward the edge, with ji-nie and patches of jifu. Over it runs a narrow suguha, its nioiguchi drawn somewhat tight with ko-nie, and the boshi goes straight to a ko-maru.
The shortened blade of the 70th session shows the same manner over a finer jigane. Its ko-itame is well packed, with thick ji-nie and plentiful chikei, and a patchy, jifu-toned utsuri rises in the ji. The suguha carries a little ko-gunome and slight ashi, nioi-dominant with ko-nie, with tobiyaki near the monouchi on the sashi-ura. The published sources find in "the orderly suguha with suitably blended ko-gunome"[[c:5]], together with the fine jigane and the calm, gentle sugata, "a piece that conveys the dignity of the Aoe school"[[c:6]]. Its several peg-holes show it was shortened more than once, and at some stage the folded-back signature was repaired and remade into the present affixed inscription, reading "Sadatsugu, resident of Bicchu Province"[[c:7]].
Two Important Cultural Properties carry the record further, on plates that give only form, forging and temper. The signed tachi held by the State at the Tokyo National Museum is forged in ko-itame mixed with mokume and tempered in a suguha with choji and ko-midare mixed in. The katana known as Ō-Aoe was shortened and gold-inlaid with his name and a Hon'ami attestation[[c:8]]; it is forged in ko-itame and tempered in a hiro-suguha.
Four designated works stand on record: two Important Cultural Properties and two Juyo. The Important Cultural Properties are national patrimony and do not change hands, one of them in the State collection. The two Juyo blades, both of the quiet suguha manner, are the part of the record a collector could ever meet, so a signed Sadatsugu reaches the market only rarely and is an occasion when it does.
Hirotsugu (弘次) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. Hirotsugu is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bitchū province whose surviving signed work falls across the early to middle Kamakura period, the span under which the Aoe school's earliest and most archaic blades are gathered. The Aoe group worked at Ko'i and Manju in the lower Takahashi river basin, and is traditionally founded by Yasutsugu around the Jōan era of the early 1170s. The published sources place Hirotsugu within the *meikan* as a son of Kunitsugu, his period given as Kōan, the name continuing through several recorded generations from the Genryaku era down to a late appearance in the Bunwa era of the Nanbokuchō period. Against that documentary placement the workmanship of his surviving tachi reads older: the judges on the 24th-session Jūyō blade note that although the *meikan* gives a Kōan date, its two-character signature and archaic manner give it points in common with the early-Kamakura Aoe group[[c:1]]. His extant signed work is comparatively scarce, the commentary on the earliest of his Jūyō tachi noting only that he was an Aoe smith whose pieces are few[[c:2]], so his hand is read from a small but consistent body of slender tachi.
The forging is where his blades are first known, and it is the Aoe *jigane* in its clearest form. Over an *itame-hada* thick with *mokume* the grain stands and gathers into the crepe-like texture the school is named for, what the published sources call the so-called *chirimen* skin[[c:3]]. Through that crepe *ji* fine *ji-nie* attaches thickly and *chikei* enter, and into it is mixed *jifu*, the patchy mottling of old Bizen-related steel, out of which a faint *jifu-utsuri* rises rather than the bright *midare-utsuri* of contemporary Bizen work. This is the discriminating mark of his *jigane*: not a clear reflection read across the *ji*, but a speckled, quiet shadow gathered out of the mottling, the Aoe variant of the Bizen feature. It is a *jigane* of subdued depth, and the published sources, characterizing the school, say that compared with contemporaneous Bizen work it is somewhat plainer and carries a quietly astringent savor[[c:4]].
The temper sits over a *chū-suguha* base broken low into small *midare*, with a tendency toward small *gunome* and, on the more restrained blades, small *chōji*. *Ashi* and *yō* enter frequently, the work carried in *nie*, the *habuchi* showing *hotsure* with fine *sunagashi*; the *nioiguchi* runs deep and in places takes on an *urumi* softness. On the 60th-session Jūyō tachi, the richest of his extant *ha*, the activity opens further: *ashi* and *saka-ashi* together, the reverse-slanting feet that are the Aoe hallmark, with *ko-nie*, small *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki*-like spots, *hotsure*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* all entering. That *saka-ashi*, the feet slanting back toward the base, is the clearest point by which his *hamon* parts from the straight *ashi* of Bizen. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns back small, *ko-maru* on most blades and pointed on others, often touched by *hakikake*, and once ending in *yakitsume*. The signature is cut in two characters at the tip of the *nakago*, and of the four tachi described in full, three are *suriage* and one is preserved *ubu*.
Within that single coherent manner the published record draws one telling distinction, concerning the brightness of the *nioiguchi*. Many Ko-Aoe works tend to a *shizumi*, a sinking and subdued *nioiguchi*, part of what the sources mean in calling the school plainer than Bizen. Against this the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi is singled out: whereas the usual Ko-Aoe blade sinks, this one is instead rather bright, a point the judges expressly draw attention to[[c:5]]. The same blade is read as expressing the features of the school with particular clarity, a crepe *ji* with *jifu* and a *jifu-utsuri*-like reflection, an archaic and well-*nie*'d *suguha* foundation mixed with small *midare* and a tendency to small *gunome*, the fine variation along the *habuchi* conveying an old flavor. The *ubu* 37th-session tachi shows the other side of his range, carrying *horimono*, a *suken* at the *koshimoto* and *bō-hi* with *soe-hi* run as *kaki-nagashi*, its two-character signature cut large with a thick chisel, the kind of confident original blade that anchors the reading of the *suriage* pieces.
Hirotsugu's place is among the early Ko-Aoe makers whose work the NBTHK gathers close to old Bizen, and his distinction is carried by his own attested traits rather than by the comparison: the crepe *itame* with its *jifu*, the faint *jifu-utsuri*, the *saka-ashi*-bearing *suguha* worked in *nie*. The published commentary on the 14th-session tachi reads the slender, shallow-*sori*, small-pointed build together with the small *itame* turning to *chirimen-hada* and the *suguha* base mixed with *ko-chōji midare* as clearly showing the characteristic features of the Aoe school of the Kamakura period[[c:6]], and finds it an excellent tachi in both *ji* and *ha*. His archaic, *nie*-worked *suguha* sets him apart from the later Aoe smiths, whose *saka-chōji* and *dan-utsuri* grew more pronounced into the Nanbokuchō period; he belongs to the quieter, earlier register of the school, the manner the sources repeatedly read as old-fragrant and classically elegant. The 60th-session tachi is judged a Ko-Aoe work rich in subdued savor whose activities in both *ji* and *ha* are full of nuance[[c:7]], valued besides as study material for an extant example by his hand.
The weight of designation behind his name is modest in number but high in tier. Of the works on official record, five are designated, reaching the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks and one Important Cultural Property; there are no National Treasures. The Important Cultural Property tachi is held at the Akihasan Hongū Akiha Shrine, patrimony in shrine keeping rather than anything that moves, and one further blade is recorded as a Prefectural Cultural Property in private hands. None of his blades carries a recorded *denrai* lineage of owners, so the connoisseurship rests on the tier record and on the quality the judges read into individual pieces, foremost the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi, whose original robust construction is described as well retained, a thick *kasane* and full *hiraniku* surviving the shortening into a *hamaguri-ba*, plainly a careful commission for a warrior house[[c:8]]. With his signed tachi few and the foremost held as cultural property, a Hirotsugu in open hands is among the rarer encounters in old Aoe work, the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō pieces reaching the market only seldom and a signed example a landmark when one does.
Aritsugu (有次) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Jūbun. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koresuke (是介) — Mainline · 1190-1199. Jūbun, Jūyō. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (延次) — Mainline · 1206-1207. Jūbi, Tokujū. Enji of Bicchu Province, Ko-Aoe[[c:1]], is the name the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi gives for this smith, and the published sources set him at the head of the line: he is held to be the first-generation Enji, traditionally the son of Ko-Aoe Moritsugu[[c:2]], with the name then carried down into the late Kamakura. He belongs to the Aoe group of Bicchu, the swordsmiths who appeared roughly two centuries after the early-eleventh-century reader Shin Sarugaku-ki listed "Bicchu swords" among the products of the provinces, and who worked the lower Takahashi River basin around Aoe and Manju. Within that group the works that do not descend later than the mid-Kamakura are called Ko-Aoe, the early Aoe, and it is to this earliest stratum that his blades are read. A question of generation comes with the name: the reference compilations record several smiths signing 延次 from the start of the Kamakura period onward, so the corpus carries a name borne by more than one hand, sorted out by date rather than by a difference of school.
His authenticated work is the signed tachi, slender and built with a high koshizori and funbari, the kissaki kept small, the tang on the least altered pieces remaining ubu in the kijimomo pheasant-thigh shape. The hand that recognises him reads first in the steel. Over a tightly forged ko-itame with fine ji-nie and chikei, the grain stands up across the whole blade and takes on the crepe-silk chirimen-hada of the school, the published sources writing that overall the grain rises into that crepe-like jigane[[c:3]]. Clear sumi-hada patches surface in the ji, ji-madara intermingles, and a midare-utsuri stands over it, the faint sumi-hada and reflection together the marks that hold his jigane to Aoe and away from a plain Bizen tachi. Over this he tempers a suguha base, shallowly notare, into which small gunome and small choji are mixed and ko-ashi enter well; the nioiguchi tends tight and shows bright and clear, and the boshi turns back in ko-maru. The published sources single out that brightly clear nioiguchi as the superb point of the work, judging on the Tokubetsu Juyo piece that the way it grows bright and clear is splendid[[c:4]].
The register is the quiet one of the early Aoe, and that is the point of him. His is a suguha-toned manner, not the saka-gunome flamboyance toward which the later Aoe smiths of the Nanbokucho would move, and the small clove and small gunome ride on the straight base as activity rather than govern it. The interest lies in the pairing of a calm temper with a busy ji: the standing grain, the crepe of the chirimen-hada, the patches of sumi-hada, the midare-utsuri laid faintly over all of it. The published sources read this whole as the school speaking through one of its founders, holding of the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi that in both jigane and hamon it well displays the distinctive features of the group and that its workmanship is excellent[[c:5]], and of the Juyo tachi that it clearly displays the features of the Ko-Aoe school in both ji and ha[[c:6]]. What separates his blades from a Bizen suguha tachi is therefore not the temper, which they share, but the jigane beneath it.
The date of his work is read from the blades themselves. The prewar Important Art Object tachi keeps an almost original kijimomo tang with a high koshizori and marked funbari, a faint sumi-hada appearing with ji-madara intermixed and a midare-utsuri standing out[[c:7]]; from its sugata and the work in ji and ha the published sources carry it back to the early Kamakura. A second Enji tachi, which the published sources place with a later bearer of the name in the Bun'ei era of the mid-Kamakura, is recorded under that later Enji. The signature itself is part of the recognition: a bare two-character mei is cut on the ha-ura near the tang tip, with a fine chisel yet in somewhat large characters, over a steeply slanted o-sujikai file pattern. The published sources note that within the Ko-Aoe tradition, not limited to Enji, it is standard to cut the signature on the ha-ura[[c:8]], and that the o-sujikai yasurime is a point not to be overlooked; on the Tokubetsu Juyo piece they add that the calligraphy of the mei precisely matches the example certified as an Important Art Object[[c:9]].
His standing is best taken from the school he opens rather than from a rivalry. Enji stands at the top of the Ko-Aoe genealogy as the son of Moritsugu, the name descending through the line to the late Kamakura. The published sources note that signed Enji tachi survive in relatively greater numbers than for most of his fellows, so the difficulty for the connoisseur is less one of authentication than of generation, of placing a given signed blade early or late within the run of the name. What recurs across his record as his own is consistent: the crepe jigane with its sumi-hada and faint reflection, the bright tight nioiguchi over a quiet suguha, the two-character ha-ura signature above steep file marks. These are not borrowed from a greater contemporary but are the early Aoe seen at its source, and unsigned attributions to the school rest on exactly this combination.
The Toko Taikan values his work in the middle range, and two of his blades stand on the official record as designated works. There are no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties among them. The earlier is the prewar Important Art Object tachi, owned at its designation by Seto Yasutaro of Hyogo. Above it stands a single tachi raised to Tokubetsu Juyo, with its Juyo record on the same blade. Enji is accordingly a smith of the early Aoe more approachable than the great Kamakura names yet still uncommon: his signed tachi appear from time to time and with patience, and most carry only the bare two characters of his name, so that placing the generation falls to the eye reading the crepe jigane and the bright suguha. A piece transmitted with its history and certified for its calligraphy is the rarest among them and a landmark when one is encountered.
Toshitada (俊忠) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Jūbun. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguie (次家) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Jūbun, Jūyō. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kagetsugu (景次) — Mainline · 1190-1199. Tokujū. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koretomo (是友) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Tokujū, Jūyō. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1151-1154. Tokujū. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Takatsuna (高綱) — Mainline · 1204-1206. Tokujū. Takatsuna is a smith of the Ko-Aoe school in Bitchu Province, active from the late Heian period into the early Kamakura period. Although swordsmith reference works (*meikan*) list three smiths of Ko-Bizen named Takatsuna -- assigned respectively to around the Genkyū, Kangen, and Kōchō eras -- and further indicate the existence of several additional makers of the same name, the NBTHK has distinguished this Takatsuna as a separate figure within the Ko-Aoe lineage on the basis of forging characteristics, file marks, and the archaic character of the signature. Works attributed to him also appear in the Imperial Collection under the broader Yamashiro tradition, reflecting the overlapping classificatory frameworks applied to smiths of this early period.
Takatsuna's work is defined by an *itame-hada* forging mixed with *ko-mokume* that shows "a tendency toward *hada-dachi*" (standing grain), accompanied by thick *ji-nie*, fine *chikei*, and a prominent mottled *jifu-utsuri*. His *hamon* is fundamentally *suguha*-based, mixed with *ko-midare*, *ko-chōji*, and *ko-gunome*; *ashi* and *yō* enter frequently, with thick *nie* that in places becomes especially strong, producing *hotsure*, *yubashiri*, and a *nijūba*-like appearance. *Kinsuji* and *sunagashi* are described as "applied vigorously." In both *ji* and *ha*, "the characteristic features of Ko-Aoe are strongly expressed." The presence of old *ō-sujikai* file marks and the archaic manner of the signature characters further support the attribution.
The NBTHK describes Takatsuna's surviving work as revealing "the high technical level" and "high technical ability" of the smith, presenting "an excellent workmanship" and "an excellent *dekiba*." His blades are praised for their *kenzen* (sound and well-preserved) construction and for a "refined, well-worked forging with finely interwoven chikei." Beyond their artistic merit, they are regarded as "extremely valuable as documentary material" -- pieces that "help compensate for gaps in the meikan record," filling lacunae in the historical understanding of the Ko-Aoe school.
Other smiths
Koreshige (是重) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kuniyuki (国行) — Mainline · 1199-1201. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1150-1185. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sanemori (眞守) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunekiyo (恒清) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (安次) — Mainline · 1199-1201. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Aritada (有忠) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Fujitsugu (藤次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hirotsune (弘恒) — Mainline · 1222-1224. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (包次) — Mainline · 1185-1190. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (包次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (盛次) — Mainline · 1224-1225. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1185-1190. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1225-1227. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Muneto (宗遠) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsune (宗恒) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritaka (業高) — Mainline · 1222-1224. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritsugu (成次) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritsugu (成次) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritsuna (成綱) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Norizane (則實) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (旦次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (亘次) — Mainline · 1199-1201. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (但次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (忠次) — Mainline · 1234-1235. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadayasu (但安) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadayasu (但安) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamenobu (爲信) — Mainline · 1225-1227. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamenori (爲則) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tametsugu (爲次) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameyoshi (爲吉) — Mainline · 1222-1224. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomoto (知遠) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (朝次) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Totsugu (遠次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhide (次秀) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次廣) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugumori (次守) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugunobu (次延) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutoshi (次俊) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguzane (次眞) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneie (恒家) — Mainline · 1227-1229. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunemori (常森) — Mainline · 1222-1224. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (常次) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyori (常依) — Mainline · 1211-1213. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyori (常依) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1225-1227. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuhiro (安弘) — Mainline · 1213-1219. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (安次) — Mainline · 1211-1213. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (安次) — Mainline · 1171-1175. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yori (頼) — Mainline · 1222-1224. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yorizane (依眞) — Mainline · 1234-1235. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitsugu (行次) — Mainline · 1199-1201. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Phase 2 · Chū-Aoe (中青江) · 1235 – 1334
The Chu-Aoe school represents the middle and culminating phase of the Aoe tradition of Bitchu Province, encompassing smiths active from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho era. The lineage traces its origins to an ancient swordmaking heritage in the lower basin of the Takahashi River, a tradition already celebrated in the eleventh-century *Shin Sarugakki*, which counted "the swords of Bitchu" among the notable products of the provinces. Scholars conventionally distinguish earlier Ko-Aoe production, extending through the mid-Kamakura period, from the Chu-Aoe and later Sue-Aoe phases that carried the tradition forward. The name Sadatsugu -- transmitted since the *Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi* as one of the *goban-kaji* appointed to serve Retired Emperor Gotoba and accorded the highest valuation in the *Shinkan Hiden-sho* -- stands as the school's most prestigious lineage name, while Yoshitsugu, Naotsugu, Tsunetsugu, and Hidetsugu represent the principal working smiths whose signed and dated examples anchor the chronology of the late Kamakura Aoe group. With the transition into the Nanbokucho period, a second flowering emerged under Tsugunao, Tsuguyoshi, and Moritsugu, who are consistently identified by the NBTHK as the representative smiths of Aoe in that era.
The technical identity of Chu-Aoe is defined by a constellation of traits that recur with remarkable consistency across the school's members. The forging characteristically displays tightly packed *ko-itame-hada* mixed with *mokume*, upon which extremely fine *ji-nie* adheres thickly and delicate *chikei* are interwoven. A mottled, patch-like *jifu* texture frequently appears, and the distinctive crepe-like surface known as *chirimen-hada* is encountered among several smiths. Most diagnostic of all is the school's *utsuri*, which manifests in multiple forms: *midare-utsuri*, the stepped *dan-utsuri* in which linear utsuri near the edge transitions to midare-utsuri toward the *mune*, and the dark-toned *sumihada*. The *hamon* is fundamentally *suguha*-based, ranging from narrow *hoso-suguha* to medium *chu-suguha* with shallow *notare*, into which *ko-gunome*, *ko-choji*, and *saka-ashi* are mixed. The *nioiguchi* is universally described as tight, bright, and clear -- the single most defining quality of the school -- producing a deep *shio-ai* that is repeatedly praised in NBTHK assessments. The *boshi* characteristically runs straight, turning back in *ko-maru* with a tendency toward a pointed tip. A critical stylistic evolution occurred within the Nanbokucho period: while the late Kamakura smiths worked predominantly in suguha, the later generation developed a splendid, flamboyant *saka-choji-midare* that became the school's most celebrated mode. Tsugunao is recognized as "a master of saka-choji," producing tempering of such florid brilliance that the NBTHK characterizes it as "the exclusive forte of this group" -- an emblematic and highly individual domain. The reverse-slanting tendencies visible in earlier Kamakura-period works are understood as precursors to this splendid later development.
The Chu-Aoe school occupies a position of enduring prestige within the Japanese sword canon. The Hon'ami family developed a longstanding practice of rendering Sadatsugu appraisals for unsigned Aoe works of particularly fine workmanship, treating the name as a mark of the highest quality within the tradition. Naotsugu and Yoshitsugu, whose signed examples bearing official court titles and era dates from Gentoku through Kanno survive in exceptional condition, furnish irreplaceable documentary material for the study of Bitchu swordmaking. Works from the school have been transmitted through distinguished collections -- the Choshu Mori, the Nabeshima of Hizen, the Uesugi, and the Maeda of Kaga -- attesting to sustained appreciation across centuries. Naotsugu occupies a pivotal position at the transition from the *ko-nie-deki* manner of the Kamakura period to the tighter, brighter *nioi-deki* workmanship of the Nanbokucho era, while Moritsugu's rare surviving works bridge the late Kamakura and early Nanbokucho phases with tanto displaying both the traditional suguha and a saka-choji not previously encountered in the school. In both the quiet restraint of their suguha and the gorgeous brilliance of their saka-choji-midare, the smiths of Chu-Aoe demonstrate the Bitchu tradition at its most refined and accomplished -- a school whose tightly forged steel, luminous nioiguchi, and distinctive utsuri constitute an aesthetic achievement of the first order.
Naotsugu (直次) — Mainline · 1288-1350. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. In Gentoku 1 (1329), in the twelfth month, Naotsugu (直次) of Bitchū signed a small hira-zukuri tantō "Bitchū-shū jū Sahyōe-no-jō Naotsugu"[[c:1]] with the date cut on the reverse, and the NBTHK calls it a fine piece that demonstrates the smith's high technique[[c:2]]. He belongs to the Aoe school of Bitchū, which forged along the lower reaches of the Takahashi river. The published sources divide its production in two: work to about the middle of Kamakura is called Ko-Aoe, and what follows, on into Nanbokuchō, simply Aoe. The Meikan places Naotsugu's activity around the Karyaku era (1326-29); he styled himself Saemon-no-jō and Sahyōe-no-jō, and together with Yoshitsugu he is counted among the representative smiths of the school in the passage from the very end of Kamakura into the opening of Nanbokuchō. His base, as the published record says of the Aoe smiths of this time, is suguha, with many of his blades built fundamentally upon it.
What distinguishes the hand is a controlled chū-suguha rather than the flamboyant chōji of an earlier Bizen. The nioiguchi tightens and brightens, ko-gunome and small angular gunome enter the temper, and faint ashi run toward the base with the reverse slant the school is known for, the saka-ashi that the published sources read as the mark of so-called Sue-Aoe. On the widest of his katana the edge is a naka-suguha with a tight nioiguchi, saka-ashi, ko-ashi and yō, and the nioiguchi is bright and clear; the bōshi rises a little before its return, a slight tsukiage that ends in a pointed turn. He keeps the suguha quiet and lets the jigane and the slant carry the work, and on the Kitaguchi katana the judges find in all of these points the characteristic features of this craftsman and his school[[c:3]].
The jigane shows the Bitchū steel at full strength. A ko-itame mixed with mokume tightens into the so-called chirimen-hada, the crêpe-like surface texture of the school, and through it run the patchy jifu and the clear sumihada patches that are among Aoe's surest tells. On the tantō the forging packs down finely, thick ji-nie gathers, and a faint midare-utsuri rises across it; on the unsigned katana the grain stands more openly, with sumihada mixed in and a rather coarse nie on the edge. The temper on the Gentoku tantō is carried down into the ha-machi, a yakikomi the judges single out, and the bright, clear sharpness of its nioiguchi is what they note above all, the hardened edge keeping its line tight and luminous[[c:4]]. The bōshi runs straight or with a shallow notare and turns back in a ko-maru or, more characteristically, with the tip drawn to a point.
His surviving work falls into two registers by form. The signed and dated pieces are the documentary core: the Gentoku 1 tantō headed by the Sahyōe-no-jō title, ubu with the long mei cut by a slender chisel and the date on the reverse, and the wide-bodied katana signed "Bitchū no kuni jūnin Naotsugu saku," their long signatures preserved through shortening by being folded back into an orikaeshi-mei. The published sources note that among his works the signatures including the Sahyōe-no-jō title are rare[[c:5]], the surviving examples of that type carrying dates of Gentoku, Shōkei and Kenmu, so the office title and the year together fix both the man and the moment. The second register is the shortened tachi attributed to him by sight, ō-suriage and mumei or with only a fragment of the province inscription left at the tang tip; here the faint, reverse-slanting ko-ashi on a standard chū-suguha are read as the well-expressed mark of Sue-Aoe, the attribution and the period alike judged secure. The Meikan reads a first and a second generation under the name, the second dated Ryakuō into Enbun, and the early designations follow it; the modern texts instead describe one Naotsugu "active from late Kamakura into early Nanbokuchō"[[c:6]], and the record is kept here as one.
What sets him apart within the school is stated in his own work rather than borrowed from a comparison. The published sources call one tantō a clear expression of the characteristics of the late-Kamakura Aoe school, Naotsugu in particular[[c:7]], and another the very type of the late-Kamakura suguha Aoe blade[[c:8]], the ko-maru bōshi and the steep ō-sujikai filing named as the school's own viewing points. His chū-suguha with its quiet reverse slant stands just before the school's Nanbokuchō peak, where the suguha turns to nioi-deki and the characteristic saka-chōji-midare appears; his manner is the standard Sue-Aoe work that the peak would carry further. On the unsigned katana attributed to him the judges find the jigane good and the workmanship good[[c:9]], allowing only that the nioiguchi shows a slight cloudiness, and they note that the former tachi silhouette and the workmanship make both the period assessment and the attribution untroubled. The bare two-character mei and the ō-sujikai file marks of the Niigata tantō are called typical, the signature characters and the filing alike following the established conventions of the school[[c:10]].
The record that survives him is almost wholly in the designated tiers. Twenty of his works carry an official designation: two Important Cultural Properties, three prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, five Tokubetsu-Jūyō and ten Jūyō; Fujishiro rates him Jō-saku. The published sources praise the quality of execution repeatedly, the Kitaguchi katana judged thoroughly healthy in both ji and ha[[c:11]] and the Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana a piece that clearly expresses the style of the Aoe school of this period, of particularly excellent workmanship[[c:12]]. His two Important Cultural Properties rest in institutional care, among them the Kyoto National Museum, and provenance recorded against his Jūyō Bijutsuhin runs through the Owari Tokugawa and Tokugawa Iesato; beyond those, what a collector may realistically encounter is one of the Tokubetsu-Jūyō or Jūyō pieces: a signed and dated tantō in which the late-Kamakura Aoe manner is set down whole, or a shortened katana whose folded-back signature still names the smith. They come to light only from time to time, and a signed and dated example, ubu and clear in both its characters and its file marks, is the kind of thing the published sources themselves treat as material of high documentary value.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1326-1332. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. In the eleventh month of Karyaku 3 (1328) Yoshitsugu (吉次) of Bitchū signed an ubu tantō "Bitchū no kuni jū Uemon no jō Taira Yoshitsugu saku"[[c:1]], an inscription the NBTHK judges of high documentary value. He belongs to the Aoe school, which flourished along the lower Takahashi river in a province the early eleventh-century Shin Sarugakuki already names for "the swords of Bitchū"[[c:2]]; work to about mid-Kamakura is called Ko-Aoe, what follows simply Aoe. The records name him, "together with Suketsugu, Yoritsugu and Naotsugu, one of the representative smiths of the school in this era"[[c:3]], and an older record calls him outright "the representative smith of the chū-Aoe"[[c:4]]. His dated works carry Shōchū 3 (1326), Karyaku (1326-29) and Gentoku (1329-31), and the residence in his long signatures is written now "Bitchū no kuni Aoe jū"[[c:5]], now "Bishū Manju jū"[[c:6]], a divergence the records expressly point out.
His foundation, and his declared strength, is the suguha of this generation at its calmest. Of the Karyaku 3 kodachi the judges write that it is "a blade in which the true mettle of Yoshitsugu, a smith whose forte is suguha, is displayed without reserve"[[c:7]]. The line is a chū-suguha, undulating shallowly in places, mixing ko-gunome, ko-chōji and ko-midare; ko-ashi and yō enter with saka-ashi among them, yet the slanting habit that marks the Aoe ha shows in him only partially, here and there. The nioiguchi tightens, carries ko-nie, and is bright and clear; fine kinsuji and sunagashi run through, and intermittent yubashiri near the base raises a nijūba-like effect. On the tantō the line narrows to a hoso-suguha with fine hotsure, the temper carried down through the hamachi, a habit shared also by the Gentoku 1 tantō of Sahyōe no jō Naotsugu[[c:8]]; of the Karyaku 3 tantō the record writes that the quiet suguha yakiba "overflows with a deep savor"[[c:9]].
The jigane is Bitchū's own. He forges a well-knit ko-itame mixed with ko-mokume and flowing hada, the ji-nie thick and extremely fine, minute chikei entering; jifu (地斑) recurs blade after blade, the clear sumihada (澄肌) of the school appears, and on the gold-inlaid Nabeshima katana the finely standing ko-itame takes on a crepe-like complexion[[c:10]]. Over this a faint midare-utsuri rises, and on the small works the utsuri divides, "a midare-utsuri toward the mune and a linear utsuri toward the ha"[[c:11]], the so-called dan-utsuri (段映り). The bōshi runs straight to a ko-maru return, at times tending to a point or lightly brushed with hakikake. Of the niji-mei tantō the judges write that the scenery of the utsuri and the tight, bright nioiguchi of the suguha are "Aoe through and through"[[c:12]].
The signed and dated core of his work is anchored on the title. He often cut long signatures headed Uemon no jō with the Taira clan name; among the signed reference works the published sources name a tachi in the Tokyo National Museum dated Gentoku 2 and a katana-mei blade at Hie Shrine, both Important Cultural Properties. His small works are rare survivals, "surviving examples of Yoshitsugu's tantō are exceedingly rare"[[c:13]], and the signed kodachi is likewise a form seldom seen in the school. A two-character mei cut on the haki-ura of one slender tachi is read as his earlier work, predating the long-signature pieces. At the far edge of the name stands a generation question: the Jūyō Bijutsuhin record of the Karyaku tantō calls its smith "presumably the predecessor"[[c:14]] of the Yoshitsugu the Meikan places in Nanbokuchō around Jōwa (1345-50), whose folded-signature katana is recorded under that later smith's own entry; Honma adds the caveat that "appraisals to individual names within Aoe will always invite both assent and dissent"[[c:15]]. The designation records meanwhile draw the line by manner, noting of his quiet suguha tantō that "they differ in feeling from the works of the school of the Nanbokuchō period"[[c:16]].
A second register stands on kiwame. Ō-suriage mumei katana of deep curvature and ample hiraniku carry his attribution. The Nabeshima katana bears a gold-inlaid attribution, not a signature, recording its shortening in Genna 5 (1619), and its workmanship is judged "the typical late-Kamakura make of the Aoe school in both ji and ha"[[c:17]]. The mumei katana under a Kyōhō 9 (1724) origami of Hon'ami Kōchū, valued at 150 kan, is judged "an outstanding piece even among the Yoshitsugu attributions"[[c:18]], "a robust figure, heavy in the hand"[[c:19]]. The kiwame are honest: of the katana descended in the Naitō family the judges write that at a glance it might also be appraised as Bizen Motoshige or the like, "and it is difficult to assert Yoshitsugu definitively"[[c:20]], while holding it a late-Kamakura Aoe blade. Within the school his place is the quiet pole of the generation: where Naotsugu signs Sahyōe no jō, Yoshitsugu answers with Uemon no jō (右衛門尉) and the Taira name, and where the slanting chōji of Aoe comes out in force elsewhere, his blades keep the calm bright line, the saka element only glimpsed.
He is rated Jō-jō saku by Fujishiro, and sixteen designated works stand on the official record: two Tokubetsu Jūyō and ten Jūyō, twelve blades in those two tiers; two Jūyō Bijutsuhin; and two Important Cultural Properties, a signed *tachi* at Fujishima Jinja, dated the third month of Shōchū 3 (1326) and recorded by its plate as an *itame* with a *suguha*, and the signed tachi dated Gentoku 2 in the Tokyo National Museum, which the Mōri family presented to Emperor Meiji and which is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection. Ten of the sixteen carry a mei, five are mumei under kiwame, and the Nabeshima katana carries its attribution in gold inlay. The provenance runs through great houses: the gold-inlaid katana descended in the Hizen Ogi branch of the Nabeshima family, recorded in the Tsuchiya Oshigata as "an ancestral sword worn at the first assault on Hara castle"[[c:21]], the blade of the Shimabara rising; the Naitō katana of Murakami carries the family tradition "Aoe Yoshitsugu bestowed by the Taikō"[[c:22]], received from Hideyoshi at the Odawara campaign of 1590; the Karyaku-dated Jūyō Bijutsuhin tantō now belongs to the Sano Art Museum. The Important Cultural Properties and the shrine and museum pieces are preserved as cultural patrimony and will not trade; a collector may realistically encounter the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tier, twelve blades among them the dated tantō and tachi and the quiet suguha katana under kiwame, and one comes to the open market only rarely, a quiet masterpiece of the Aoe suguha at its calmest when it does.
Suketsugu (助次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Suketsugu of the Ko-Aoe school in Bitchū worked in the early Kamakura period and is transmitted as the son of Toshitsugu, one of the representative smiths of the Aoe group in its old phase. The name then ran through several generations to the end of Kamakura, a later bearer leaving a Shōwa-era date and the long signature reading Bitchū-no-kuni Masu-no-Higashi-no-shō Aoe Suketsugu saku. Against that descent, the published sources fix the surviving works of this signature manner as the earliest of the name: by the *Meikan* there were three Suketsugu active in the Kamakura period, and of the works extant 「現存するものの中では最も時代の古いもの」 is what the judges call this hand. He works the quiet Ko-Aoe suguha, his tachi slender to standard in build with a high *koshizori*, *funbari* standing and a *ko-kissaki* or *chū-kissaki*; a *kodachi* and a *ken* survive in his hand, and one *ō-suriage mumei katana* is attributed to him.
His characteristic hand is a *chū-* or *hoso-suguha*, very shallowly undulating in *notare*, broken by a little *ko-gunome* with *ko-chōji* and *ko-midare* mixed in. *Ko-ashi*, *saka-ashi* and *yō* enter, *ko-nie* adheres well and the *nioiguchi* draws tight, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* playing and *kuichigaiba* or *hotsure* at the edge here and there. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns in a small *ko-maru*, at times lightly brushed with *hakikake* or tending faintly to point. The suguha base is the constant of his work, and what distinguishes him within the school is the degree to which that base is interrupted by *ko-gunome*, a little *ko-chōji* and *ko-midare* mixing with it. The *Aoe* slant, the *saka-ashi* and *saka*-tending elements that mark his fellows, is the muted side of him: where *saka* enters at all, it rides quietly on the *ko-gunome*. His is the calmest and least slanting of the named Ko-Aoe suguha.
The forging is a *ko-itame* mixing *mokume*, here and there running into *masame* and standing a little overall, with *ji-nie* attached and fine *chikei* entering. *Jifu* mixes into it and clear *sumihada* shows, the steel taking on the crepe-silk *chirimen-hada* the school is known for, the color tending slightly dark, and a faint, sometimes *dan*-like *utsuri* rising. The published sources generalize this base for the whole group and for him in turn: the smiths of this Ko-Aoe generation worked a forging in which *mokume* stands out and the *hada* tends to rise into 「いわゆる縮緬状の肌合」, with *jifu* often mixing in, over which they tempered either a calm suguha or a suguha broken by small *midare*, the *nie* generally well attached, the whole conveying, against the Bizen work of the same period, a quieter and more subdued flavor. *Horimono*, where present, are *bō-hi* run *kaki-nagashi* or carried through *kaki-tōshi*.
The signature is the school's own and the point the judges name. On the *haura*, the worn-inward face of the *nakago*, below the *mekugi-ana* and near the tang tip, he cuts a bold, large two-character *mei* with a thick chisel, the strokes deeply struck, paired with the steep *ō-sujikai* filing. The published sources read the date off the cutting: 「助次は同名数代あるが、この銘振のものが古い」, the bolder cursive forms being the earlier, while later hands keep the thick chisel but square the calligraphy toward *kaisho*. Within his work the judges set two registers. The rule is the quiet suguha above, the calm composition that 「同派の典型的且つ代表的な太刀」 displays. Against it stands a single flamboyant outlier: a Tokubetsu-Jūyō tachi on which, 「同派の常と相違して焼幅広く」, the temper hardens wide in a *notare* mixed with *gunome*, *chōji* and *togariba*, *tobiyaki* and *hotsure* entering, the *bōshi* running in as *notare-komi* and brushing into a flame. For this manner the judges point to 「国宝に指定されている島津家伝来の康次の太刀」, the Yasutsugu tachi handed down in the Shimazu house and designated a kokuhō, and call the blade a precious work showing one stylistic mode within Ko-Aoe.
What the published sources note plainly is that the individuality of the man himself is slight, the manner of the school standing forward more than the hand: even a representative tachi is praised yet marked as 「助次の個性に乏しい憾がある」. The same restraint they read as a virtue, calling the work old and elegant, the quiet suguha showing well over a dignified stance, the *ji* and *ha* healthy and rich in quiet flavor. He sits at the early-Kamakura core of Ko-Aoe, named together with Moritsugu, Tametsugu, Tsuguie, Tsugutada, Sadatsugu, Yasutsugu, Kanetsugu, Tsunetsugu and his father Toshitsugu, most of them sharing the character *tsugu* as the family element. His quiet ko-gunome-broken suguha stands just upstream of the school's later turn toward the nioi-based suguha and slanting chōji-midare of its Nanbokuchō masters such as Naotsugu and Yoshitsugu.
Fujishiro grades him *Jō-saku*. The weight of designation behind his name is substantial for so quiet a Ko-Aoe hand: four of his blades reach the Tokubetsu-Jūyō tier and a further nine the Jūyō, thirteen in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō and Jūyō tiers together, with one more on the prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin roll. Almost all are signed tachi; the surviving *ken* in his hand the published sources call 「古青江助次の現存稀な剣の作例は貴重であり、資料的価値も頗る高い」, the school's old steel showing fine *masame* near the edge with *ji-nie* thickly attached, *kuichigaiba* and *yubashiri* giving the *ji* and *ha* conspicuous activity. The recorded provenance is thin but real. One *kodachi* on the Jūyō-Bijutsuhin roll passed through Sugiyama Shigemaru, who held it with a Jūyō-Bunkazai Moritsugu tachi and *daishō* mountings before presenting it to Amiya, and was recorded with Ogura Yōkichi of Tokyo. Current whereabouts are partial: of those on record his blades are held by the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Hayashibara Museum of Art and Itsukushima Jinja, with the rest in private hands. A signed Ko-Aoe Suketsugu is not wholly beyond reach, since his blades trade within the Jūyō and Tokubetsu-Jūyō tiers; but most designated work is held rather than offered, and an example of the calmest old Aoe suguha comes to a private collector only rarely, and with patience.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Jūbun, Jūbi, Jūyō. Moritsugu of Ko-Aoe in Bitchu is represented by five designated tachi: two Juyo Token, two Juyo Bijutsuhin certified in 1941, and an Important Cultural Property. The published sources open each account with his descent: 「守次は青江鍛冶の祖の安次の子と伝え、爾来同銘が南北朝時代まで継承されている」 (Moritsugu is said to be the son of Yasutsugu, founder of the Aoe smiths, and the same name was carried on into the Nanbokucho period). Because the name passed through several generations, his works are sorted by the hand of the signature.
The published sources distinguish the two-character signatures appraised as Ko-Aoe. One group is cut with a thick, strongly driven chisel in an almost block script, sometimes with reverse strokes. Another loosens that script slightly. A third is a large, smoothly cut cursive, and the stronger signatures appear to be the older. Both Juyo tachi carry the cursive form. An unusual habit sets him apart: 「古青江は佩裏に銘するのが通例であるが、守次は例外で佩表に銘するのを常としている」 (Ko-Aoe smiths normally sign on the *haki-ura*, but Moritsugu is an exception and as a rule signs on the *haki-omote*).
The sugata is slender, with high *koshizori*, *funbari* at the base and a *ko-kissaki*, even where the tang has been shortened. The jigane is a well-forged *itame* that stands out, mixed with *mokume* and *nagare-hada*, with fine *ji-nie*, *chikei* and *jifu*. The two Juyo Bijutsuhin are described as *chirimen-hada* with a suggestion of *utsuri*. The hamon is a *suguha*. On the 1983 tachi it is 「おとなしやかで上品な直刃を焼いており」 (a quiet and refined *suguha*), with *ko-nie*, fine *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and a straight *boshi* ending in *ko-maru*. On the Juyo Bijutsuhin it is *nioi*-dominant and tight at the *nioiguchi*, with *ko-ashi* and *saka-ashi*.
The 1990 tachi shows the livelier side of the same base. Its *suguha* is mixed with *ko-midare*, with *ashi* and *yo* in abundance, *hotsure*, *uchinoke*, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi*. The published sources single out its nie: 「光の強い沸が厚くつき、様々な変化を内包する古調な小乱れ刃が見事である」 (strong, bright *nie* adheres thickly, and the archaic *ko-midare* temper, holding many changes within it, is splendid). The Important Cultural Property is recorded as *ko-itame* with a *suguha* mixed with *ko-midare*.
The generation question is stated openly in the earlier record. Of one Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi they write 「この守次は初代ではないが、鎌倉時代中期を下らないであろう」 (this Moritsugu is not the first generation, but the work should not be later than the mid-Kamakura period), and a further comment there takes it for the third generation. That tachi was later in the Sano Art Museum, and the second Juyo Bijutsuhin is thought to be by the same hand. The five works are accordingly read as Ko-Aoe Moritsugu of the Kamakura period, without a firm division among the generations of the name.
Shigetsugu (重次) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Jūbi, Jūyō. A signed tachi designated at the 48th Jūyō session carries a two-character mei, Shigetsugu, cut boldly on the ura of a shortened tang filed in ō-sujikai, and the published commentary reads it as classic Ko-Aoe: "this tachi clearly displays the characteristics of Ko-Aoe.[[c:1]]" Shigetsugu is a smith of the Ko-Aoe, the early phase of the Aoe school of Bicchū Province. The published sources identify him with the craftsman recorded in the reference works as a son of Toshitsugu and placed in the mid-Kamakura period around Bun'ei (1264-1275); they note plainly that "this Shigetsugu corresponds to the smith transmitted in the meikan as the son of Toshitsugu, mid-Kamakura, around Bun'ei.[[c:2]]" The school itself is traced to Yasutsugu of the Jōan years, and works that do not descend past the mid-Kamakura are set apart as Ko-Aoe; among its representative hands the published record names Moritsugu, Tametsugu, Tsugie, Tsunetsugu, Toshitsugu, Suketsugu and this Shigetsugu, most of them carrying the character tsugu as a shared element of their names.
His surviving work is tachi, slender and well-shaped, with a deep koshi-zori and pronounced funbari, several still keeping their original tang. The hand that distinguishes him is a quiet one. Over an *itame* mixed with *mokume*, at times a closely packed *ko-itame* standing a little, he forges a steel somewhat dark in tone that tends toward *sumihada*, carrying the speckled *jihada-madara* and patchy *jifu* that are the Aoe *jigane*, with fine *ji-nie* and, on his most fully described blade, a clear *midare-utsuri* standing in the *ji*. The temper over that *jigane* is calm and archaic, a *suguha* base shallowly *notare* into which a small *ko-midare* of *ko-gunome* and *ko-chōji* enters. *Ashi* and *yō* are well present, the *nie* thick and in places particularly strong, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run frequently along the edge. The *bōshi* runs straight to a *yakizume*-like finish with fine *hakikake*. The published sources call the effect old in feeling and rich in *nie*, the activity gathered not in towering clove clusters but in the small reversed-clove line and its internal work.
The *jigane* is where his school shows most plainly. The somewhat dark steel, the *sumihada* and *jifu*, and the crepe-like *chirimen* texture set the Aoe *jigane* against the brighter, cleaner *ko-itame* of contemporary Bizen, and the published commentary draws the contrast directly, judging Ko-Aoe work "on the whole somewhat subdued and quietly astringent in flavour compared with Bizen blades of the same period.[[c:3]]" Over that *jigane* the *hamon* stays comparatively restrained. The published sources praise the most fully described of his blades for being "archaic in the temper, well covered in *nie*,[[c:4]]" with *ashi*, *yō*, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* showing within, a deeply nuanced and engaging manner rather than a flamboyant one.
Not all of his record is so quiet. One of his shortened, two-character-signed tachi opens instead into a dense, double-flower *jūka-chōji-midare* in *nioi-deki* with a tendency toward *ko-nie*, the *ji* an *itame* standing a little with *sumihada* and an *utsuri*-like reflection. The published sources note that, set beside his quieter *suguha*-toned work, the manner of the signature and the workmanship differ across his extant pieces, so the activity can open here into a richer clove-flower line. That blade carries a cut-in inscription recording its shortening in Tenbun 10 (1541) by Fukui Ukyō-no-suke Koremune Tadanō, a documented later history laid over an early hand.
What the judges single out separates him within his own school as much as from his neighbours. Compared with the brighter, cleaner steel of Ko-Bizen, his somewhat dark *jihada* with its *sumihada* and *jifu* reads as the Aoe *jigane*; and against the school's own conventions the published record notes a telling exception. The three prewar Important Art Object tachi are signed on the *omote*, which the commentary remarks is "although Ko-Aoe works, exceptionally bearing tachi-style signatures,[[c:5]]" whereas the Jūyō tachi places its signature on the *ura* in the usual Ko-Aoe manner, the tang filed in *ō-sujikai*; the placement of the signature and the file marks are exactly the points the published sources name as distinguishing the school from Ko-Bizen, and they cite them in support of the attribution. He stands among the named early hands of Aoe, the quiet Bicchū counterweight to the brilliance of Kamakura Bizen.
For the collector he is a rare early name, graded Jō saku by Fujishiro. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through three blades designated Important Art Objects before the war and one tachi designated Jūyō, five designated works in all, and the published commentary calls the surviving examples precious, holding that "extant works by Shigetsugu are rare, and this one is precious[[c:6]]; moreover it has high value as reference material for the study of the smith.[[c:7]]" Their provenance runs through the great daimyō houses: the three-character Shigetsugu saku tachi was transmitted in the Kishū Tokugawa family before passing to Hon'ami Kōson, another descended through the Tokugawa house to Tokugawa Iesato, and a third was held by Miyazaki Tomijirō of Kanagawa. So few of his blades survive, and so seldom does a signed Ko-Aoe Shigetsugu come to light, that a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, valued less as an ornament than as a document of how the Aoe school worked in its earliest age.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Jūbun, Jūyō. Yoshitsugu is counted among the representative smiths of the Bitchu Aoe school during the late Kamakura period. He bore the title Uemon no Jo and was a resident of Manju in Bitchu Province, belonging to the Naka-Aoe lineage. His long signatures — such as "Bishu Manjusho ju Uemon no Jo Yoshitsugu saku"[[c:1]] and "Bitchu no Kuni Aoe ju Uemon no Jo Taira Yoshitsugu saku"[[c:2]] — are the form most commonly encountered among his surviving works, with dated examples from the Gentoku and Kareki eras establishing his active period. Earlier works bearing shorter two-character signatures are also known and are thought to predate the long, dated inscriptions.
Yoshitsugu's workmanship conforms to the general manner shared by Aoe works of this period, with the characteristic features of the school well expressed. His tachi display deep curvature with a *chu-kissaki* that is somewhat compact. The *kitae* is *itame-hada* tending toward *hada-dachi*, with *ji-nie* adhering and areas of clear, refined steel mixed in. The *hamon* is typically *suguha*-based — whether *naka-suguha* toned with mixed *gunome*, or showing slight *notare* — with the *nioiguchi* tight and *saeru*, *ko-nie* attaching, and *ashi* entering frequently. The *boshi* is straight, forming *ko-maru* at the tip. The *yasurime* characteristically follow the *o-sujikai* pattern associated with the Aoe school.
Yoshitsugu occupies a position of importance as a representative figure of the Naka-Aoe lineage at its height. His works demonstrate the typical late-Kamakura style of the Aoe school, with forging and tempering of excellent quality[[c:3]]. Examples retaining *ubu* nakago are especially valued for the light they shed on the evolution of his signature practice, from early two-character *mei* to the long, dated inscriptions of his mature period. His finest blades are praised as being *kenzen* in both *ji* and *ha*.
Suketsugu (助次) — Mainline · 1312-1318. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Suketsugu of Aoe in Bitchu is a name the published sources say was carried by three smiths, from the early to the end of the Kamakura period, and the blades on this record belong chiefly to the late-Kamakura Chu-Aoe Suketsugu of the Showa era. A tachi signed Bitchu no Kuni Koi Higashi-no-sho Aoe Suketsugu saku and dated the sixth month of Showa 1 (1312), recorded in the Koyama oshigata, fixes his time, and the published sources write that "the Showa 1 date is the oldest among Aoe-made swords"[[c:1]]. Tradition makes him the son of Ko-Aoe Toshitsugu, and the name ran on to the end of Kamakura.
His steel is the Aoe steel. Over an *itame* that stands a little and flows in places, with *ji-nie* and large grain mixed here and there, the *sumi-hada* of the school appears with *jifu*, and on one tachi a *jifu-utsuri* rises in the ji. The published sources describe one of the Showa tachi as one that "shows well the character of the Aoe school of this time"[[c:2]], and another as one that "shows a typical form of the Aoe school of this period"[[c:3]].
The temper is a *chu-suguha* or a suguha-based line that undulates shallowly, small *ashi* entering and at times slanting in the reverse direction familiar from Aoe, the *nioiguchi* tight with *ko-nie*. One broad Showa tachi instead mixes small gunome, small notare and small choji with ashi and yo, the ha well covered in nie and rich in change. The *boshi* runs straight to a *ko-maru*.
The signatures are documents in themselves. Where the earlier Aoe smiths cut a two-character mei on the haki-ura, the published sources note that late-Kamakura Aoe blades with a long signature usually carry it on the haki-omote, and one tachi has a broad thick-chiselled mei with the character for year written in a variant form often seen on Aoe. Of a long tachi signed Bitchu no Kuni Aoe-ju Suketsugu with a Showa date they write that cutting a large signature in the middle of the tang on the haki-ura "follows the tradition handed down since Ko-Aoe"[[c:4]], and that the whole "leaves an air of antique elegance"[[c:5]].
Two blades sit at the edges of the name. A tanto signed Bitchu no Kuni Seno-ju Gyobu no Jo, dated Bunpo 2 (1318) with the maker's age of seventy-one on the mune, shows that the Seno smiths kept their own identity beside the Aoe smiths; the published sources call it "precious for research"[[c:6]] and find its manner "akin to the neighbouring Kagemitsu and others of the time"[[c:7]]. A broad, shortened wakizashi with an extended boshi they judge a work reaching into the Nanbokucho that "shows the Sue-Aoe manner well"[[c:8]].
His record holds seven designated works: one Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, five Juyo, and one prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin katana from the Maeda family, formerly of Maeda Toshinari. Dated, long-signed Aoe tachi of the Showa era are few, and an example of this kind comes to market only rarely; when one does, its signature carries as much interest as its steel.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Tokujū. Moritsugu (守次) was a smith of the Ko-Aoe school of Bitchū Province, traditionally regarded as the son of Yasutsugu, who is held to be the founder of the Aoe lineage. The name "Moritsugu" was inherited by successive smiths down into the Nanbokucho period, with extant works spanning from the early Kamakura period through the Bunwa and Enbun eras of the mid-Nanbokucho. Among signed works appraised as Ko-Aoe, scholarship distinguishes two signature types: a two-character *gyōsho* (semi-cursive) form, powerfully struck and incorporating *gyaku-tagane* (reverse chisel work), and a characteristically elongated, flowing *sōsho* (cursive) form. The former type appears to date slightly earlier. While Ko-Aoe works are typically signed on the *ha-ura*, Moritsugu is a noted exception, customarily signing on the *ha-omote*.
Moritsugu's forging characteristically shows *itame-hada* with vigorous *mokume* admixture that tends toward finely raised grain, frequently producing the distinctive *chirimen-hada* (crêpe-like texture) associated with the Ko-Aoe tradition. Dense *ji-nie* adheres thickly, with conspicuous *chikei* throughout, and a *midare-utsuri*-like reflection or faint mottled *utsuri* appears. His *hamon* is grounded in *suguha*, mixed with *ko-gunome* and *ko-chōji*; small *ashi* enter actively, and the *nioiguchi* shows a *shimarigokoro* (tightened tendency) with *ko-nie* adhering. Along the *habuchi*, features such as *hotsure*, *nijūba*, *yubashiri*, and *uchi-noke* appear, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through, yielding a bright *nioiguchi*.
The NBTHK characterizes Moritsugu's workmanship as displaying an archaic (*kochō*) manner that conveys a high level of dignity, combining grandeur with elegance. His blades are praised for richly varied workmanship and a "notably superior appearance." As rare extant examples from the Ko-Aoe group, works by Moritsugu are assessed as possessing extremely high documentary value for the study of the Aoe school, and those found *kenzen* in both *ji* and *ha* are termed "precious works."
Suketsuna (助綱) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Tokujū, Jūyō. Suketsuna is a smith of the Ko-Aoe lineage, active in Bitchu Province from the late Heian through approximately the mid-Kamakura period. The swordsmiths of Bitchu are broadly divided into two groups: those of the Seno Kajishi line tracing their origin to Noritaka, and those of the Aoe Kajishi line whose signatures characteristically incorporate the character *tsugi*. Today, however, these are generally grouped together under the broad designation "Aoe smiths." While the name Suketsuna also appears among the Kamakura Ichimonji, Fukuoka Ichimonji, Osafune, and Kokubunji lineages, the works attributed to this maker belong specifically to the Ko-Aoe tradition, which flourished centered on Aoe along the basin of the Takahashi River. Extant signed works by this smith are comparatively rare, making each surviving example precious as documentary material.
In terms of workmanship, Suketsuna's blades display the hallmark characteristics of the Ko-Aoe school. The *jigane* tends toward *hada-dachi*, forming a *chirimen-hada* (crepe-like) texture[[c:2]], with *jifu* frequently appearing alongside well-adhering *ji-nie*. The *hamon* is consistently *suguha*-based[[c:3]], rendered in *ko-nie-deki*, often mixed with *ko-midare*, *gunome*, or *ko-choji*; *ashi* and *yo* enter within the temper, and *sunagashi* is sometimes applied. The *boshi* characteristically runs straight or in shallow *notare*, turning back in *ko-maru* with slight *kaeri*. *Bo-hi* are commonly carved through on both sides. The *nakago*, typically *suriage*, bears the distinctive Ko-Aoe practice of cutting the signature on the *ha-ura* side[[c:4]] with thick chisel strokes. Overall, when compared with contemporary Bizen works, the impression is more subdued and austere, with the *nioiguchi* tending toward *shizumi*.
Suketsuna's surviving tachi consistently exhibit a slender build with pronounced *koshizori* and *ko-kissaki*[[c:1]], preserving an archaic period character that does not descend later than the mid-Kamakura period. The combination of *jifu-utsuri* standing out clearly in the *ji*, the restrained *suguha*-toned temper with *ko-nie*, and the signature placement on the *ha-ura* side together constitute unmistakable hallmarks of the school. As works by this smith are few, each blade serves not only as an exemplar of Ko-Aoe craftsmanship but also as invaluable source material for the study of early Bitchu swordmaking traditions.
Sukeyori (助依) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Tokujū. Sukeyori was a swordsmith of the Ko-Aoe school of Bitchu Province, active during the early Kamakura period. The Aoe lineage is traditionally traced to Yasutsugu of the Joan era (1171--1175) and thereafter produced many noted craftsmen through the late Nanbokucho period; works dating no later than approximately the mid-Kamakura period are especially distinguished as Ko-Aoe. Representative smiths of this early group include Moritsugu, Tametsugu, Tsugie, Tsugutada, Sadatsugu, Yasutsugu, Kanetsugu, Tsunetsugu, Toshitsugu, and Suketsugu, among others. In the *meikan*, Sukeyori is recorded with a Shoo-era dating[[c:1]] that is regarded as probably not greatly in error. All blades bearing the Sukeyori signature that have been confirmed in *shinsa* to date have been limited to *tachi*, and all share the consistent two-character *mei* and common features in both workmanship and manner of cutting the inscription.
Sukeyori's forging characteristically displays *itame* mixed with *mokume*, tending toward standing grain and producing the so-called *chirimen-hada* --- the crepe-like texture regarded as diagnostic of the Ko-Aoe group. The *jihada* is rich in *chikei* and *jifu*, with fine, thick *ji-nie* adhering throughout. A faint *utsuri* may stand up within the surface. The *hamon* is based on *suguha* with slight shallow *notare* or *ko-midare*, sometimes mixed with *ko-choji*; the *nioiguchi* shows a somewhat *shizumi* tendency, and thick *ko-nie* adheres, with *ashi*, *yo*, and occasional *nie*-streak-like activity producing a deep and resonant character. The *boshi* typically enters *ko-maru*, at times with *hakikake*. The *nakago* bears the distinctive *o-sujikai* filemarks and signature placement on the *ha-ura*, centered below the *mekugi-ana* --- conventions characteristic of the Aoe school as a whole and clearly distinguishing these works from contemporary Bizen production.
Compared with the forging usually encountered in this school, Sukeyori's finest works show a *ko-itame* that is uniformly tight, presenting a well-refined and notably elegant texture. The NBTHK has observed that both *ji* and *ha* clearly express the workmanship typical of this group, while conveying the subdued, austere flavor that sets Ko-Aoe apart from Ko-Bizen and related traditions. Extant works by Sukeyori are few, and *tachi* retaining an *ubu-nakago* are especially scarce, rendering authenticated examples exceedingly valuable as documentary material. His superior pieces are praised for a dignified form well complemented by an archaic *hamon*.
Hidetsugu (秀次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Tokujū, Jūyō. Saemon no Jo Hidetsugu was a swordsmith of the Aoe school active in Bitchu Province during the late Kamakura period, with dated works bearing era names such as Kagen, Enkyo, and Showa. Sword reference compendia record him as signing "Bitchu no Kuni Manju no Sho ju Saemon no Jo," and note that the name Hideji was transmitted in successive generations — one tradition holding that Hideji was a son of Tsugatada, another that he was a son of Tsuguhide. The Aoe lineage, flourishing chiefly in the lower basin of the Takahashi River, inherited a reputation for Bitchu swords noted as early as the eleventh-century *Shin Sarugaki-ki*. Works up through roughly the mid-Kamakura period are classified as Ko-Aoe, while those thereafter through the Nanbokucho period are grouped broadly under the name Aoe.
In forging and hardening, works by this smith display the hallmarks of the mature Aoe tradition. The *kitae* shows tightly forged *ko-itame-hada* with extremely fine *ji-nie* and distinct *midare-utsuri* standing in the ground. The *hamon* is fundamentally *suguha*, mixed with *gunome*, angular elements, *ko-choji*, and *ko-gunome*; *ashi* and *yo* enter abundantly, with *saka-ashi* interspersed and *ko-nie* attaching. Fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through the temper, and the *nioiguchi* is bright and clear. In certain works the *nie* presence becomes calmer and the *nioiguchi* tightens, reflecting the stylistic transition from the late Kamakura into the Nanbokucho period that characterizes this school's later output.
Extant signed works by smiths bearing the Saemon no Jo title within the Hideji line are rarely encountered, and those that survive in *ubu* condition with dated inscriptions hold particular documentary value. The *kaki-kudashi* style of date inscription seen on certain examples is a feature observed within the broader Aoe group and represents precious evidence for research into both the individual smith and the school. These blades demonstrate a markedly superior workmanship that plainly reveals the high technical level of Saemon no Jo Hidetsugu, and they serve as important reference material for the study of Bitchu Province sword production in the late Kamakura period.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sadatsugu (貞次) of the Bitchu Aoe school is one of the most historically revered names in the Japanese sword tradition. Ko-Aoe Sadatsugu has been transmitted since the *Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi* as a master selected among the smiths appointed to forge in attendance upon Retired Emperor Gotoba. In the *Shinkan Hiden-sho* he is accorded the highest valuation -- "Bitchu workmanship, supreme: fifteen *kan*" -- and thus has long been regarded as a foremost figure even among Aoe works. The name Sadatsugu was carried on through successive generations into the Nanbokucho period; the later Uemon Taro Sadatsugu, recorded as the son of Suketsugu, left dated works from the Karyaku, Gentoku, and Genko eras, though surviving examples by this smith are exceedingly rare.
Works attributed to Sadatsugu display the distinctive hallmarks of the late-Kamakura Aoe school. The forging typically presents *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume*, in which the grain stands out to produce a *chirimen-hada* (crepe-like) texture. Minute *ji-nie* adheres densely, fine *chikei* enter, and *midare-utsuri* rises prominently. The *hamon* takes *suguha* as its foundation, incorporating *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome*, and small *midare*-like elements, with *ashi* and *yo* appearing throughout. The temper is *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie*, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run well, yielding a *nioiguchi* that is bright and clear. In certain works a reverse-running tendency (*gyaku-gakari*) emerges in the lower half, prefiguring the flamboyant *gyaku-choji midare* of the subsequent Nanbokucho period.
Sadatsugu's significance extends beyond his personal accomplishment. From old times there has been a tendency to ascribe to Sadatsugu those unsigned Aoe blades that display a typical manner and are of particularly fine workmanship, making the name a benchmark for quality within the school. The imposing *sugata* seen in signed examples -- wide *mihaba* with little taper, *o-kissaki*, and pronounced *funbari* -- is chronologically noteworthy for anticipating forms more commonly associated with the Nanbokucho era. As both a historical figure of the highest rank and a touchstone for Aoe excellence, Sadatsugu remains indispensable to the study of the Bitchu sword-making tradition.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1310-1347. Tokujū, Jūyō. Tsunetsugu is one of the representative lineage names of the Aoe school of Bitchu Province, a tradition whose renown was already attested in the early eleventh-century compendium *Shin Sarugaki-ki*, which counted "the swords of Bitchu" among the notable products of the provinces. The earliest and most celebrated bearer of the name is the Ko-Aoe Tsunetsugu traditionally identified as one of Retired Emperor Go-Toba's *goban-kaji* — appointed swordsmiths of the highest standing — and recorded as a son of Ko-Aoe Moritsugu. From this distinguished origin the name was inherited across a long span, from the early Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho era, with multiple generations active in the Aoe heartland along the lower reaches of the Takahashi River. One later bearer, Saemon no Jo Tsunetsugu, is documented as residing at Manjusho in Bitchu and inscribed blades with his official title alongside a Enkyo 3 (1310) date, constituting valuable reference material for the school's chronology.
The technical character of late-Kamakura Tsunetsugu work is firmly established in NBTHK appraisals. The forging (*kitae*) shows compact *ko-itame* mixed with *ko-mokume*, the grain standing finely to produce a *chirimen-hada* — the distinctive crepe-like texture — with *jifu*-like tonal areas intermixed and fine *ji-nie* adhering closely. A hallmark of the school is the appearance of *utsuri* in various modes: reverse-leaning *midare-utsuri* in darker bands, mottled *jifu-utsuri*, and the distinctive *dan-utsuri* in which *sugu-utsuri* stands near the edge while *midare-utsuri* appears toward the *shinogi*. The *hamon* is fundamentally *chu-suguha*, into which *ko-gunome*, *gunome*, and reverse-slanting elements are mixed; *saka-ashi* — the so-called *nezumi-ashi* — enter plentifully alongside *ashi* and *yo*. The *nioiguchi* tends toward *shimarigokoro*, a tightened quality, yet remains bright and clear, with *nioi* predominating and *ko-nie* adhering.
NBTHK assessors consistently characterize Tsunetsugu's oeuvre as manifesting, without reservation, the aesthetic strengths and points of interest characteristic of bright, clear Aoe work. Compared with contemporary Bizen productions, these blades present a quieter, more restrained and astringent character. Appraisals recurrently note ample *nikuoki* — excellent retention of flesh — conferring a substantial and forceful presence, and praise the dense, precise forging and the sound condition of both *ji* and *ha* as hallmarks of robust and stalwart workmanship. In these qualities the Tsunetsugu lineage stands as a pillar of the Aoe tradition at its late-Kamakura zenith.
Other smiths
Yasutsugu (安次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (盛次) — Mainline · 1332-1334. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sanenaga (眞長) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoritsugu (頼次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatsugu (親次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Chikatsugu of Ko-Aoe is known through two signed tachi, a Juyo Bijutsuhin recognised in 1940 and a Juyo Token designated at the twenty-seventh session. The signature compendia list several smiths of the name, in Bizen at Nitta-sho or Osafune, in Bitchu at Aoe, and in Bingo a smith thought to have founded the Hokke Ichijo line. Of the Jubi tachi the published sources write 「この親次は銘鑑に鎌倉時代中期、弘安[[c:1]]頃と伝えているものに該当するであろう」 (this Chikatsugu probably corresponds to the one the compendia place in the mid-Kamakura period, around Koan, 1278 to 1288).
That tachi is *suriage*, with a width and *kissaki* of standard proportion and an orthodox overall shape. Its jigane is *itame* with the grain standing somewhat, with a tendency toward *sumihada*, and the temper is a *nioi-deki* *ko-midare* with *ashi*. A second reader accepted the Ko-Aoe judgement but added a reservation: 「この親次は編者の言の如く古青江と思われるが、銘の位置、鏨の太さは異例である」 (as the editor says, this Chikatsugu appears to be Ko-Aoe, but the placement of the signature and the thickness of the chisel strokes are unusual).
The Juyo tachi is also *suriage*, a *shinogi-zukuri* blade with the *shinogi-ji* shaved down so that the ridge stands high, a shallow curvature and a *chu-kissaki*. It is forged in *itame* mixed with *mokume*, with *ji-nie*, forming *chirimen-hada*; toward the edge the grain flows, yet the surface stands in a fine *chiri-chiri* texture. The *hamon* is a *hoso-suguha* with a tight *nioiguchi*, which the sources describe as 「匂口のしまった直刃を焼いて小互の目、小足入り、ねずみ足も入っている」 (a *suguha* with a tightened *nioiguchi*, with small *gunome*, *ko-ashi* and also *nezumi-ashi*), in *ko-nie*, and the *boshi* runs straight with a very slight return. A large two-character signature is cut near the tang tip, on the *haki-ura* in the position of a katana signature, and the attribution to Aoe rests on the file marks: 「大筋違の鑢目からこの作は青江の親次と」 (from the large *o-sujikai* file marks, the work is judged Aoe Chikatsugu).
On this small record Chikatsugu stands as a Ko-Aoe hand of the late thirteenth century working in a restrained *suguha* and *ko-midare*, with the crepe-like *chirimen-hada* of his school, and with a signature whose placement is recorded as unusual or noteworthy on both blades. The Jubi tachi was owned at its recognition by Mitsui Takakimi and is now in the Sano Art Museum.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (延次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Nobutsugu, catalogued with the Ko-Aoe group of Bitchū, is known through a single signed tachi with a blade length of two shaku three sun two bu, recognised as a Juyo Bijutsuhin on 20 December 1934. The name was used by more than one smith, and the published sources place this blade within that series: 「延次は銘鑑では鎌倉時代初期より同銘数工存在するが、この作は、鎌倉時代中期、文永[[c:1]]頃と伝えられるものに該当するであろう」 (according to the registers several smiths of this name existed from the early Kamakura period, but this work probably corresponds to the one traditionally placed in the mid-Kamakura period, around Bun'ei, 1264 to 1274).
The tachi is described as 「細身小切先のよい姿である」 (a fine form, slender with a small *kissaki*). Its 「鍛え小板目約み、地沸細かにつき、映りごころがある」 (forging is a tight *ko-itame* with fine *ji-nie* and a suggestion of *utsuri*), and the temper is recorded as 「刃文匂出来多少小沸づいた直刃に小足入る」 (a *nioi-deki* *suguha* somewhat touched with *ko-nie*, with *ko-ashi* entering).
The tachi was owned at recognition by Konoe Fumimaro in Tokyo and is now in the Yōmei Bunko in Kyoto. It is published in the Kōzan Oshigata, the Imamura Oshigata, both editions of the Nihontō Kōza, Nihontō Zuikan and Ōshirōto no. 18. This single blade is the whole of his present record, and it fixes this Nobutsugu in the Bun'ei years of the mid-Kamakura period.
Sanetsune (眞恒) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Suetsugu (末次) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuyuki (安行) — Mainline · 1256-1257. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatsugu (親次) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatsugu (親次) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hidetsugu (秀次) — Mainline · 1260-1261. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naganao (長直) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naganao (永直) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagatsugu (長次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (延次) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Suketsugu (助次) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutada (次忠) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutsune (次恒) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyori (次依) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyori (次頼) — Mainline · 1306-1308. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyoshi (次吉) — Mainline · 1238-1239. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyoshi (次吉) — Mainline · 1306-1308. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyoshi (經義) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoritsugu (頼次) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitsugu (行次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukizane (行眞) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arinobu (有信) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arisue (有末) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arisue (有末) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Aritada (有忠) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Aritsugu (有次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikanori (親則) — Mainline · 1324-1326. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikanori (親則) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatoshi (親利) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatsugu (近次) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikatsugu (近次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikayori (近依) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Harutsugu (張次) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Harutsugu (玄次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Harutsugu (春次) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hidetoshi (秀利) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hiromichi (弘道) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisayoshi (久吉) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kagenaga (景長) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kageyoshi (景良) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanenaga (包永) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanenaga (包永) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (兼次) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (包次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (兼次) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (包次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanetsugu (金次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kiyotsugu (清次) — Mainline · 1260-1261. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koreshige (是重) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koreshige (是重) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kunimune (國宗) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Masatsune (正恒) — Mainline · 1311-1312. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritoshi (守利) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (盛次) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsune (守恒) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsune (守恒) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munesada (宗貞) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munesue (宗末) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsugu (宗次) — Mainline · 1324-1326. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsugu (宗次) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsune (宗恒) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagahisa (永久) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagamune (長宗) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagatsugu (長次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagatsugu (永次) — Mainline · 1324-1326. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naoie (直家) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naokage (直景) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naonobu (直信) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naotaka (直高) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nariie (成家) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nariie (成家) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nariie (成家) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritaka (業高) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritsuna (成綱) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (延次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Norinari (則成) — Mainline · 1260-1261. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Noritsugu (則次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Noritsugu (則次) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Saia (西阿) — Mainline · 1288-1333. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Shigetsugu (重次) — Mainline · 1240-1243. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Shigetsugu (重次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukechika (助近) — Mainline · 1332-1334. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukenari (助成) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Suketane (助植) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (忠次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamenobu (爲信) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamenori (爲則) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameto (爲遠) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameto (爲遠) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tametoshi (爲利) — Mainline · 1260-1261. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameyasu (爲康) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameyasu (爲安) — Mainline · 1240-1243. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokitsugu (時次) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokizane (時眞) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokizane (時眞) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomoto (知遠) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (友次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (朝次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (友次) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (友次) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (利次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (年次) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (俊次) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Totsugu (遠次) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhide (次秀) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhide (次秀) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次弘) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次弘) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次廣) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugukiyo (次清) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugunao (次直) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugunao (次直) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugusada (次定) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutane (次植) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutane (次植) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutoshi (次利) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutsune (次恒) — Mainline · 1324-1326. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyori (次頼) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyori (次依) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyoshi (次吉) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyuki (次行) — Mainline · 1326-1329. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguzane (次眞) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguzane (次眞) — Mainline · 1259-1260. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsune (恒) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneie (恒家) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunekiyo (恒清) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunemoto (恒元) — Mainline · 1259-1260. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunemoto (恒元) — Mainline · 1243-1247. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunenaga (恒永) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunenaga (恒永) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunenori (恒則) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunesue (恒末) — Mainline · 1238-1239. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunesue (恒末) — Mainline · 1331-1336. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneto (常遠) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneto (恒遠) — Mainline · 1257-1259. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyasu (恒康) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyori (恒依) — Mainline · 1259-1260. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyori (常依) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1261-1264. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuhiro (安弘) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuhiro (安弘) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuie (安家) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (安次) — Mainline · 1235-1238. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasutsugu (康次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoritsugu (依次) — Mainline · 1311-1312. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoritsugu (依次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoritsugu (依次) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitoshi (行利) — Mainline · 1235-1238. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitoshi (行利) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitoshi (行利) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitsugu (行次) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitsugu (行次) — Mainline · 1249-1256. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukitsugu (幸次) — Mainline · 1311-1312. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukizane (行眞) — Mainline · 1275-1278. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Phase 3 · Sue-Aoe (末青江) · 1334 – 1500
Sue-Aoe names the closing chapter of the Bitchū tradition, the work made after the Aoe smiths reached the height of their powers in the Nanbokuchō era and then carried the lineage forward into Muromachi decline. The window is anchored by the hands the NBTHK repeatedly groups together as the representative smiths of the period: Tsuguyoshi (次吉), Tsugunao or Tsuginao (次直), and Moritsugu (守次), with Naotsugu (直次), Yoshitsugu (吉次), and a Sadatsugu (貞次) name carried down from the late Kamakura masters into this later age. Dated blades fix the chronology firmly, from a Moritsugu tantō of Enbun 3 (1358) and a Naotsugu in the Ryakuō years through Tsuguyoshi pieces of Teiji 2 (1363) and Kōan 2 (1362). These men succeeded the late-Kamakura-into-early-Nanbokuchō generation that produced Sadatsugu and the earlier Moritsugu, and they worked at the moment the Southern Court's fortunes were turning, after which the school thinned out. The very tail of the line surfaces in obscure later Bitchū hands such as Munesada and Sōtei of Kasaoka, dated Bunmei 13 (1481), whose lineage the records leave unknown and whose work the setsumei describe as nearly indistinguishable from late Bizen.
Sugata is the first tell. Setsumei after setsumei records a wide *mihaba* with little taper from base to tip, thin *kasane*, *sun-nobi* proportion in the tantō and an extended *chū-kissaki* or outright *ō-kissaki* in the larger blades, the broad Nanbokuchō build that the earlier Aoe never carried. The *jihada* keeps the school signature of *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume*, finely standing, with mottled *jifu* and patches of *sumihada* drifting through the steel. Above all the period is read in its *utsuri*: streak-like *suji-utsuri* rises near the edge and stacks into the layered *dan-utsuri* the catalogues prize, seen plainly on the Tsugiyoshi tachi of Tokuju 21 and the dated Tsuguyoshi tantō of Juyo 58. Two tempers divide the leading hands. Tsuguyoshi favors a tight, bright *suguha* with *ko-ashi* and *saka-ashi*; Tsugunao favors the flamboyant *saka-chōji-midare* with its reverse slant, *ashi* and *yō* pouring in, that matured around Enbun. Against this the Ko-Aoe of the mid-Kamakura ran *ko-nie-deki* with a subdued, *shizumi* *nioiguchi* over a refined *chirimen-hada*, while the late-Kamakura Chū-Aoe of Sadatsugu and Moritsugu stood between, the *nie* growing calmer and the reverse-slanting *yakiba* only beginning to foreshadow the later drama. Crucially the period remained *nioi-deki* where other provinces took up Sōshū *nie*, a holding distinction the setsumei mark out by name.
For kantei the cluster reads together. A broad Nanbokuchō sugata, *dan-utsuri* over *sumihada*, *ō-sujikai* file marks on the tang, and a *nioiguchi* that is tight and clear point to this window rather than to Bizen of the same age; the choice between bright *suguha* and reverse *saka-chōji* then separates Tsuguyoshi from Tsugunao, while Naotsugu's forceful reverse-chisel *mei* and *nezumi-ashi*, and Moritsugu's *kinsuji* in a tight *suguha*, mark their own hands. The named masters carry strong provenance: a Tsugiyoshi wakizashi dated Enbun 2 descended in the Maeda family, a Yoshitsugu tantō passed to the Sakai of Himeji by gift of Tokugawa Ietsuna, and an *ō-suriage* *den* Tsuguyoshi katana ran through the Yanagisawa house with Hon'ami origami from Mitsuatsu. Honma's own remark singling out Tsugiyoshi and Tsuginao as the makers of the clearest *chōji* in tantō fixes their standing at the close of the Aoe story.
Tsugunao (次直) — Mainline · 1345-1361. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Tsugunao of Bitchu stands with Tsuguyoshi and Moritsugu as a representative master of the Aoe school in the mid Nanbokucho period, and his record is unusually legible for that age: the published sources list extant dated works through the Jowa, Kan'o, Shohei, Bunna and Enbun eras (1345 to 1361), the center of his activity falling around Bunna and Enbun, and most pieces carry the long signature Bitchu no kuni ju Tsugunao saku[[c:1]] with the date cut on the reverse. The prewar designation record adds that this Tsugunao is said to have been a son of Yoshitsugu. Behind him the school divides in two. Ko-Aoe work, up to about the mid Kamakura period, is generally nie-based with a subdued nioiguchi and a large, standing hada; from the end of Kamakura the manner changes, and by the Nanbokucho period the published sources describe work that is nioi-based, with a vividly clear nioiguchi over a tightly packed ko-itame. Tsugunao belongs wholly to this later, clear-tempered Aoe, the line the sources call sue-Aoe, and he stands near its close.
The published sources state his work in a single recurring formula: two manners, one a flamboyant saka-choji-midare, the other a suguha with a tightened nioiguchi, both nioi-based and both executed at a high level. The first is the celebrated hand. One designation text speaks of "the saka-choji-midare that may be called Tsugunao's family art"[[c:2]], and another judges that this manner, its nioiguchi tight and so bright and clear, "was, within the Nanbokucho period, the sole domain of this school"[[c:3]] and its emblematic territory. In these blades saka-ashi and yo enter the ha frequently, the temper is nioi-dominant with ko-nie, fine kinsuji and sunagashi run through it, and the boshi comes in midare-komi, thrusts up, points and returns deeply. At its most flamboyant the midare can even leave the slant behind: an Enbun 6 naginata-naoshi, its choji lively in variation and rise and fall, is described as "a truly florid workmanship that recalls the Fukuoka Ichimonji", the single such comparison in his record.
The jigane beneath both manners is the school's own. Some blades retain what the published sources call the Aoe's original chirimen-hada, but most show a tightly packed ko-itame mixed with ko-mokume, ji-nie adhering thickly in fine particles, the peculiar mottled jifu the sources name namazu-hada, and clear patches of sumi-hada emerging here and there. On the finest pieces the reflection doubles: a midare-utsuri stands toward the mune while a straight band rises along the yakiba, together forming what the texts call dan-utsuri. The second manner rests on this steel. It is a chu-suguha, at times shading into shallow notare, mixed with ko-gunome and ko-choji, slanting here and there so that saka-ashi and yo enter even within the straight line; the nioiguchi is tight, bright and clear, and on a tachi dated Shohei 7 the sources note the fine nezumi-ashi. Famed though he is for the slanted midare, the designation texts repeat that "even when he tempers suguha he is skillful, and shows high technique", and one tanto in hoso-suguha is praised for a nioiguchi so crisply tightened and bright that it imparts a serene, restrained taste. Whichever manner he works, the sources observe, the boshi thrusts up with a pointed tip, a school tell that survives both hands.
The two manners divide largely by form. Of his tachi records nearly all run to suguha, whether chu-suguha or hoso-suguha, while the flamboyant saka-choji is carried by the hira-zukuri blades, the sunnobi wakizashi and tanto of wide mihaba, thin kasane and shallow sori that wear the typical Nanbokucho silhouette, and by naginata-naoshi. Two hira-zukuri tanto of the same length, dated the eleventh and twelfth months of Enbun 3 (1358) and both Important Cultural Properties, are each recorded with saka-choji-midare. His signing habits are themselves a study: the long mei with the date written down in one line, the kakikudashi-mei, is noted as not rare in the Aoe of this period, as is the rounded maru-mune construction; the southern court year Shohei 7 appears beside the northern Bunna and Enbun dates; and where most long blades of the period were later shortened into o-suriage mumei, his record preserves signed and dated tachi, among them an ubu blade of 89.8 centimeters dated Jowa 3. O-suriage mumei katana carry kinzogan attributions to Tsugunao by the Honami, Mitsutada or Kotsune, and stand among his prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin. The boundary of the name is drawn from the work itself: a tachi in gunome-dominant ha, unlike the choji-led temper of the Enbun-dated pieces, is read in Honma's recorded comment as "possibly later than the works with Enbun dates", and a hoso-suguha tachi is judged "probably a little later in date than the Enbun-dated works of Tsugunao", so the published record itself holds open the question of a later generation under the same name.
Within the school the manners divide between the masters: Tsugunao left more saka-choji-midare and Tsuguyoshi more suguha, and the sources write that "in this point he may be said to stand in contrast to Tsuguyoshi". What marks a blade as his are his own documented features in combination: the slanting set of the choji and ashi, the tight bright nioiguchi over a nioi-based ha, the sumi-hada and namazu-hada mottling in the packed ko-itame, the stepped dan-utsuri on the finest work, and the thrusting, pointed boshi. He stands at the close of the line the sources call sue-Aoe; no individual pupil is named in his record, but the blades judged later than his Enbun-dated work show the Tsugunao name carrying on past the prime master.
Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku, and twenty-six designated works stand on record: three Important Cultural Properties, five Juyo Bijutsuhin, seven Tokubetsu Juyo and eleven Juyo. The provenance behind them runs through the great houses. The Maeda of Kaga held his Enbun 5 tanto as a treasure of the house, styled the Dai-Aoe (大青江) after the famous pair of Aoe meibutsu katana; a dated wakizashi formerly of the Yanagisawa is documented by the note on its old scabbard as the shogun Tsunayoshi's gift on his first visit to the Yanagisawa mansion in Genroku 4; a dated tachi descended in the Choshu Mori, a katana bears Mori Motoyasu's possession inscription in gold inlay beside the record of Umetada's shortening, another katana was transmitted in the Kishu Tokugawa house, and one tachi is accompanied by a letter of commendation of Tokugawa Hidetada together with its period uchigatana koshirae. The Important Cultural Property blades are patrimony. An orikaeshi-mei katana is held by the Tokugawa Art Museum and the earlier of the Enbun 3 tanto by the Tokyo National Museum, while the second tanto is recorded in private hands in Aichi. The Hayashibara Museum of Art holds one of the Juyo Bijutsuhin. For the private collector the realistic field is the eighteen blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, most of recorded whereabouts in private hands; these are held rather than traded, and a signed, dated Tsugunao, of a kind the published sources themselves call rare among the survivors of this school and period, comes to market only seldom and is an occasion when it does.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Moritsugu is an Aoe smith of Bitchū, his name traditionally derived from Yasutsugu, the founder of the Aoe lineage, and carried by several hands from the Ko-Aoe period down into the Nanbokuchō. The published sources are careful with the name. The Meikan lists more than one smith called Moritsugu even within Ko-Aoe, and the name passed on afterward, so that surviving works range from blades judged to the end of Kamakura through dated pieces of the Jōwa, Bunwa and Enbun years in the middle of the Nanbokuchō. His record falls into two faces, an early powerful tachi and a group of dated late works, chiefly tantō. Of one Enbun piece the commentary says plainly that this is the work of the last bearer of the name, 'the Moritsugu who brought that tradition to its close'[[c:1]].
The hand that runs through both faces is a calm, bright *suguha*. On the late tantō the temper is *nioi*-dominant and clear, the *nioiguchi* drawn tight, *ko-nie* gathered along it; one Bunwa tantō the published record calls a textbook of Nanbokuchō Aoe *suguha* work. On the early tachi the same line is a *suguha* base into which *ko-gunome* and *ko-chōji* are set, *ko-ashi* entering, fine *kinsuji* running, the *nioiguchi* bright. The judges single out this quality above all. The way a tight, bright *suguha* is tempered to produce a deep *shio-ai*, a salt-like depth in the hardened edge, they call 'superb'[[c:2]], and from it 'the high technical level of Moritsugu can be perceived'[[c:3]].
The *jigane* is the Aoe steel at two strengths. On the early two-character tachi it is a *ko-itame* mixed with *ko-mokume*, the grain finely standing, *ji-nie* adhering throughout in fine particles, *chikei* entering, and from the *hamon* boundary a somewhat faint *midare-utsuri* rising, the most refined *jigane* in his record. On the dated tantō the forging stands a little more, an *itame* that at times flows, mixed with *jifu* and *chihan*-like mottling, with a clear *utsuri* over it. The *bōshi* on both is essentially straight, turning back in a *ko-maru*, sometimes with *hakikake*, and on the tachi a *bō-hi* is carved through into the tang.
Within the dated work the published sources draw the period's central observation. The Aoe of this generation, they note, shows little conspicuous *nie* and becomes for the most part *nioi-deki*, and in it 'there are two manners, the traditional *suguha* and a splendid *saka-chōji* not seen before'[[c:4]]. Most of Moritsugu's work belongs to the first of these. The second appears in two of his blades. His Jūyō Bijutsuhin tantō mixes reverse-leaning *gunome* into a *notare* of *nioi-deki*, and an Important Cultural Property tantō dated the eighth month of Enbun 2 (1357) is recorded outright with a *saka-chōji midare* temper. The same year, Enbun 2, is inscribed on an Important Cultural Property tachi of 86.0 cm whose temper is recorded as a *hiro-suguha* mixed with *chōji*, and a long-signed Jūyō tachi in a narrow *suguha* carries an era name the published sources read as Jōwa. His shapes are of their moment. The early tachi is wide and powerful with high *koshizori*, thick *kasane* and *funbari* in the Kenmu manner, and the tantō are *hira-zukuri* with a *sun-nobi* feeling or a faint *uchizori*. One rare *shōbu-zukuri* piece the sources note as unusual for the smith and the school alike, and several of the tantō carry a *sankō-ken* or *goma-bashi* devotional carving in the groove.
His place in the school is the one the judges name. His early tachi belongs to the classic Aoe manner of *suguha* over a fine *ko-itame* with a bright *midare-utsuri*, while the dated works bring the long Moritsugu name to its end and show both of the period's manners, the tight traditional *suguha* and the new *saka-chōji*. The strongest external anchor is documentary. The published sources find that the manner of cutting the signature on his finest tachi matches exactly the hand of the tachi long held by the Uesugi family, the Important Cultural Property known as the Rinpō Tachi. It differs only in that his *bō-hi*, carried through the tang, forced the signature onto the *hira-ji* rather than toward the *mune*.
He is a rare and quiet name. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work at 900. He has no National Treasures. His record runs instead through the Important Cultural Property tier, three blades among them, one Special Jūyō tachi and four Jūyō, with a single prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin tantō, so that nine designated works stand on record. The Enbun 2 tachi is preserved in the Tokyo National Museum, and a second Important Cultural Property tachi survives with its leather-wrapped tachi koshirae and a recorded provenance from Uesugi Kenshin; the *saka-chōji* tantō also descends from the Uesugi family. These are patrimony rather than property. The Jūyō Bijutsuhin tantō was certified in the Suzuki collection of Yamagata. Of the remainder the Special Jūyō and Jūyō blades are the pieces that survive in private and recorded hands, and even these come to light only seldom, since extant Moritsugu of this period are few. A signed Aoe Moritsugu reaching a collector is an uncommon event, and a document of how the Aoe school carried its old *suguha* down to the close of its line.
Tsuguyoshi (次吉) — Mainline · 1357-1368. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. The early eleventh-century travel-text *Shin Sarugakki*, listing the famous products of the provinces, already names "the swords of Bitchū," and it was the Aoe smiths, flourishing along the lower reaches of the Takahashi River, who inherited that reputation. Tsuguyoshi works at the Nanbokuchō height of the line, and the published sources count him, together with Tsugunao and Moritsugu, among the representative Aoe smiths of the mid-fourteenth century. His dated, signed blades run across the Enbun, Jōji and Kōan years of the 1350s and 1360s, almost all of them *tantō* and *sun-nobi* wakizashi: wide in body, thin in *kasane*, shallow in *sori*, the period shape stated without ornament. Several are still *ubu*, carrying a long signature on the *omote* and a date on the reverse, so his hand can be followed year by year.
His manner is the one the published sources draw most carefully, because it divides cleanly in two. He works in a tight, bright *suguha* and in a flamboyant *saka-chōji-midare*, and the judges return again and again to the same distinction between the two Aoe masters: "as a rule Tsuguyoshi runs to *suguha*, Tsugunao to *saka-chōji-midare*,[[c:1]]" while in either temper the *nioiguchi* is tight and clear. The *suguha* is by far his own register. On these blades he tempers a *chū-suguha* or a narrow *hoso-suguha*, in places a shallow *notare*, into which small *ko-ashi*, *yō* and a reversed *saka-ashi* tendency enter, the temper *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie*, fine *kinsuji* running within, the *nioiguchi* tight and notably bright. It is this clarity that the published sources name his and the school's chief point of appreciation, the *nioiguchi* that "is tight, and bright and clear.[[c:2]]"
The *jigane* carries the rest of the Aoe signature. Over a well-packed *ko-itame*, at times mixed with *ko-mokume* and standing a little, lie fine *ji-nie* set in minute density and delicate *chikei*, with the speckled *ji-madara* the sources also call *chirimen-hada* and patches of clear *sumihada*. A *midare-utsuri* stands toward the *mune*, and on his finest blades a further linear *utsuri* runs along the edge so that the two layer into a banded *dan-utsuri*, the steel left clear. The *bōshi* runs straight to a *ko-maru*, frequently with a pointed turn, sometimes with a long *kaeri* or a little *hakikake*; and the tang is filed, by the school's rule, in *ō-sujikai*. On one Kōan *tantō* the judges single out a *kaeri* "boldly tempered down deep to the *machi*,[[c:3]]" an unusual flourish in a *suguha* work that they hold sharpens rather than coarsens the blade.
The second register is the rarer face. On a small number of pieces the temper opens into a showy *saka-chōji-midare* mixed with *gunome*, the *ashi* reversed and *yō* entering, *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie* and fine *kinsuji*, the *bōshi* entering as *midare* and turning with a pointed flavor; the *midare-utsuri* on the same blades stands conspicuously. The judges call one such *wakizashi* a representative work whose *saka-chōji* and *utsuri* together show the school plainly, and on a dated *tantō* of this kind they record an oral remark of Honma's that, within this Nanbokuchō line, "the smith who tempers the clove pattern in a *tantō* with the clearest *nioiguchi* is this craftsman, or else Tsugunao.[[c:4]]" Beyond the signed work stands a third record, the *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him, a wide blade of imposing shape that keeps a 1657 Hon'ami origami naming Tsuguyoshi; its *itame* *jigane* with emerging *jifu* and its *nioi*-deki *suguha* with *saka-ashi* let the judges affirm it as his from the *jihada* and *hamon* rather than from any personal tell.
What sets Tsuguyoshi apart within his own school is exactly this balance. Against Tsugunao, whose hand leans to the brilliant reverse clove pattern, his work is read as the *suguha* master of the pair, the *nioiguchi* tight and bright on both their hands but the quiet temper his by preference. Against the earlier Ko-Aoe, whose *suguha* the published sources describe as *ko-nie-deki* with a somewhat subdued *nioiguchi*, his is the Nanbokuchō clarity, the line tightened and brightened. The judges call the *suguha* his family specialty, the manner in which "he displays his true capabilities," and name his best blades the outstanding examples among his surviving work.
For the collector he is a Nanbokuchō name of real standing rather than a rarity beyond reach. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the modern designations, fourteen of his blades falling in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, two of them at Tokubetsu Jūyō. The published sources prize his *ubu*, dated, signed pieces as reference material for the study of the smith, and name one Tokubetsu Jūyō wakizashi outstanding among his works. His provenance runs through the daimyō houses: a Tokubetsu Jūyō wakizashi transmitted in the Maeda family with a black-lacquer *aikuchi koshirae* bearing eight gold *umebachi* crests, a *tantō* held in the Kan'in-no-miya princely house with its Hon'ami origami and crested storage box, and further blades recorded with the Maeda and Arima families. A signed Tsuguyoshi is not often offered, and most designated examples are held rather than traded, but a Jūyō tantō or wakizashi of his does appear from time to time, and a dated, signed one is among the more knowable things a collector of Bitchū Aoe could hope to encounter.
Tsuguyoshi (次吉) — Mainline · 1338-1358. Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. Tsuguyoshi is an Aoe smith of Bitchū Province, working in the Nanbokuchō period, whom the published sources rank alongside Tsugunao and Moritsugu as "one of the representative smiths of the Aoe school in the mid-Nanbokuchō period." The blades gathered under his name are signed and dated across the 1340s and 1350s, the years of Ryakuō, Jōwa, Kan'ō and Enbun, and the published commentary treats these dated, *ubu* pieces as valuable documentary material for the study of the smith and his school. He stands at a turning point in the long Bitchū story the same sources recall, in which the early-eleventh-century travel miscellany *Shin Sarugakki* already named "the swords of Bitchū" among the noted products of the provinces, and the Aoe smiths who flourished along the lower Takahashi River two centuries later inherited that reputation. Where their late-Kamakura work calmed and the Nanbokuchō work tightened, Tsuguyoshi is one of the hands in whom the school's clear, bright temper reaches its height.
His characteristic manner is the *suguha*, and the sources make the point as a plain rule of kantei: broadly "Tsuguyoshi tends to produce *suguha*, while Tsugunao more frequently shows reverse *chōji-midare*"[[c:1]], with a tight, bright *nioiguchi* shared between the two. His is a *chū-suguha* or a slender *hoso-suguha*, shallowly *notare*, into which small *ko-gunome*, occasional *ko-chōji* and angular elements enter, carried by *ko-ashi*, *yō* and a faint reverse-slanting tendency. The temper is *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie*, fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running within, and above all the *nioiguchi* is bright and clear. One Aoe wakizashi is called a typical example of the *suguha* associated with him, and of his signed *naginata-naoshi* the published sources say it shows "the working range of *suguha* in which the smith fully demonstrates his forte"[[c:2]], the *chikei* entering more conspicuously than in his usual production. The *bōshi* runs straight into a *ko-maru*, at times rising above the *yokote*, occasionally finishing in *hakikake* or *yakitsume*.
The *jigane* is the constant. He forges a well-packed *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume*, the grain at times finely standing, with very fine *ji-nie* set thickly in *mijin* and delicate *chikei* entering well; in places a *jifu*-like complexion and patches of *sumihada* appear, the speckled tells of the Aoe *jigane*. Over it a *midare-utsuri* stands toward the *mune*, and on his finest blades parallel streaks of *suji-utsuri* rise near the edge as well, the two layering into a banded *dan-utsuri*. The published sources name this their distinctive mark: of one dated Jōwa tachi they write that "the *midare-utsuri* appearing close to the cutting edge is a hallmark peculiar to this tradition"[[c:3]]. It is the *utsuri*, more than any flourish in the temper, that carries the eye on his blades.
Within his record the sources draw two further faces. One is a small group of pieces judged not from the school's Nanbokuchō height but from the very end of Kamakura into the early Nanbokuchō: of standard *mihaba* with little taper, the curvature high with *koshizori* and added *saki-zori*, the *chū-kissaki* not yet greatly extended, a form read as marking the entry into the new age, the same tight *suguha* and *dan-utsuri* over a closely packed *ko-itame*. The other is the reverse-leaning touch. The flamboyant *saka-chōji-midare* the sources hold more characteristic of Tsugunao is largely absent from his own blades, yet a reverse tendency enters his *suguha* as *saka-ashi* and a *gyaku-chōji* flavor: one *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him widens into a *suguha* with reverse-slanting *ashi* and *gyaku-chōji* and a *midare-komi bōshi* that rises to a pointed turn, and the Important Cultural Property tachi recorded under his name, a long signed blade dated Jōwa 2 (1346) and 81.5 cm long, is catalogued with a *ko-notare* and *saka-chōji* temper, the most pronounced of its kind on his record.
What sets him within the school is exactly what the judges name. His tang is filed in the *ō-sujikai* of the Aoe convention, the long signature often cut on the *haki-omote* toward the *mune* with the date written descending, a habit the sources call typical of Nanbokuchō Aoe work. Against Tsugunao he is the *suguha* hand; against Ko-Aoe, whose *suguha* is *ko-nie-deki* with a somewhat subdued, *shizumi nioiguchi*, his is the brighter, tighter, clearer temper of the later school. The published sources gather him with Tsugunao and Moritsugu as "one of the representative smiths of the mid-Nanbokuchō Aoe school"[[c:4]], and praise the broad, unhurried temper of one Jūyō tachi as full of commanding spirit, a work in which "the highlights of this smith, who excelled in *suguha*, are shown without omission"[[c:5]].
For the collector he is a documented Nanbokuchō name whose signed, dated blades survive in fair number. Fujishiro's rating is not recorded. He has no National Treasures. His record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, a long signed and dated tachi, and the higher modern tiers, one blade designated Tokubetsu Jūyō and eighteen designated Jūyō. His provenance is sparing and honestly so: an *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him was transmitted in the Mito Tokugawa family, and the rest are held in private and institutional collections of recorded but partial whereabouts. Of the blades that can change hands, most are held rather than traded, so a signed Tsuguyoshi comes to market only from time to time and a dated, *ubu* example is a notable thing to encounter, valued, as the sources repeat, as reference material for understanding the range of his work.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1346-1376. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. A wakizashi dated Shōhei 5 (1350), signed in full as Ōsumi no Gon no Suke Taira Sadatsugu of Bitchū Province and long held in the Naitō house of Nobeoka, fixes the Sadatsugu of this entry in time: not the early-Kamakura Ko-Aoe smith of the same name, but the Nanbokuchō continuation of the Aoe line in Bitchū. The published sources treat Sadatsugu as one of the representative houses of Aoe, the name carried in unbroken succession from the early Kamakura period down through the Nanbokuchō era. Within that long descent they recognize several smiths working under the single name, a point the NBTHK states outright when it observes that 'there have been several Sadatsugu in the school since the Kamakura period'[[c:1]]. The most individual of the Nanbokuchō hands is Ōsumi no Gon no Suke Taira Sadatsugu, whose dated works run from Genkō through Shōhei and whom the published sources call a smith who 'reflects a notably strong individuality in his workmanship even within his school'[[c:2]].
His recognized work is the *hira-zukuri* tantō and wakizashi, wide in body and *sun-nobi*, thin in *kasane* with shallow *sori*, the bold and powerful shape of the Nanbokuchō peak. Over a *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume* whose grain stands finely into the so-called *chirimen-hada*, with minute *ji-nie*, *chikei*, and patches of clear *sumi-hada*-toned *jifu*, he takes the *suguha* broad, mixing in slight *ko-chōji*. The *nioiguchi* is tight and somewhat subdued, with thick *ko-nie*; *ashi* and *yō* enter densely, carrying the inward-slanting *saka-ashi* of the school. The most striking thing his judges name is what happens inside the temper. The *nie* gathers and condenses into *shima-ba*, islands of hardening within the *ha*; *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* are active; and the *bōshi* turns back in a *ko-maru* tempered deeply and long down the side. It is this that the published sources mean when they write that 'a certain bold, uninhibited flavour overflowing with vigour is why he is said to be an atypical presence within his school'[[c:3]].
The *jigane* is the constant beneath that activity. The forging is a tightly worked *ko-itame* with *mokume*, the grain standing finely to a crêpe-like *chirimen* texture, into which enter fine *ji-nie* in minute particles, delicate *chikei*, and the *sumi-hada*-toned mottling that the published sources call the clear-steel patches of Aoe; over it a faint, *midare*-leaning *utsuri* rises. The carving program on the tantō is devotional and economical, a *bonji* seed-syllable with a *suken* or *gomabashi* cut beneath it and run off; the long signature sits centrally in somewhat thick chisel, and the file marks are the steep *ō-sujikai* of Bitchū. These last two, the *ō-sujikai* tang and the *ha-ura* reverse-chisel manner of the inscription, are the tang tells the published sources set against the Bizen file when they place a blade with Aoe rather than its near neighbour.
The Sadatsugu name in the Nanbokuchō does not resolve to one man. A second body of signed work, cut simply Bitchū no kuni jū Sadatsugu, carries dates of Jōji and Eiwa; the published sources elsewhere treat the Sadatsugu of this dated range as a different and slightly later smith from the Ōsumi no Gon no Suke maker. These are small tantō in the calm Aoe hand: a narrow *hoso-suguha* over a *ko-itame* that flows and turns *masame* toward the edge, the *nioiguchi* tight, the *bōshi* a small *maru*. The judges place them in one of the two Aoe manners of the age, writing that 'the Aoe school of this period has both a reverse-chōji temper running wildly and a *suguha* with a tight *nioiguchi*'[[c:4]], and note the small tantō format as a peculiarity of the school. The third face of the record is the *ō-suriage mumei* or gold-inlaid *naginata-naoshi* judged Sadatsugu, and the NBTHK explains the practice plainly: because Aoe Sadatsugu has been held first-rank since the *Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi*, with the *Shinkan Hiden-shō* valuing Bitchū work at the supreme grade, there is an old habit of attributing a typical, finely made unsigned Aoe blade to him. On the *Ebi Kusari-giri* *naginata-naoshi* they make it explicit, that such a gold-inlaid 'Sadatsugu' does not point to the Ko-Aoe smith himself but uses the name 'in the sense of a representative superior work of the school'[[c:5]], and Honma Junji called such a Sadatsugu 'not a scholarly attribution but a term in praise of Aoe'[[c:6]].
What sets this Nanbokuchō Aoe apart is exactly what the published sources name as its own. Where the work resembles its neighbours it is by tradition rather than by borrowing: the standing *itame* with *jifu* and *ji-nie* is the Aoe *jigane*, and the temper, the judges write, follows 'what may be called the Aoe tradition, a *suguha* into which *saka-ashi* enter'[[c:7]]. On the *ō-suriage* attributions a bright *midare-utsuri* stands clear, and over it a *suguha* mixed with *ko-chōji*, *ko-gunome*, and small *midare* takes a *saka-gakari* turn, *nioi*-dominant and bright, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* fine. The inward-slanting feet and clusters, the clear *utsuri*, and the bright tight *nioiguchi* are the marks that hold a blade to Bitchū and away from the mainstream Osafune *chōji* it might otherwise be mistaken for, though the line of Kagemitsu leans its temper too; against the famed Ko-Aoe name the surviving signed and attributed work is read.
For the collector Sadatsugu is a scarce Nanbokuchō name rather than a common one. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through one Tokubetsu Jūyō and eleven Jūyō, with one prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, thirteen designated works in all on record. The published sources call the Shōhei 5 Ōsumi no Gon no Suke wakizashi a *kessaku* and the very finest among his works, sound in both *ji* and *ha*, and note that as surviving examples by this smith are few the dated pieces carry high documentary value. His blades descend through documented houses: the Tokubetsu Jūyō wakizashi in the Naitō family, lords of the Nobeoka domain in Hyūga, and two of the gold-inlaid *naginata-naoshi*, bearing the names *Kitakaze* and *Ebi Kusari-giri*, owned by Miura Shōgen, a senior retainer of the Kishū Tokugawa, one of them received from the prelate Tenkai. With only a small number in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, a signed Aoe Sadatsugu comes to market only seldom, and a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the celebrated Aoe name was carried into the Nanbokuchō age.
Hiratada (平忠) — Mainline · 1352-1368. Jūbun. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ietsugu (家次) — Mainline · 1367-1386. Jūbun, Jūyō. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yorizane (依眞) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Jūbun. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Jūbi, Tokujū. Yoshitsugu was a smith of the Aoe school working in Bitchu Province, a region long renowned as a source of iron. Sword compendia record him as active around the Jowa era (1345--1350) of the Nanbokucho period, placing him within the mature phase of the school's development. The Aoe group is conventionally divided into two periods: works up to around the mid-Kamakura period are distinguished as Ko-Aoe, while those thereafter through the Nanbokucho period are broadly termed Aoe. The NBTHK notes, however, that appraisals assigning specific individual names to Aoe works "are subject to both approval and dissent," underscoring the difficulty of firm personal attribution within this prolific school.
The Aoe style exhibits two principal modes: one consists of *suguha* tempered with a tightly formed *nioiguchi*; the other is the distinctive *saka-choji-midare*, "whose characteristic form was brought to completion by around Enbun, during the high point of Nanbokucho swordmaking." Yoshitsugu's work reflects the first mode. His forging is a densely compacted *ko-itame-hada* in which *jifu* appears. The *hamon* is a *gunome*-based *ko-midare* in slight *ko-nie* with *sunagashi*, and *ko-choji* ashi enter. The nioiguchi is tight, with *ko-nie*, and "bright and clear." His blades present a wide *mihaba* with little taper, shallow *sori*, and a *chu-kissaki*; the *boshi* runs straight into a *ko-maru* with a long return.
Designated examples have been praised as "superlative" and "outstanding" among Aoe works, with the NBTHK further commending their *kenzen* -- sound and well-preserved -- condition. His output exemplifies the commanding, robust *taihai* associated with Aoe at its Nanbokucho-period zenith, and his blades remain touchstones for the school's tradition of tight forging and luminous temper.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sadatsugu is one of the most celebrated names of the Aoe school of Bitchu Province. Transmitted since the *Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi* as a smith selected among the *ban-kaji* appointed to serve Retired Emperor Go-Toba, Sadatsugu is accorded the highest valuation in the *Shinkan Hiden-sho*, recorded as "Bitchu objects, supreme: fifteen *kan*,"[[c:1]] and has thus long been regarded as first rank even among Aoe works. The name was carried on from the early Kamakura period through the Nanbokucho period, encompassing multiple generations. So great was the esteem attached to this lineage that the Hon'ami family developed a longstanding tendency, when encountering well-made unsigned Aoe works that display a typical manner and particularly fine workmanship, to render Sadatsugu appraisals in the sense of denoting an Aoe piece of superior quality.
The technical character of works attributed to Sadatsugu is firmly rooted in the Aoe idiom of the late Kamakura period. The forging presents *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume* in which the grain stands out finely; extremely fine *ji-nie* adheres, and vivid *midare-utsuri* appears conspicuously. The *hamon* is fundamentally *suguha*, mixed with *choji*, *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome*, and small *gunome*; a distinctive tendency toward *saka-ashi* can be observed throughout. In the lower half of the blade, the temper characteristically becomes irregular and lively, with *ashi* and *yo* entering vigorously, *nioi* predominating with *ko-nie*, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through a *nioiguchi* that is bright and clear. The *boshi* typically shows a shallow *notare* with an upward-tending rise, becoming pointed at the tip with a rather long *kaeri*, revealing a distinctive workmanship.
The scholarly significance of Sadatsugu attributions lies in their role as markers of the highest quality within the Aoe tradition. The NBTHK has repeatedly observed that the *jihada*, *hamon*, and *boshi* of these works "conspicuously manifest the distinctive characteristics of the Aoe group in the late Kamakura period," and that the reverse-slanting tendencies visible in the *yakiba* call to mind a precursor to the brilliant *saka-choji midare* that flourished in the subsequent Nanbokucho period. The internal scenery of the temper displays variety; the *nioiguchi* is bright and clear; and, combined with the robust form featuring thick *kasane* and abundant *nikuoki*, these works are consistently recognized as representative superior exemplars of the school.
Other smiths
Ietsugu (家次) — Mainline · 1356-1357. Ietsugu belonged to the Aoe school of Bitchu Province, a lineage whose activity spanned from the mid-Kamakura period through the late Nanbokucho era. He is recorded in the *Meikan* as a son of Moritsugu, and his works are appraised across two distinct periods: a tachi bearing a *tachi*-style signature is attributed to the Naka-Aoe group of the middle to late Kamakura period, while dated works inscribed Enbun 2 (1357) and Shitoku 3 (1386) place him firmly in the Nanbokucho era. This range suggests either a long working life or, more likely, successive generations operating under the same name.
The Naka-Aoe tachi displays the school's hallmark qualities: a dense *ko-itame-hada* with *ji-nie* and *utsuri* standing out, paired with a *suguha-cho* temper where the *nioiguchi* tends toward tightness with abundant *ko-ashi* and adhering *ko-nie*. The NBTHK notes that "the characteristic features of this lineage are well expressed in both the *jihada* and the *hamon*." The later tachi dated Shitoku 3 is especially significant, as signed works of the Aoe school from this period are described as "extremely rare — not only those by Ietsugu, but in general." Despite workmanship the NBTHK candidly assesses as not rising to a high level, the piece is valued as "exceedingly precious as documentary material."
What emerges from the designated corpus is an artisan of considerable documentary importance to the study of the Aoe tradition. His tanto dated Enbun 2 differs in form from the large, elongated examples of contemporaries such as Tsuguyoshi and Tsugunao, making it "useful for research on the Aoe school." Across his surviving works, Ietsugu preserves the essential vocabulary of Bitchu craftsmanship while documenting the school's evolution through its final active centuries.
Nagatsugu (長次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kunitsugu (国次) — Mainline · 1394-1466. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagatsugu (長次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1380-1394. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sanetsugu (真次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Suetsugu (末次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Suetsugu (末次) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukeyoshi (助吉) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (俊次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhisa (次久) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1380-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munesada (宗貞) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arihiro (在弘) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arihiro (有弘) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arihiro (有弘) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arihiro (在弘) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Arisue (有末) — Mainline · 1489-1492. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1384-1387. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Chikayori (親依) — Mainline · 1361-1362. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Haruhisa (春久) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Harutsugu (春次) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Hisatsugu (久次) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kagenaga (景長) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kageshige (晩重) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kageshige (晩重) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kageshige (景重) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kagetsugu (景次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kagetsugu (景次) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanenaga (包永) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Kanenobu (兼宣) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koreshige (是重) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Koreshige (是重) — Mainline · 1460-1466. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Mareto (希遠) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Masatsugu (正次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Masatsune (正恒) — Mainline · 1361-1362. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Moritsugu (盛次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Morotsugu (師次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munesada (宗貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsugu (宗次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Munetsugu (宗次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagahisa (長久) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nagamitsu (永光) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naonaga (直長) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naonobu (直信) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naosada (直貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naotsugu (直次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naotsugu (直次) — Mainline · 1335-1364. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Naritaka (業高) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Narizane (業實) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobukuni (信國) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobusada (延貞) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobusada (延貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobusada (延貞) — Mainline · 1375-1379. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Nobutsugu (信次) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Norimitsu (則光) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Noritaka (則高) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sadatsugu (貞次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sanesada (眞貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sanesada (眞貞) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Shigetsugu (重次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Shigetsugu (重次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sueyoshi (末吉) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukechika (助近) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukenari (助成) — Mainline · 1460-1466. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Sukenobu (助延) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadakuni (忠國) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (忠次) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tadatsugu (忠次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Takasue (高末) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamekiyo (爲清) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tamenaga (爲長) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tametsugu (爲繼) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tametsune (爲恒) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameuji (爲氏) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tameyoshi (爲吉) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokikuni (時國) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokisada (時貞) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokitsugu (時次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokitsugu (時次) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tokizane (時眞) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (友次) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tomotsugu (朝次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (年次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (利次) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Toshitsugu (年次) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguari (次有) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguchika (次近) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhide (次秀) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次廣) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguhiro (次弘) — Mainline · 1342-1345. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguie (次家) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugumasa (次正) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugumune (次宗) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugunari (次成) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugunori (次則) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugusada (次貞) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugusue (次末) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugusuke (次助) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutoshi (次利) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutoshi (次利) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsugutsune (次恒) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuguyori (次依) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunekiyo (恒清) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunesada (恒貞) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetomo (常伴) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (常次) — Mainline · 1428-1429. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (經次) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1350-1352. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunetsugu (恒次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsuneyoshi (恒吉) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Tsunezane (恒眞) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuhiro (安弘) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yasuie (安家) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshifusa (吉房) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshimura (吉村) — Mainline · 987-1596. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yoshitsugu (吉次) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukinobu (行信) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukinobu (行信) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukiyasu (行安) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukiyasu (行安) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukiyasu (行安) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.
Yukizane (行眞) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Bitchū Aoe School.