The school of the Dōjigiri. In late Heian Hōki, Yasutsuna and his line — Sanemori, Sadatsuna, Aritsuna — forged some of the earliest fully realized Japanese swords: a blackish, ancient-flavoured steel alive with kinsuji and sunagashi that Masamune and Norishige would later take as the ideal behind the Sōshū tradition. The Ko-Hōki masters carry the school’s designations; the later Sue-Hōki phase is a quiet provincial afterword to one of the founding chapters of the Japanese sword.
Era
966 — 1600
Members
47
Kokuhō
2
Jūbun
8
Jūbi
11
Tokujū
11
Jūyō
63
For Sale
2
Phase 01
古伯耆Ko-Hoki966 – 1334
42smiths2Kokuhō8Jūbun11Jūbi11Tokujū57Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Phase 02
末伯耆Sue-Hoki1334 – 1600
5smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi0Tokujū6Jūyō
The Hōki School (伯耆) Lineage
The The Hōki School (伯耆), active 966–1600 in Hōki Province across 47 documented smiths: 2 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 8 Jūbun, 11 Jūbi, 11 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 63 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ko-Hoki (古伯耆) · 966 – 1334
Ko-Hoki occupies the deepest stratum of the school, the chapter in which the Hoki name first enters the record at all. The published commentary places *Yasutsuna* roughly contemporary with Sanjo Munechika in the late Heian period, correcting the older reference-book dating that pushed him back to the Daido era (806 to 810), and the gap between that legend and the inferred reality is itself a measure of how far back this phase reaches. Gathered around Yasutsuna is the *Ohara* group: Masamori (read also as Sanemori), transmitted as his son, with Aritsuna, *Sadatsuna*, Yasuie and *Masakage* (Sanekage) named beside him, a circle the setsumei describes as flourishing from the late Heian into the early Kamakura period. Hoki *Kunimune* extends the manner toward the Kamakura age, his work judged to stand apart from Bizen Saburo Kunimune and possibly to predate him. Signed survivals at this antiquity are thin, more frequent under Yasutsuna than any other hand, and the meibutsu Dojigiri Yasutsuna fixes the period's highest reference.
The style of this phase is read first in the steel. The setsumei return blade after blade to *itame* with standing grain, mixed with *o-itame* and *mokume* in large pattern, thick *ji-nie*, entering *chikei* and patchy *jifu* that rises into *jifu-utsuri* or *midare-utsuri* across a ground of darkish, blackish (*kanai-iro*) tone. The temper rests on a *suguha* base broken into *ko-midare*, with *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome* and shallow *ko-notare* mingled small in scale, the *nie* lying thick and the *nioiguchi* tending to *urumi* or *shizumi*; *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run insistently, and many blades drop the edge above the *machi* in *yakiotoshi*. The *sugata* keeps an archaic koshizori *tachi* form with *funbari* and a small *kissaki*, the *boshi* running straight to *ko-maru* or *yakizume*. Against the later Sue-Hoki the contrast is one of vigor and individuality: where the late phase settles this rustic register into something tamer and more regular, Ko-Hoki stands open, dark and forceful, each hand still distinct, Yasutsuna's *midare* running larger while Sadatsuna's finest signed work brightens unusually toward Bizen.
For *kantei* the recurring task is to separate Hoki from Ko-Bizen, whose contemporaneous *ko-midare* it superficially resembles. The setsumei draw the line on close view: Ko-Bizen steel is bright and tight, while the Hoki *ji* stands open and dark with conspicuous large *itame*, a clouded *nioiguchi*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* working through a softer provincial edge that carries an ancient fragrance (*koko*). A thread of Yamato spirit is read in certain pieces, such as the unsigned Yasutsuna long held in the Maeda house, and Sadatsuna's *o-sujikai* *yasurime* point toward Aoe even as judgment keeps him in Ko-Hoki. Yasutsuna and Masamori head the phase, and the signature habit of cutting *tsuna* (綱) larger than *yasu* (安) and shifted to the right is a noted diagnostic. The Dojigiri stands above the named works, with the Imperial Yasunori tachi and Sadatsuna and Kunimune blades transmitted through the Tokugawa, the Satake of Dewa, and the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira, the provenance running through the houses that held the country.
Yasutsuna (安綱) — Mainline · 987-1150. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Nearly every entry the NBTHK has published on Yasutsuna of Hoki returns to the same anchor: the existence of the Meibutsu Dojigiri Yasutsuna, the sources write, "has further elevated his renown," and within his oeuvre that sword remains the most celebrated of his name. Yasutsuna is the representative smith of Ko-Hoki, the old school of Hoki province, and he stands in the oldest stratum of the curved Japanese sword. The sword registries transmit an active period around the Daido era (806 to 810), but the published record consistently lowers the dating: judging from the surviving work, he reads as a smith of the late Heian period, roughly contemporary with Sanjo Munechika, and one earlier designation places him around the Eien era (987 to 989). A Juyo entry of 1962 fixes his historical position exactly, calling his age the time when the sword was passing from the straight chokuto to the curved tachi, and when that new form had, for the time being, settled into a standard shape. Other entries call him "a renowned master from the earliest phase of true curved swords" and a celebrated master representing the very beginnings of the Japanese sword. Among the Ko-Hoki smiths his signed works survive in comparatively large numbers, so that, almost alone at this depth of antiquity, his hand can be studied from the inscription as well as from the steel.
His tachi keep the classical silhouette of the Heian period. The blade is typically slender, the koshizori high with pronounced funbari, and the width narrows toward a small kissaki. The sources single out one point of the form again and again: compared with Ko-Bizen work, the tendency of his blades to incline downward toward the tip is not especially conspicuous, and this restraint of the upper curve is named a distinctive trait of his shaping. A few works run larger, and the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of the Satake line is noted as being of bigger, more robust construction than what is commonly encountered from him.
The jigane carries the deepest part of his identity. He forges itame mixed with o-itame and mokume, and the hada stands out. Thick ji-nie covers it, chikei and jifu enter, and the steel itself shows a darkish color (黒み) out of which a jifu-utsuri rises. Over that dark steel he tempers a nie-laden ko-midare on a base of shallow suguha and notare. Within it ko-gunome, ko-choji and ko-notare mingle conspicuously, kinsuji and sunagashi weave through the ha, and on many blades the temper is dropped above the machi in yakiotoshi (焼落し). It is this combination that the published sources contrast with old Bizen, writing that his workmanship "differs somewhat in feeling from groups such as Ko-Bizen." The boshi runs sugu to a small ko-maru or to yakizume, often swept with hakikake. Within the school the published record also isolates a personal tell: in the upper half of the hamon the ko-gunome and ko-notare mix in a somewhat independent form, a point one Juyo entry names as the place where Yasutsuna is distinguished even among Ko-Hoki.
The signature is its own field of study. He cut a large two-character mei on the haki-omote toward the mune, and the habit of his chisel is recorded in entry after entry: the character Tsuna is larger than the character Yasu and is set slightly to the right, his signing habit (手癖), one seen in other Ko-Hoki works as well. The benchmark is the Dojigiri itself; of one Juyo tachi the sources state that the manner of the signature is "exactly like that of the Dojigiri Yasutsuna," and a Juyo Bijutsuhin entry judges another mei similar to the Dojigiri. Tachi surviving with the nakago unaltered are extremely few, and an ubu signed Yasutsuna is counted exceedingly precious in the published record. Beside the prime manner the NBTHK documents a quieter register. One signed tachi, in which the ko-gunome and ko-notare recede, is read as an appearance rather close to Ko-Bizen work and expressly called one style register of the smith; another, in a more subdued hoso-suguha dressing, is still betrayed by the abundant vertical workings along the habuchi. The unsigned remainder, o-suriage blades, are accepted on the archaic elegance (古雅) of their ji and ha: one carries the origami of Hon'ami Koon dated Kanbun 4 (1664), another the origami of Hon'ami Koyu dated Kanpo 3 (1743), and the mumei katana handed down in the Maeda house, carrying a thread of Yamato spirit (一脈大和ごころ), has its tradition affirmed.
His manner is, in effect, the definition of Ko-Hoki. The school is read through him: the standing dark jigane, the jifu-utsuri and the nie-charged small midare with its yakiotoshi form the axis along which the published sources set Hoki apart from old Bizen, and unsigned blades of sufficient age and flavor gather to his name as den Yasutsuna. Even the signing habit extends beyond him, since the rightward-set Tsuna recurs elsewhere in the school. The published record treats him as a single late Heian master, with no division into generations, and so presents him plainly as the first fully formed personality of the curved sword, working at the moment the tachi itself was being settled.
Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku. Thirty-five designated works stand on record. Two are National Treasures and five are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony preserved beyond any market, and six more were certified Juyo Bijutsuhin between 1933 and 1941, then in the hands of the Satake, Sakai, Matsudaira and Ikeda houses, of the shrine Tsuboi Hachimangu, and of the Maeda; the Ikeda blade had been shortened in the Bakumatsu period by Osafune Sukehira, probably for the wear of the daimyo himself. Thirteen of his blades carry recorded provenance, and the roll runs through the men and houses that held the country: Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Hidetada, the Echizen Matsudaira line, the Shimazu, the Imperial Family, and the Satake of Kubota in Dewa, who handed down two of his signed tachi. Of recorded whereabouts today, his blades rest with the Tokyo National Museum, the Sano Art Museum and Ogamiyama Jinja, and one has crossed the sea to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. For the private collector the realistic horizon is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, twenty-one blades in all, most of them long held; a Yasutsuna of any kind comes to the market only rarely, and a signed example, let alone an ubu one, is among the rarest encounters the field can offer.
Ohara (大原) — Mainline · 987-1596. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Among the oldest curved swords on record, those signed in the six characters *Hoki Ohara Sanemori* form a small and precious group: of all the smiths gathered under his name in the catalogue, the published sources say plainly that "a signed work by Sanemori, traditionally transmitted as a son of Yasutsuna, is rare" (安綱の子と伝える大原真守の作で有銘作は珍しい). He worked at Ohara in Hoki at the close of the Heian period, and he is the second master of Ko-Hoki (古伯耆), standing beside his father Yasutsuna in the founding stratum of the Japanese tachi. Beginning with Yasutsuna, the published commentary records, Sanemori together with Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage make up the line collectively called Ko-Hoki, which flourished from the late Heian into the early Kamakura period. His blades reach us in two registers: the signed *tachi* and *kodachi* cut in their large six-character mei, and the mostly *o-suriage* unsigned blades that the shinsa returns to him as *den* Ohara Sanemori.
His hand is best read first as an archaic form that looks, at a glance, like Ko-Bizen. The *tachi* is slender, the curvature high and seated at the waist with *funbari*, the *shinogi-haba* narrow against the blade width and the *hiraniku* full, the whole tapering to a small *kissaki*, what the published sources call a slender, small-pointed silhouette "more frequently seen in this smith's work than in his father Yasutsuna's" (細身小鋒の体配は父の安綱に比してこの工に多く見るところ). Over this the temper is a *suguha* base undulating shallowly, with *ko-midare* leading and *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome* and pointed elements mingling so that the whole pattern stays small in scale. Within it the *nie* lies thick, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run frequently, and drifting *yubashiri* with the occasional *tobiyaki* gather along the crests of the temper, the *nioiguchi* often clouded or subdued. His own short threads of *nie-suji* accompany the *kinsuji*, a working written for him and not for his father.
The *jigane* carries the rustic weight of the school. The forging is *itame* mixed with large *o-itame*, *mokume* and a flowing *nagare-hada*, standing open in large pattern; thick *ji-nie* adheres, *chikei* enters, and patchy *jifu* with a *jifu-utsuri* rises over a steel of darkish tone. From these very features the published sources draw the school's defining distinction: that although the manner resembles contemporaneous Ko-Bizen, on close view the standing *itame*, the *chikei* and *jifu*, the clouded *nioiguchi* and frequent *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* "differ somewhat in taste from Ko-Bizen and take on a more rustic flavor" (古備前のそれとはやや趣を異にし、一段と野趣をおびた). The *boshi* runs straight to a small *ko-maru*, often swept in *hakikake*, and on the *tachi* not infrequently tempered out to a *yakizume*; some blades carry *yaki-otoshi* above the *machi*, and *bo-hi* or a *bonji* with *suken* are cut at the waist on the carved pieces.
What sets Sanemori apart within his own school is a matter of scale. Where his father's *midare* runs larger, the published commentary repeatedly marks his as smaller in pattern: in Honma's words, "compared with Yasutsuna, Sanemori's work is generally somewhat more slender, and the smaller-patterned irregularity of its temper is the point to see; though transmitted as Yasutsuna's son, the manner is, if anything, somewhat more archaic" (大原真守の作は安綱に比較して、概してやや細身であり、乱刃が小模様であるのが見処であり、古来安綱の子と伝えているが、むしろやや古調である). The shinsa returns to the same observation on blade after blade, that in the small-patterned irregularity "the points of interest belonging to Ohara Sanemori within the line can be discerned" (一派の中でも大原真守の見どころが窺われる). The signature itself is a register of its own: where the other Ko-Hoki smiths sign in two characters, "Sanemori has comparatively many long signatures, and the manner of inscription is not uniform" (他の古伯耆鍛冶がみな二字銘であるのに対し真守は比較的長銘が多く), the six-character mei cut large with a thick chisel.
His place is fixed by both ends of the lineage. Upstream he is transmitted as the son of Yasutsuna, the head of Ko-Hoki, carrying his father's manner one generation on at the close of the Heian period; downstream he heads, with Yasutsuna, the Ohara group beside Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage, and it is to his name that the *den* attributions of archaic unsigned blades gather. Because genuine signed pieces are so few and their signatures vary, the published sources caution that "which form is correct cannot readily be decided" (いずれが正しいとも俄かに決し難い) and call for further study; yet the unsigned blades are accepted to him precisely on the shared tell, the standing well-*nie* *itame*, the deep *jigane*, and a *ko-midare* that does not gather into neatness but, the commentary says, in "an artless, unaffected unsophistication that instead conveys an ancient fragrance" (わざとらしさのない稚拙さが却って古香を感ぜしめる). It is the same eye that distinguishes him from the more polished Ko-Bizen and reads the unsigned tachi back to his hand.
The designated record under his name is small and almost entirely held. Of the works on the official record three are Tokubetsu Juyo, one is an Important Cultural Property, and a further group reaches Juyo; he has no National Treasure. The Tokuju kodachi of 2006, densely forged and bearing the rare added character *Katsu*, is recorded as resembling the *tachi* transmitted in the Tsuchiya family, lords of the Tsuchiura domain, now in the Tsuchiura City Museum, and its carved waist parallels the Important Cultural Property tachi at the Kishu Toshogu in Wakayama, a key reference for the character of Sanemori's *horimono*. A signed *tachi* recorded in the Juyo Bijutsuhin passed through the Tokugawa family, in the hands of Tokugawa Iesato, and is published in the *Nihonto Taikan* and other reference works; one *o-suriage* blade was "formerly treasured by Baron Ito Miyoji" (もと伊東巳代治伯の愛蔵の一口). A privately held Sanemori is among the rarest things a collector could encounter, the signed work scarcer still; an unsigned tachi of recorded whereabouts comes to light only from time to time, and a landmark when it does.
Aritsuna (有綱) — Mainline · 1181-1182. Jūbun, Jūyō. Aritsuna is one of the Ko-Hoki masters of the late Heian to early Kamakura period, a smith of the old Hoki school that gathered around Yasutsuna. The signature compendia record him as the son of Moritsuna of Hoki, but the published sources set that aside on the evidence of the workmanship and confirm him, together with Yasuie and Sanemori, as belonging to Yasutsuna's line, the record stating plainly that he is confirmed as one of Yasutsuna's group (安綱の一派と確認される); a parallel tradition hands him down as a son of Yasutsuna himself. His signed works are very few, and almost all of them have been shortened in later ages, so the man is most often met not under his own signature but as a den attribution (伝有綱) on a greatly shortened tachi whose make the connoisseur is asked to read back to him.
That reading turns on a low, restrained temper. Over the body the published sources describe a small midare as the basis of the hamon, mixing into it ko-choji, ko-notare and small gunome, the temper kept low and the ko-ashi entering well; toward the monouchi the line tightens into a slender suguha tone. Across the whole run sunagashi and kinsuji appear frequently, the nioi lies deep, and on the unsigned katana from Ishikawa the nioiguchi is recorded sinking in a subdued, shizumi character with ko-nie attaching, the fine sunagashi and kinsuji together imparting an archaic flavor (古調がある). The boshi runs straight and turns back in a small ko-maru. It is a quiet, old manner, far from the showy choji of the later Bizen, and the low temper and the sunken habuchi are exactly what mark the work as old Hoki.
The jigane carries the same antiquity. The forging is an itame that stands slightly toward hada-dachi, mixed with a nagare tendency, fine ji-nie adhering to it and fine chikei entering. On the greatly shortened katana from Tokyo the published sources note the grain standing and the chikei fine and frequent, and it is this standing, nie-laden ji, rather than any one figure in the temper, that fixes the attribution. The koshizori tachi sugata survives the shortening: the build is shinogi-zukuri with an iori-mune, and though o-suriage the curvature stays relatively high, funbari remains at the base, and a chu-kissaki closes the point, the old high-waisted profile of a late Heian tachi still legible in a blade cut down for later wear.
He is met in two registers of this one early manner. The rarer is the signed tachi, where the bare two-character mei survives cut on the ha-ura: there the temper is a suguha-cho carrying ko-ashi and yo, with ko-nie adhering well, and in the notare portions choji and gunome enter and rise upward from around the middle of the omote, the bo-hi carved through both faces with a kaku-dome, while the boshi of this one blade is itself a suguha, restored. The more numerous is the o-suriage, unsigned katana handed down as Aritsuna of Hoki, and it is here that the kantei properly lives, the attribution resting on the workmanship rather than on any surviving signature. Of one such blade the published sources write that the traditional attribution to Aritsuna can be accepted, 「有綱の所伝は首肯し得る」, the ji and ha together judged good and old in tone.
His standing reaches well beyond Hoki. On the Tokyo katana the published sources draw the line forward to Sagami, recording that smiths such as Masamune and Norishige took just this manner of work as their ideal and on that basis established the Soshu tradition, 「相州正宗、則重等はこうした作風を理想として相州伝を創始している」. The old Hoki hand, the standing nie-laden itame with its chikei and the small midare swept with sunagashi and kinsuji, is thus named among the acknowledged sources of the later nie-based Soshu style. He is set apart from the Bizen schools of his own age less by any borrowed comparison than by his own grounded features, the quiet ko-midare, the standing ji and the subdued nioiguchi that together carry the archaic air.
For the collector, Aritsuna is among the rarest names a Hoki student could hope to encounter. The reference texts place him in the Toko Taikan but record no Fujishiro grade, and there is no National Treasure or Tokubetsu Juyo among the work on record. His two Important Cultural Properties are held as patrimony, a signed tachi preserved at Oyamazumi Jinja on the inland sea, long the great repository of early sword dedications, and a second tachi in the Tokyo Fuji Museum. Beyond these the official record runs to a small handful of Juyo blades, three in all, the o-suriage mumei den works in which his hand is read, with no provenance to daimyo houses recorded among them. A privately held Aritsuna is therefore a thing seen only rarely, and a signed one rarer still; when one does come before a collector it is a landmark, one of the few honest ways to hold the old Hoki manner from which the Soshu tradition drew its ideal.
Kunimune (國宗) — Mainline · 1150-1220. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Kunimune of Hōki is one of the standing puzzles of the old Hōki school, a smith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period whose work is bound up at every turn with the problem of telling him from his far more famous namesake. The published sources are candid about how little is settled. No fixed account of him survives, and no blade among the few that remain records Hōki as his place of residence, so that he is known almost entirely from the workmanship and the cut of his signature. One tradition passes him down as a pupil of the Bizen smith Saburō Kunimune who later moved to Hōki, but the published commentary on his extant signed tachi finds this hard to sustain: examined together, the surviving blades show none of Saburō's manner, run more archaic in tone, and may even precede him, so that the NBTHK reads him not as a Bizen offshoot but as a smith who, in their words, 'inherited the line of the Yasutsuna group' (安綱一派の流れを汲む). He stands, in other words, beside Sadatsuna and the other early Hōki hands rather than among the Bizen chōji-makers, and the constant refrain of his designation entries is that his work is 'distinct from Bizen Saburō Kunimune' (備前三郎国宗とは異なり).
What the judges actually name as his hand is a nie-laden, archaic temper rather than the bright chōji of Bizen. Over the body of his signed and shortened tachi he tempers a suguha-based *ko-midare*, broken with *gunome* and a shallow *notare* tone, the *ashi* entering well and the *nie* gathering thickly within the edge, and through it run insistent *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, with the *nioiguchi* clouding to *urumi* in places. This nie-rich, restless edge is the tell the published sources lean on to separate him from the calmer, nioi-built chōji of the Bizen Kunimune. The *bōshi* answers the *hamon*: a *midare-komi* or straight sweep that brushes into *hakikake* and finishes in a *yakizume* tone, rich in *nie* at the point.
The *jigane* is the other half of the picture, and it is the more rustic for being old Hōki. The forging is *itame* with the grain standing, at times flowing, *ji-nie* well applied and patches of *jifu* intermingled, the steel inclining to a dark, iron-like color. It is the kind of *jigane* the published sources warn can be mistaken for contemporaneous old Bizen, told apart by its standing grain, its darkish tone and the soft, clouded edge over it. On the finer pieces, where the forging tightens, a faint *midare-utsuri* rises, and on one shortened katana the close *ko-itame* with a *masa* tendency takes on a whitish reflection instead. Throughout, the manner is read as archaic and 'of high antiquarian fragrance' (古香の高い), no later than the early Kamakura.
His small record divides into two registers. The mainstream face, carried on most of the signed and *suriage* tachi, is the rustic Hōki manner just described: standing *itame*, darkish steel, a clouded suguha-based *ko-midare* full of *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*. The second face is a small group of finer signed tachi, two of them at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank, where the forging packs into a dense *ko-itame* with *chikei*, the temper brightens into *ko-chōji*, and the upper half of the edge breaks into a banded double- and triple-temper, a *nijūba* and *sanjūba* effect. This banding is the feature the published sources single out as 'reminiscent of Sadatsuna of the same lineage' (同派の貞綱をおもわせる), and it is the clearest internal link tying Hōki Kunimune into the Yasutsuna group. Across both registers he cuts a bold, archaic two-character signature near the tip of the tang with a thick chisel; the judges find its strokes 'rounder than the Bizen Kunimune's, with a somewhat different movement of the chisel' (銘が備前の国宗より丸味があり), and note that he never signs the fuller Hōki no Kuni Kunimune.
What sets him apart, then, is precisely what the comparison with Bizen brings out. His extant signed tachi 'show no manner of Saburō Kunimune and are more archaic', and so are referred back to the Hōki line; his nie-rich edge, his *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and the *nijūba* and *sanjūba* of his best pieces are the affirmative evidence, not a borrowed Bizen flamboyance. The published sources fold his work into the body of Hōki blades they describe as sharing 'a manner common to old Hōki work' (古伯耆物に共通する作風), and date the school's reach in his case as late as the Einin era. He is, in short, a quiet, archaic Hōki hand carrying the Yasutsuna inheritance forward, valued as much for what he documents about that line as for any single brilliant trait.
For the collector he is a rare early name with a thin but real record. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his standing rests instead on the designated tiers, where five of his blades fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks, two of them at the higher level. One shortened katana bears a gold-inlaid Hakushū Kunimune signature, and one prewar tachi was certified an Important Art Object and recorded in the *Nihontō Taikan*. Provenance, where it is recorded at all, runs through old houses rather than museums: a blade transmitted in the Yamana and Ikeda families, and well-known examples the published sources name as once held at 'Kunōzan Tōshōgū' (久能山東照宮) and in the Ii family. Surviving works are few, and the commentary calls them precious as documentary material for so rare a smith. A signed Hōki Kunimune is not a blade that comes to market often; when one of recorded whereabouts does change hands it is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Yasutsuna line ran on into the Kamakura period.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sadatsuna worked in Hōki province in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, one of the small group of smiths the published sources gather around Yasutsuna and call Ko-Hōki. The same commentary that names that circle, listing Yasutsuna with Sanemori, traditionally his son, and the related smiths Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage, also records, on the authority of the Meikan, that Sadatsuna himself was a son of Ōhara Sanemori. What it does not give him is quantity. Signed work by his hand is, in the recurring phrase of the designation papers, exceedingly few, so that his record reaches us in two distinct registers: a body of unsigned blades judged to be his in the mainstream Ko-Hōki manner, and a handful of signed tachi the judges hold apart as something finer.
The larger register, the one the unsigned attributions carry, is the rustic Ko-Hōki hand the published sources describe whenever they place a blade with this group. The forging is itame in a large pattern, frequently mixed with ō-itame and mokume, the grain standing open; thick *ji-nie* gathers in it, *chikei* enter, *jifu* and a faint patchy *utsuri* drift across the steel, and the *kane* itself takes a dark, iron-grey cast. Over that *jigane* the temper rests on a *suguha* base broken into *ko-midare* and small *ko-gunome*, with *ashi* and *yō* entering, the *nie* thick and locally strong, the *habuchi* frayed into *hotsure*, and bright *kinsuji*, *nie-suji* and *sunagashi* running insistently through the edge. The defining quality is not the pattern but its mood: the *nioiguchi* is clouded and sunken, *urumi* and *shizumi-gokoro*, never the clear bright line of Bizen. Several blades drop their temper above the *machi* in a *yaki-otoshi*, and the *bōshi* runs straight to a small *ko-maru* or sweeps with *hakikake*.
The *jigane* and the clouded edge together are the tell, and the judges return to them precisely because the work is so easily confused with something else. Their manner, the published sources note, tempers a small irregular line that resembles the contemporary Ko-Bizen of the same years, a temper they describe with the phrase "resembling the small-midare style of the Ko-Bizen works" (古備前物に類似した小乱れ調). Looked at closely, the resemblance breaks: where the Ko-Bizen steel is bright and tight, Sadatsuna's stands open and dark, his *itame* large-patterned and conspicuous, his edge soft and subdued with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* working through it. From this the group is read as something rougher and more provincial, what the commentary calls a more rustic, untrammeled character. His own bright *jifu-utsuri* and the dark, standing *jigane* set him apart, not by any single signature flourish but by the whole temper of the steel.
The second register is the small set of signed tachi the judges single out, and it inverts the picture. Here the forging tightens, the *itame* packing closer with its *mokume*, and instead of a faint patchy reflection a vivid *midare-utsuri* or *jifu-utsuri* stands clearly in the *ji*. The temper brightens and leans toward Bizen, a *suguha*-toned line opening into *ko-chōji*, small *chōji* and *ko-midare* with *ko-gunome*, *ashi* and *yō* entering frequently, slight *tobiyaki* and *shimaba* in the upper half, and the *nioiguchi* turning tight and clear rather than clouded. Of the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi the judges write that it shows "a refined manner exceptional not only for Sadatsuna himself but within the whole group" (同工のみならず同派の中でも異例の垢抜けた作風を示しており); of another, that it is "an outstanding piece not only among Sadatsuna's works but within the school" (貞綱のみならず同派の出色の一口である). These are the same hand caught at its most controlled, and they are what make the unsigned attributions legible, the bright, varied edge and the somewhat wide, powerful shape recurring on signed and mumei work alike.
What ties the registers together, and what has unsettled his place in the schools, is the tang. On blade after blade the *yasurime* are *ō-sujikai*, the steeply slanted file marks, and the two-character signature is cut bold and archaic with a thick chisel. Those file marks, the published sources observe, are not found on Yasutsuna or Sanemori but do appear on Aritsuna of the same line, so they read as a thread binding Sadatsuna into the lineage. The same feature is a characteristic of the Aoe school, and on its strength the commentary records a standing view that he should be placed with Aoe; one early Jūyō paper, judging from the *sugata*, the fine *jigane* and the florid temper, wondered whether the blade might belong to the Ko-Aoe group and left the question to later research. The settled judgment weighs that possibility but does not accept it, concluding that, taking the workmanship and the signature characters together, "it is appropriate to regard the work as Ko-Hōki" (古伯耆物と捉えるのが妥当であろう).
For a collector Sadatsuna is, before anything else, a rare early name. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs entirely through the modern designations, two tachi at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and seventeen blades at Jūyō, nineteen in those two tiers in all. Of the signed tachi the published commentary calls one "an outstanding piece among the same maker's works, transmitted in the Tokugawa shogunal house" (同作中傑出の一口であり、徳川将軍家伝来である), and a long unsigned tachi bears a later dedicatory inscription to the Konpira shrine in Sanuki; of one of the finest mumei katana the judges write that it shows "a particularly outstanding level of workmanship even among attributions to Sadatsuna" (貞綱極めの中でも特に傑出した出来映えをあらわしている). The Tōkō Taikan values him at a high level among recorded smiths. Almost nothing of his trades: the designated blades are held in shrines, museums and long-private collections, and because signed examples are so few, a signed Ko-Hōki Sadatsuna comes to light only seldom and a privately held one is a rare thing to encounter, a document of how the Hōki tradition forged its dark, rustic steel at the very dawn of the Japanese sword.
Sanekage (眞景) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Sanekage (真景) belongs to the Ko-Hoki group of swordsmiths centered in Hoki Province, a lineage that traces its origins to the celebrated Yasutsuna. According to traditional accounts, Sanekage studied under Ohara Sanemori, a smith said to have been Yasutsuna's son, and is placed around the *Genryaku* era (1184--1185), though some scholarship has advanced the view that his activity may date somewhat earlier. Together with related smiths such as Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie, and Masakage, these craftsmen are collectively referred to as Ko-Hoki, a group that flourished from the latter part of the Heian period into the early Kamakura period. Extant works bearing Sanekage's signature are extremely rare, making each surviving blade of considerable documentary importance.
In broad terms, the Ko-Hoki style features a predominantly small *midare* temper that superficially resembles contemporaneous Ko-Bizen work; however, upon closer inspection, the forging reveals a large-pattern *itame-hada* with standing grain, mixed with *chikei* and mottled effects in the *ji* that lend a distinctly darker tone. The tempered edge tends toward a somewhat blurred, moist-looking *nioiguchi* with a conspicuously textured *habuchi*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* frequently provide the decisive highlights. The *nie* is strong throughout, producing a dense, rich surface character. Small *gunome* and small *notare* stand out within the pattern, and *yakiootoshi* at the base of the temper line is also encountered -- features that distinguish Ko-Hoki work from Ko-Bizen and impart a stronger rustic, provincial character.
Within this group, Sanekage's surviving work displays a particularly archaic quality. His *ji* and *ha*, when compared even with Yasutsuna, appear rather more old-fashioned and rustic, accepted by scholars as provincial work clearly differing from traditions such as Ko-Bizen. This pronounced archaism, combined with the exceptional rarity of signed examples, renders Sanekage an important figure for understanding the earliest phase of organized swordsmithing in the San'in region of Japan.
Sukenaga (助長) — Mainline · 1175-1199. Tokujū. Smith of the Hōki School.
Other smiths
Yasuie (安家) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Narichika (成近) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sadanawa (貞繩) — Mainline · 985-987. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tomoyasu (友安) — Mainline · 1184-1220. Smith of the Hōki School.
Amahara (天原) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arikuni (有國) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arimune (有宗) — Mainline · 1104-1106. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1166-1169. Smith of the Hōki School.
Chikanori (近範) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Hōki School.
Haranamu (原南) — Mainline · 1159-1160. Smith of the Hōki School.
Iemochi (家持) — Mainline · 990-995. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ienaga (家長) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ietoki (家時) — Mainline · 999-1004. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsumasa (光正) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsunobu (光信) — Mainline · 990-995. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsunobu (光信) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Hōki School.
Munetaka (宗隆) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Hōki School.
Nikko (日光) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Nissho (日照) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noritsune (則恒) — Mainline · 1229-1232. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sadahira (貞平) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sanemitsu (眞光) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sanemori (眞守) — Mainline · 1175-1199. Ohara Sanemori (大原真守) of Hoki Province is traditionally transmitted as a son of Yasutsuna, the founding figure of the Ko-Hoki school. Together with related smiths--Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie, and Sanekage--this group flourished from the late Heian period into the early Kamakura period. Sanemori's signed works employ a comparatively long inscription, characteristically a six-character *mei* cut with a thick chisel, of which the variant closely resembling the tachi preserved at Wakayama Toshogu (Important Cultural Property) is the most frequently cited. Extant signed works are "exceedingly rare," and the several signature variants make definitive authentication a continuing subject of study.
The NBTHK consistently distinguishes Ko-Hoki from contemporaneous Ko-Bizen, noting that while both schools temper predominantly small-pattern *midare*, "upon closer examination their character differs somewhat." Sanemori's *kitae* is *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume*, with the grain tending to stand; fine *ji-nie* adheres, *chikei* enters, and *jifu*-like textures are intermingled with *jifu-utsuri* standing out. A defining feature is that "the steel often takes on a blackish tone." His *hamon* is based on *suguha* mixed with *ko-midare*, *ko-choji*, and *ko-gunome*--"overall a fine-patterned irregularity"--with *ko-ashi* and *yo* entering well. The *nioiguchi* tends toward *urumi* (a moist, soft quality) and at times shows *shizumi* (subdued character), while *kinsuji*, *nie-suji*, and *sunagashi* appear with frequency. The *boshi* is typically *sugu* to *ko-maru*, and carved works--placed characteristically at the *koshi-moto*--include *bonji*, *suken*, and *koshi-bi*, providing "valuable material for understanding the distinctive nature of Sanemori's carvings." Within the Ko-Hoki group, Sanemori's tempering is noted for presenting "somewhat smaller-scale patterns of irregularity" compared to Yasutsuna.
The setsumei repeatedly invoke an atmosphere of "archaic, artless dignity" and "rustic, provincial flavor" when describing these works, a quality that "in one vein recalls Awataguchi Kuniyasu and Ayanokoji Sadatoshi." The classical *sugata*--slender, with *funbari*, high *koshizori*, and *ko-kissaki*--is described as appearing "more frequently in this smith's work" than in his father's. Multiple blades bear the addendum character "Katsu" (勝) on the *ura* of the *nakago*, a feature of unknown meaning that is "valuable as documentary material," also recorded in the *Tsuchiya Oshigata*.
Sanenori (眞則) — Mainline · 1156-1159. Smith of the Hōki School.
Shigenaga (重永) — Mainline · 1166-1169. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tamemori (爲守) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tamesuke (爲助) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tameyoshi (爲吉) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yasumitsu (安光) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yasunori (安則) — Mainline · 1177-1181. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yoshimori (吉守) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Phase 2 · Sue-Hoki (末伯耆) · 1334 – 1600
Where Ko-Hoki belongs to the dawn of the curved blade under Yasutsuna and the Ohara circle, Sue-Hoki names the province's late continuation, the smiths of Hoki who worked through the closing phase of the Muromachi period rather than its founding age. The setsumei gather this later body around a few documented lines. Chief among them is the *Hiroyoshi* (広賀) name, also read Hiroga and Hiroka, which the records first place around the Bunmei era (1469 to 1487) and carry on into the *shinto* period across several generations. That line is transmitted as descending from Tsunahiro of Sagami: the first Hiroyoshi is said to have gone down to Soshu Kamakura during the Tenbun era and, his study completed, returned home, after which the name divided into two houses, the Mita and the Doso. To these the commentary adds Yukikage of the Inaba *ko-kaji* (dated Choroku 2/1458) and Morihiro of the Sainoo group at Kurayoshi, placed around the Tensho era. The published sources rank Hiroga, with Wakasa Fuyuhiro, among the representative makers of the San'in region in this period.
The setsumei describe a style that has moved away from the dark, open, archaic register of the Ohara masters toward the shared idiom of late-Muromachi production. The construction is the *uchigatana* of the age: *shinogi-zukuri* with *sakizori* and an extended *chu-kissaki*, the *jigane* a tightly forged *ko-itame* with *ji-nie* rather than the large, conspicuously standing *itame* of Yasutsuna. The records read the *hamon* as belonging to two manners. One is the late-Soshu approach, with large *gunome-midare*, *tobiyaki* developing into *hitatsura*, and thickly gathered *nie*; the other follows late Bizen. A *suguha* base mixed with *gunome* and *choji* recurs across the Hiroyoshi blades, and one tanto's *explanation* notes that the school specialized in *gunome* and *hitatsura*, so that a *suguha* work stood as a rarity. The setsumei place this output close in feeling to *Sue-Bizen* Kiyomitsu, Wakasa Fuyuhiro, and Bungo Munekage, situating Sue-Hoki within a standardized San'in current rather than the singular provincial vigor of the older phase.
For *kantei* the commentary fixes the distinction differently than it does for Ko-Hoki. Where the ancient phase is held apart from old Bizen by its dark, open steel, the later Hoki blades are read against their late-Muromachi neighbors and against finer work: the Morihiro *katana* is described as approaching the impression of an old *niji Kunitoshi* and as a piece that might be mistaken for a superior (*joko*) smith's hand. The signing habits anchor identity, the long *mei* giving residence and the Mita or Doso house, with dated examples from Tenbun through Eiroku and into the Tensho era. Provenance is recorded at the modest scale of the working blade: one Eiroku 8 *katana* was made for a patron of Banshu Hiroto and long dedicated to Hiroto Shrine, the roughened *nakago* attributed to its years in that keeping.
Hiroyoshi (廣賀) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Jūyō. Hiroyoshi of Hoki Province, who signed himself Mita Gorozaemon no Jo, worked at Tsuwara through the Tenbun and Eiroku eras of the late Muromachi period, and the dated tanto of Tenbun 2 (1533), cut on the mune with an age inscription reading that it was made at sixty-one years, is regarded as the earliest dated work of his hand. The name Hiroyoshi, read Hiroga, first appears in Hoki around the Bunmei era and runs over several generations of the same signature down into the shinto period, the line dividing into a Doso-o house that forged at the Kajimachi district of Kurayoshi and the Mita house of this smith, who resided at Tsuwara and later worked between Tsuwara and Kurayoshi. The published sources transmit him as a pupil of the Sagami smith Tsunahiro, 「相州綱広の門人と伝え」, so that what reaches this corner of the San'in coast with him is the late Soshu manner of the age, carried into a province better known for Mount Daisen than for its forges. Among the several smiths who signed Hoshu Hiroga, the published sources judge those signing Mita Gorozaemon no Jo to be the most skillful, 「見田五郎左衛門尉と銘するものが特に上手である」, and they place him with Wakasa Fuyuhiro as a representative maker of the San'in region in the late Muromachi period.
The feature that most distinguishes his work is that it is two hands rather than one, a duality the published sources state outright. His blades, they write, divide into those of a Soshu-influenced character and those showing a Bizen-like style, 「相州風のものと、備前風のものと」, and certain pieces incorporate aspects of both the late Soshu and late Bizen lineages, 「末相州と末備前両派のおもむきが加味されたもの」. The Soshu side is the fuller register, a large gunome-midare, at times a koshi-hiraki gunome or an o-notare base showing a compound, double-structured feeling. Choji-ashi and yo enter thickly, frequent tobiyaki builds into hitatsura, and the temper is well filled with nie, threaded with sunagashi and a little kinsuji. The Bizen-toned side is the calmer one, a broad suguha-cho into which gunome are mixed, carrying ashi and yo with ko-nie adhering and sunagashi touched in. The boshi follows the temper beneath it, running midare-komi over the irregular work and turning back deeply, an ichimai-like feeling continuing down the mune into muneyaki, while over the straighter temper it goes straight to a rounded turnback with a long yakisage.
Under both manners lies one jigane, a tightly forged ko-itame with fine ji-nie densely adhering, mixed in places with mokume and crossed by chikei, and on the largest of the katana a faint whitish utsuri rises in the ji. On the Eiroku 8 katana the ji carries intermingled jifu, the patchy steel that gives the late San'in work its particular look, and in the tanto the ko-itame opens conspicuously into nagare-hada on both faces. The published sources draw attention to this ji directly, observing that within his steel there is a rustic flavor and a darkened, bronzy tone, 「かな色に黒味あるものがあってそこがこの派の見どころともなっている」, and they make this character of ji and ha one of the chief attractions of the group rather than a defect of provincial forging. The hamon over it is rich in nie on the Soshu pieces and bright with ashi and yo over the suguha, and on the tanto the suguha base carries a shallow notare with kuichigai-ba about the waist, the hardened width broadening above the monouchi with a suggestion of yubashiri.
The sugata is as legible as the temper. His katana are shinogi-zukuri with sakizori and an extended chu-kissaki, one a high-shinogi blade with deep sori, another koshizori with funbari at the base, the form the published sources call a quintessential Muromachi uchigatana. The tanto is hira-zukuri, wide of mihaba and thick of kasane with a receding fukura, the yoroi-doshi shape made for piercing armor, and it carries a koshi-hi on the omote and gomabashi on the ura. Every recorded blade is ubu and every one is long-signed toward the mune, most often the full Mita Gorozaemon no Jo Hiroga title with an Eiroku or Tenbun date, and at times a patron's name or, on the Tenbun tanto, an age inscription, so that his record is unusually precise in its dating. Those dated works span from Tenbun 5 (1536) through Genki 3 (1572), and the present blades carry Tenbun 2, Eiroku 1, Eiroku 4 and Eiroku 8 dates, fixing his activity firmly across the middle and third quarter of the sixteenth century.
Within the broader Hiroga name his place is that of the prized Mita branch, the hand the published commentary singles out for skill while the Doso-o house and the later same-name generations stand around it. The comparisons the sources draw are to his contemporaries rather than to his teacher. His Eiroku katana is judged in no way inferior to the works of the contemporaneous Sue-Bizen group, 「末備前派の作などに比して遜色がな」い, and his style is set close to Bizen Kiyomitsu, Wakasa Fuyuhiro and Bungo Munekage, the working smiths of the same decade across the San'in and Sanyo provinces. What sets his own blades apart within that company is grounded in their own description, the tobiyaki passing into hitatsura on the Soshu side and the broad gunome over a darkened, jifu-flecked ji on the Bizen-toned side, not in any borrowed resemblance. The Soshu manner he descends from Tsunahiro he carries as a provincial idiom, harder and more rustic than the metropolitan Sagami work, and it is that rustic note, named in the sources, that identifies the group.
The connoisseurship around Hiroyoshi is that of a skilled provincial master rather than a celebrated name. The reference texts place him at Jo-saku in Fujishiro's ranking and at four hundred points in the Toko Taikan, the assessment of a competent and collectible smith well below the first rank of the age. He holds no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties, and his designated record stands at five blades, all at the Juyo level, none yet risen to Tokubetsu Juyo. Provenance, where it survives, is real and worth naming. A naginata of his came down from Ukita Hideie into the Maeda family, the Eiroku 8 katana was long dedicated to Hiroto Shrine in Banshu, for which it was made to a patron's order, and a Mita Gorozaemon tanto is recorded in the Imperial collection. The remaining holders on record are private. For a collector this places him within reach in a way the great Soshu and Bizen names are not. A signed, ubu Hiroga katana of the wide Soshu midare with its tobiyaki and hitatsura, or one of the broad suguha-cho of the calmer manner, is the kind of dated, legible late-Muromachi work that comes to market from time to time and rewards a patient eye, a sound blade by the most skilled hand of the Hoki Hiroga line.
Arikane (有包) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arimasa (有正) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Hōki School.
Morihiro (守廣) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Jūyō. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Hōki School.
Live·Hōki lineage
伯耆
The Hōki School
The school of the Dōjigiri. In late Heian Hōki, Yasutsuna and his line — Sanemori, Sadatsuna, Aritsuna — forged some of the earliest fully realized Japanese swords: a blackish, ancient-flavoured steel alive with kinsuji and sunagashi that Masamune and Norishige would later take as the ideal behind the Sōshū tradition. The Ko-Hōki masters carry the school’s designations; the later Sue-Hōki phase is a quiet provincial afterword to one of the founding chapters of the Japanese sword.
Era
966 — 1600
Members
47
Kokuhō
2
Jūbun
8
Jūbi
11
Tokujū
11
Jūyō
63
For Sale
2
Phase 01
古伯耆Ko-Hoki966 – 1334
42smiths2Kokuhō8Jūbun11Jūbi11Tokujū57Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Phase 02
末伯耆Sue-Hoki1334 – 1600
5smiths0Kokuhō0Jūbun0Jūbi0Tokujū6Jūyō
The Hōki School (伯耆) Lineage
The The Hōki School (伯耆), active 966–1600 in Hōki Province across 47 documented smiths: 2 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 8 Jūbun, 11 Jūbi, 11 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 63 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ko-Hoki (古伯耆) · 966 – 1334
Ko-Hoki occupies the deepest stratum of the school, the chapter in which the Hoki name first enters the record at all. The published commentary places *Yasutsuna* roughly contemporary with Sanjo Munechika in the late Heian period, correcting the older reference-book dating that pushed him back to the Daido era (806 to 810), and the gap between that legend and the inferred reality is itself a measure of how far back this phase reaches. Gathered around Yasutsuna is the *Ohara* group: Masamori (read also as Sanemori), transmitted as his son, with Aritsuna, *Sadatsuna*, Yasuie and *Masakage* (Sanekage) named beside him, a circle the setsumei describes as flourishing from the late Heian into the early Kamakura period. Hoki *Kunimune* extends the manner toward the Kamakura age, his work judged to stand apart from Bizen Saburo Kunimune and possibly to predate him. Signed survivals at this antiquity are thin, more frequent under Yasutsuna than any other hand, and the meibutsu Dojigiri Yasutsuna fixes the period's highest reference.
The style of this phase is read first in the steel. The setsumei return blade after blade to *itame* with standing grain, mixed with *o-itame* and *mokume* in large pattern, thick *ji-nie*, entering *chikei* and patchy *jifu* that rises into *jifu-utsuri* or *midare-utsuri* across a ground of darkish, blackish (*kanai-iro*) tone. The temper rests on a *suguha* base broken into *ko-midare*, with *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome* and shallow *ko-notare* mingled small in scale, the *nie* lying thick and the *nioiguchi* tending to *urumi* or *shizumi*; *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run insistently, and many blades drop the edge above the *machi* in *yakiotoshi*. The *sugata* keeps an archaic koshizori *tachi* form with *funbari* and a small *kissaki*, the *boshi* running straight to *ko-maru* or *yakizume*. Against the later Sue-Hoki the contrast is one of vigor and individuality: where the late phase settles this rustic register into something tamer and more regular, Ko-Hoki stands open, dark and forceful, each hand still distinct, Yasutsuna's *midare* running larger while Sadatsuna's finest signed work brightens unusually toward Bizen.
For *kantei* the recurring task is to separate Hoki from Ko-Bizen, whose contemporaneous *ko-midare* it superficially resembles. The setsumei draw the line on close view: Ko-Bizen steel is bright and tight, while the Hoki *ji* stands open and dark with conspicuous large *itame*, a clouded *nioiguchi*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* working through a softer provincial edge that carries an ancient fragrance (*koko*). A thread of Yamato spirit is read in certain pieces, such as the unsigned Yasutsuna long held in the Maeda house, and Sadatsuna's *o-sujikai* *yasurime* point toward Aoe even as judgment keeps him in Ko-Hoki. Yasutsuna and Masamori head the phase, and the signature habit of cutting *tsuna* (綱) larger than *yasu* (安) and shifted to the right is a noted diagnostic. The Dojigiri stands above the named works, with the Imperial Yasunori tachi and Sadatsuna and Kunimune blades transmitted through the Tokugawa, the Satake of Dewa, and the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira, the provenance running through the houses that held the country.
Yasutsuna (安綱) — Mainline · 987-1150. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Nearly every entry the NBTHK has published on Yasutsuna of Hoki returns to the same anchor: the existence of the Meibutsu Dojigiri Yasutsuna, the sources write, "has further elevated his renown," and within his oeuvre that sword remains the most celebrated of his name. Yasutsuna is the representative smith of Ko-Hoki, the old school of Hoki province, and he stands in the oldest stratum of the curved Japanese sword. The sword registries transmit an active period around the Daido era (806 to 810), but the published record consistently lowers the dating: judging from the surviving work, he reads as a smith of the late Heian period, roughly contemporary with Sanjo Munechika, and one earlier designation places him around the Eien era (987 to 989). A Juyo entry of 1962 fixes his historical position exactly, calling his age the time when the sword was passing from the straight chokuto to the curved tachi, and when that new form had, for the time being, settled into a standard shape. Other entries call him "a renowned master from the earliest phase of true curved swords" and a celebrated master representing the very beginnings of the Japanese sword. Among the Ko-Hoki smiths his signed works survive in comparatively large numbers, so that, almost alone at this depth of antiquity, his hand can be studied from the inscription as well as from the steel.
His tachi keep the classical silhouette of the Heian period. The blade is typically slender, the koshizori high with pronounced funbari, and the width narrows toward a small kissaki. The sources single out one point of the form again and again: compared with Ko-Bizen work, the tendency of his blades to incline downward toward the tip is not especially conspicuous, and this restraint of the upper curve is named a distinctive trait of his shaping. A few works run larger, and the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of the Satake line is noted as being of bigger, more robust construction than what is commonly encountered from him.
The jigane carries the deepest part of his identity. He forges itame mixed with o-itame and mokume, and the hada stands out. Thick ji-nie covers it, chikei and jifu enter, and the steel itself shows a darkish color (黒み) out of which a jifu-utsuri rises. Over that dark steel he tempers a nie-laden ko-midare on a base of shallow suguha and notare. Within it ko-gunome, ko-choji and ko-notare mingle conspicuously, kinsuji and sunagashi weave through the ha, and on many blades the temper is dropped above the machi in yakiotoshi (焼落し). It is this combination that the published sources contrast with old Bizen, writing that his workmanship "differs somewhat in feeling from groups such as Ko-Bizen." The boshi runs sugu to a small ko-maru or to yakizume, often swept with hakikake. Within the school the published record also isolates a personal tell: in the upper half of the hamon the ko-gunome and ko-notare mix in a somewhat independent form, a point one Juyo entry names as the place where Yasutsuna is distinguished even among Ko-Hoki.
The signature is its own field of study. He cut a large two-character mei on the haki-omote toward the mune, and the habit of his chisel is recorded in entry after entry: the character Tsuna is larger than the character Yasu and is set slightly to the right, his signing habit (手癖), one seen in other Ko-Hoki works as well. The benchmark is the Dojigiri itself; of one Juyo tachi the sources state that the manner of the signature is "exactly like that of the Dojigiri Yasutsuna," and a Juyo Bijutsuhin entry judges another mei similar to the Dojigiri. Tachi surviving with the nakago unaltered are extremely few, and an ubu signed Yasutsuna is counted exceedingly precious in the published record. Beside the prime manner the NBTHK documents a quieter register. One signed tachi, in which the ko-gunome and ko-notare recede, is read as an appearance rather close to Ko-Bizen work and expressly called one style register of the smith; another, in a more subdued hoso-suguha dressing, is still betrayed by the abundant vertical workings along the habuchi. The unsigned remainder, o-suriage blades, are accepted on the archaic elegance (古雅) of their ji and ha: one carries the origami of Hon'ami Koon dated Kanbun 4 (1664), another the origami of Hon'ami Koyu dated Kanpo 3 (1743), and the mumei katana handed down in the Maeda house, carrying a thread of Yamato spirit (一脈大和ごころ), has its tradition affirmed.
His manner is, in effect, the definition of Ko-Hoki. The school is read through him: the standing dark jigane, the jifu-utsuri and the nie-charged small midare with its yakiotoshi form the axis along which the published sources set Hoki apart from old Bizen, and unsigned blades of sufficient age and flavor gather to his name as den Yasutsuna. Even the signing habit extends beyond him, since the rightward-set Tsuna recurs elsewhere in the school. The published record treats him as a single late Heian master, with no division into generations, and so presents him plainly as the first fully formed personality of the curved sword, working at the moment the tachi itself was being settled.
Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku. Thirty-five designated works stand on record. Two are National Treasures and five are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony preserved beyond any market, and six more were certified Juyo Bijutsuhin between 1933 and 1941, then in the hands of the Satake, Sakai, Matsudaira and Ikeda houses, of the shrine Tsuboi Hachimangu, and of the Maeda; the Ikeda blade had been shortened in the Bakumatsu period by Osafune Sukehira, probably for the wear of the daimyo himself. Thirteen of his blades carry recorded provenance, and the roll runs through the men and houses that held the country: Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Hidetada, the Echizen Matsudaira line, the Shimazu, the Imperial Family, and the Satake of Kubota in Dewa, who handed down two of his signed tachi. Of recorded whereabouts today, his blades rest with the Tokyo National Museum, the Sano Art Museum and Ogamiyama Jinja, and one has crossed the sea to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. For the private collector the realistic horizon is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, twenty-one blades in all, most of them long held; a Yasutsuna of any kind comes to the market only rarely, and a signed example, let alone an ubu one, is among the rarest encounters the field can offer.
Ohara (大原) — Mainline · 987-1596. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Among the oldest curved swords on record, those signed in the six characters *Hoki Ohara Sanemori* form a small and precious group: of all the smiths gathered under his name in the catalogue, the published sources say plainly that "a signed work by Sanemori, traditionally transmitted as a son of Yasutsuna, is rare" (安綱の子と伝える大原真守の作で有銘作は珍しい). He worked at Ohara in Hoki at the close of the Heian period, and he is the second master of Ko-Hoki (古伯耆), standing beside his father Yasutsuna in the founding stratum of the Japanese tachi. Beginning with Yasutsuna, the published commentary records, Sanemori together with Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage make up the line collectively called Ko-Hoki, which flourished from the late Heian into the early Kamakura period. His blades reach us in two registers: the signed *tachi* and *kodachi* cut in their large six-character mei, and the mostly *o-suriage* unsigned blades that the shinsa returns to him as *den* Ohara Sanemori.
His hand is best read first as an archaic form that looks, at a glance, like Ko-Bizen. The *tachi* is slender, the curvature high and seated at the waist with *funbari*, the *shinogi-haba* narrow against the blade width and the *hiraniku* full, the whole tapering to a small *kissaki*, what the published sources call a slender, small-pointed silhouette "more frequently seen in this smith's work than in his father Yasutsuna's" (細身小鋒の体配は父の安綱に比してこの工に多く見るところ). Over this the temper is a *suguha* base undulating shallowly, with *ko-midare* leading and *ko-choji*, *ko-gunome* and pointed elements mingling so that the whole pattern stays small in scale. Within it the *nie* lies thick, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run frequently, and drifting *yubashiri* with the occasional *tobiyaki* gather along the crests of the temper, the *nioiguchi* often clouded or subdued. His own short threads of *nie-suji* accompany the *kinsuji*, a working written for him and not for his father.
The *jigane* carries the rustic weight of the school. The forging is *itame* mixed with large *o-itame*, *mokume* and a flowing *nagare-hada*, standing open in large pattern; thick *ji-nie* adheres, *chikei* enters, and patchy *jifu* with a *jifu-utsuri* rises over a steel of darkish tone. From these very features the published sources draw the school's defining distinction: that although the manner resembles contemporaneous Ko-Bizen, on close view the standing *itame*, the *chikei* and *jifu*, the clouded *nioiguchi* and frequent *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* "differ somewhat in taste from Ko-Bizen and take on a more rustic flavor" (古備前のそれとはやや趣を異にし、一段と野趣をおびた). The *boshi* runs straight to a small *ko-maru*, often swept in *hakikake*, and on the *tachi* not infrequently tempered out to a *yakizume*; some blades carry *yaki-otoshi* above the *machi*, and *bo-hi* or a *bonji* with *suken* are cut at the waist on the carved pieces.
What sets Sanemori apart within his own school is a matter of scale. Where his father's *midare* runs larger, the published commentary repeatedly marks his as smaller in pattern: in Honma's words, "compared with Yasutsuna, Sanemori's work is generally somewhat more slender, and the smaller-patterned irregularity of its temper is the point to see; though transmitted as Yasutsuna's son, the manner is, if anything, somewhat more archaic" (大原真守の作は安綱に比較して、概してやや細身であり、乱刃が小模様であるのが見処であり、古来安綱の子と伝えているが、むしろやや古調である). The shinsa returns to the same observation on blade after blade, that in the small-patterned irregularity "the points of interest belonging to Ohara Sanemori within the line can be discerned" (一派の中でも大原真守の見どころが窺われる). The signature itself is a register of its own: where the other Ko-Hoki smiths sign in two characters, "Sanemori has comparatively many long signatures, and the manner of inscription is not uniform" (他の古伯耆鍛冶がみな二字銘であるのに対し真守は比較的長銘が多く), the six-character mei cut large with a thick chisel.
His place is fixed by both ends of the lineage. Upstream he is transmitted as the son of Yasutsuna, the head of Ko-Hoki, carrying his father's manner one generation on at the close of the Heian period; downstream he heads, with Yasutsuna, the Ohara group beside Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage, and it is to his name that the *den* attributions of archaic unsigned blades gather. Because genuine signed pieces are so few and their signatures vary, the published sources caution that "which form is correct cannot readily be decided" (いずれが正しいとも俄かに決し難い) and call for further study; yet the unsigned blades are accepted to him precisely on the shared tell, the standing well-*nie* *itame*, the deep *jigane*, and a *ko-midare* that does not gather into neatness but, the commentary says, in "an artless, unaffected unsophistication that instead conveys an ancient fragrance" (わざとらしさのない稚拙さが却って古香を感ぜしめる). It is the same eye that distinguishes him from the more polished Ko-Bizen and reads the unsigned tachi back to his hand.
The designated record under his name is small and almost entirely held. Of the works on the official record three are Tokubetsu Juyo, one is an Important Cultural Property, and a further group reaches Juyo; he has no National Treasure. The Tokuju kodachi of 2006, densely forged and bearing the rare added character *Katsu*, is recorded as resembling the *tachi* transmitted in the Tsuchiya family, lords of the Tsuchiura domain, now in the Tsuchiura City Museum, and its carved waist parallels the Important Cultural Property tachi at the Kishu Toshogu in Wakayama, a key reference for the character of Sanemori's *horimono*. A signed *tachi* recorded in the Juyo Bijutsuhin passed through the Tokugawa family, in the hands of Tokugawa Iesato, and is published in the *Nihonto Taikan* and other reference works; one *o-suriage* blade was "formerly treasured by Baron Ito Miyoji" (もと伊東巳代治伯の愛蔵の一口). A privately held Sanemori is among the rarest things a collector could encounter, the signed work scarcer still; an unsigned tachi of recorded whereabouts comes to light only from time to time, and a landmark when it does.
Aritsuna (有綱) — Mainline · 1181-1182. Jūbun, Jūyō. Aritsuna is one of the Ko-Hoki masters of the late Heian to early Kamakura period, a smith of the old Hoki school that gathered around Yasutsuna. The signature compendia record him as the son of Moritsuna of Hoki, but the published sources set that aside on the evidence of the workmanship and confirm him, together with Yasuie and Sanemori, as belonging to Yasutsuna's line, the record stating plainly that he is confirmed as one of Yasutsuna's group (安綱の一派と確認される); a parallel tradition hands him down as a son of Yasutsuna himself. His signed works are very few, and almost all of them have been shortened in later ages, so the man is most often met not under his own signature but as a den attribution (伝有綱) on a greatly shortened tachi whose make the connoisseur is asked to read back to him.
That reading turns on a low, restrained temper. Over the body the published sources describe a small midare as the basis of the hamon, mixing into it ko-choji, ko-notare and small gunome, the temper kept low and the ko-ashi entering well; toward the monouchi the line tightens into a slender suguha tone. Across the whole run sunagashi and kinsuji appear frequently, the nioi lies deep, and on the unsigned katana from Ishikawa the nioiguchi is recorded sinking in a subdued, shizumi character with ko-nie attaching, the fine sunagashi and kinsuji together imparting an archaic flavor (古調がある). The boshi runs straight and turns back in a small ko-maru. It is a quiet, old manner, far from the showy choji of the later Bizen, and the low temper and the sunken habuchi are exactly what mark the work as old Hoki.
The jigane carries the same antiquity. The forging is an itame that stands slightly toward hada-dachi, mixed with a nagare tendency, fine ji-nie adhering to it and fine chikei entering. On the greatly shortened katana from Tokyo the published sources note the grain standing and the chikei fine and frequent, and it is this standing, nie-laden ji, rather than any one figure in the temper, that fixes the attribution. The koshizori tachi sugata survives the shortening: the build is shinogi-zukuri with an iori-mune, and though o-suriage the curvature stays relatively high, funbari remains at the base, and a chu-kissaki closes the point, the old high-waisted profile of a late Heian tachi still legible in a blade cut down for later wear.
He is met in two registers of this one early manner. The rarer is the signed tachi, where the bare two-character mei survives cut on the ha-ura: there the temper is a suguha-cho carrying ko-ashi and yo, with ko-nie adhering well, and in the notare portions choji and gunome enter and rise upward from around the middle of the omote, the bo-hi carved through both faces with a kaku-dome, while the boshi of this one blade is itself a suguha, restored. The more numerous is the o-suriage, unsigned katana handed down as Aritsuna of Hoki, and it is here that the kantei properly lives, the attribution resting on the workmanship rather than on any surviving signature. Of one such blade the published sources write that the traditional attribution to Aritsuna can be accepted, 「有綱の所伝は首肯し得る」, the ji and ha together judged good and old in tone.
His standing reaches well beyond Hoki. On the Tokyo katana the published sources draw the line forward to Sagami, recording that smiths such as Masamune and Norishige took just this manner of work as their ideal and on that basis established the Soshu tradition, 「相州正宗、則重等はこうした作風を理想として相州伝を創始している」. The old Hoki hand, the standing nie-laden itame with its chikei and the small midare swept with sunagashi and kinsuji, is thus named among the acknowledged sources of the later nie-based Soshu style. He is set apart from the Bizen schools of his own age less by any borrowed comparison than by his own grounded features, the quiet ko-midare, the standing ji and the subdued nioiguchi that together carry the archaic air.
For the collector, Aritsuna is among the rarest names a Hoki student could hope to encounter. The reference texts place him in the Toko Taikan but record no Fujishiro grade, and there is no National Treasure or Tokubetsu Juyo among the work on record. His two Important Cultural Properties are held as patrimony, a signed tachi preserved at Oyamazumi Jinja on the inland sea, long the great repository of early sword dedications, and a second tachi in the Tokyo Fuji Museum. Beyond these the official record runs to a small handful of Juyo blades, three in all, the o-suriage mumei den works in which his hand is read, with no provenance to daimyo houses recorded among them. A privately held Aritsuna is therefore a thing seen only rarely, and a signed one rarer still; when one does come before a collector it is a landmark, one of the few honest ways to hold the old Hoki manner from which the Soshu tradition drew its ideal.
Kunimune (國宗) — Mainline · 1150-1220. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Kunimune of Hōki is one of the standing puzzles of the old Hōki school, a smith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period whose work is bound up at every turn with the problem of telling him from his far more famous namesake. The published sources are candid about how little is settled. No fixed account of him survives, and no blade among the few that remain records Hōki as his place of residence, so that he is known almost entirely from the workmanship and the cut of his signature. One tradition passes him down as a pupil of the Bizen smith Saburō Kunimune who later moved to Hōki, but the published commentary on his extant signed tachi finds this hard to sustain: examined together, the surviving blades show none of Saburō's manner, run more archaic in tone, and may even precede him, so that the NBTHK reads him not as a Bizen offshoot but as a smith who, in their words, 'inherited the line of the Yasutsuna group' (安綱一派の流れを汲む). He stands, in other words, beside Sadatsuna and the other early Hōki hands rather than among the Bizen chōji-makers, and the constant refrain of his designation entries is that his work is 'distinct from Bizen Saburō Kunimune' (備前三郎国宗とは異なり).
What the judges actually name as his hand is a nie-laden, archaic temper rather than the bright chōji of Bizen. Over the body of his signed and shortened tachi he tempers a suguha-based *ko-midare*, broken with *gunome* and a shallow *notare* tone, the *ashi* entering well and the *nie* gathering thickly within the edge, and through it run insistent *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, with the *nioiguchi* clouding to *urumi* in places. This nie-rich, restless edge is the tell the published sources lean on to separate him from the calmer, nioi-built chōji of the Bizen Kunimune. The *bōshi* answers the *hamon*: a *midare-komi* or straight sweep that brushes into *hakikake* and finishes in a *yakizume* tone, rich in *nie* at the point.
The *jigane* is the other half of the picture, and it is the more rustic for being old Hōki. The forging is *itame* with the grain standing, at times flowing, *ji-nie* well applied and patches of *jifu* intermingled, the steel inclining to a dark, iron-like color. It is the kind of *jigane* the published sources warn can be mistaken for contemporaneous old Bizen, told apart by its standing grain, its darkish tone and the soft, clouded edge over it. On the finer pieces, where the forging tightens, a faint *midare-utsuri* rises, and on one shortened katana the close *ko-itame* with a *masa* tendency takes on a whitish reflection instead. Throughout, the manner is read as archaic and 'of high antiquarian fragrance' (古香の高い), no later than the early Kamakura.
His small record divides into two registers. The mainstream face, carried on most of the signed and *suriage* tachi, is the rustic Hōki manner just described: standing *itame*, darkish steel, a clouded suguha-based *ko-midare* full of *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*. The second face is a small group of finer signed tachi, two of them at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank, where the forging packs into a dense *ko-itame* with *chikei*, the temper brightens into *ko-chōji*, and the upper half of the edge breaks into a banded double- and triple-temper, a *nijūba* and *sanjūba* effect. This banding is the feature the published sources single out as 'reminiscent of Sadatsuna of the same lineage' (同派の貞綱をおもわせる), and it is the clearest internal link tying Hōki Kunimune into the Yasutsuna group. Across both registers he cuts a bold, archaic two-character signature near the tip of the tang with a thick chisel; the judges find its strokes 'rounder than the Bizen Kunimune's, with a somewhat different movement of the chisel' (銘が備前の国宗より丸味があり), and note that he never signs the fuller Hōki no Kuni Kunimune.
What sets him apart, then, is precisely what the comparison with Bizen brings out. His extant signed tachi 'show no manner of Saburō Kunimune and are more archaic', and so are referred back to the Hōki line; his nie-rich edge, his *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and the *nijūba* and *sanjūba* of his best pieces are the affirmative evidence, not a borrowed Bizen flamboyance. The published sources fold his work into the body of Hōki blades they describe as sharing 'a manner common to old Hōki work' (古伯耆物に共通する作風), and date the school's reach in his case as late as the Einin era. He is, in short, a quiet, archaic Hōki hand carrying the Yasutsuna inheritance forward, valued as much for what he documents about that line as for any single brilliant trait.
For the collector he is a rare early name with a thin but real record. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his standing rests instead on the designated tiers, where five of his blades fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks, two of them at the higher level. One shortened katana bears a gold-inlaid Hakushū Kunimune signature, and one prewar tachi was certified an Important Art Object and recorded in the *Nihontō Taikan*. Provenance, where it is recorded at all, runs through old houses rather than museums: a blade transmitted in the Yamana and Ikeda families, and well-known examples the published sources name as once held at 'Kunōzan Tōshōgū' (久能山東照宮) and in the Ii family. Surviving works are few, and the commentary calls them precious as documentary material for so rare a smith. A signed Hōki Kunimune is not a blade that comes to market often; when one of recorded whereabouts does change hands it is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Yasutsuna line ran on into the Kamakura period.
Sadatsuna (貞綱) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sadatsuna worked in Hōki province in the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, one of the small group of smiths the published sources gather around Yasutsuna and call Ko-Hōki. The same commentary that names that circle, listing Yasutsuna with Sanemori, traditionally his son, and the related smiths Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie and Sanekage, also records, on the authority of the Meikan, that Sadatsuna himself was a son of Ōhara Sanemori. What it does not give him is quantity. Signed work by his hand is, in the recurring phrase of the designation papers, exceedingly few, so that his record reaches us in two distinct registers: a body of unsigned blades judged to be his in the mainstream Ko-Hōki manner, and a handful of signed tachi the judges hold apart as something finer.
The larger register, the one the unsigned attributions carry, is the rustic Ko-Hōki hand the published sources describe whenever they place a blade with this group. The forging is itame in a large pattern, frequently mixed with ō-itame and mokume, the grain standing open; thick *ji-nie* gathers in it, *chikei* enter, *jifu* and a faint patchy *utsuri* drift across the steel, and the *kane* itself takes a dark, iron-grey cast. Over that *jigane* the temper rests on a *suguha* base broken into *ko-midare* and small *ko-gunome*, with *ashi* and *yō* entering, the *nie* thick and locally strong, the *habuchi* frayed into *hotsure*, and bright *kinsuji*, *nie-suji* and *sunagashi* running insistently through the edge. The defining quality is not the pattern but its mood: the *nioiguchi* is clouded and sunken, *urumi* and *shizumi-gokoro*, never the clear bright line of Bizen. Several blades drop their temper above the *machi* in a *yaki-otoshi*, and the *bōshi* runs straight to a small *ko-maru* or sweeps with *hakikake*.
The *jigane* and the clouded edge together are the tell, and the judges return to them precisely because the work is so easily confused with something else. Their manner, the published sources note, tempers a small irregular line that resembles the contemporary Ko-Bizen of the same years, a temper they describe with the phrase "resembling the small-midare style of the Ko-Bizen works" (古備前物に類似した小乱れ調). Looked at closely, the resemblance breaks: where the Ko-Bizen steel is bright and tight, Sadatsuna's stands open and dark, his *itame* large-patterned and conspicuous, his edge soft and subdued with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* working through it. From this the group is read as something rougher and more provincial, what the commentary calls a more rustic, untrammeled character. His own bright *jifu-utsuri* and the dark, standing *jigane* set him apart, not by any single signature flourish but by the whole temper of the steel.
The second register is the small set of signed tachi the judges single out, and it inverts the picture. Here the forging tightens, the *itame* packing closer with its *mokume*, and instead of a faint patchy reflection a vivid *midare-utsuri* or *jifu-utsuri* stands clearly in the *ji*. The temper brightens and leans toward Bizen, a *suguha*-toned line opening into *ko-chōji*, small *chōji* and *ko-midare* with *ko-gunome*, *ashi* and *yō* entering frequently, slight *tobiyaki* and *shimaba* in the upper half, and the *nioiguchi* turning tight and clear rather than clouded. Of the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi the judges write that it shows "a refined manner exceptional not only for Sadatsuna himself but within the whole group" (同工のみならず同派の中でも異例の垢抜けた作風を示しており); of another, that it is "an outstanding piece not only among Sadatsuna's works but within the school" (貞綱のみならず同派の出色の一口である). These are the same hand caught at its most controlled, and they are what make the unsigned attributions legible, the bright, varied edge and the somewhat wide, powerful shape recurring on signed and mumei work alike.
What ties the registers together, and what has unsettled his place in the schools, is the tang. On blade after blade the *yasurime* are *ō-sujikai*, the steeply slanted file marks, and the two-character signature is cut bold and archaic with a thick chisel. Those file marks, the published sources observe, are not found on Yasutsuna or Sanemori but do appear on Aritsuna of the same line, so they read as a thread binding Sadatsuna into the lineage. The same feature is a characteristic of the Aoe school, and on its strength the commentary records a standing view that he should be placed with Aoe; one early Jūyō paper, judging from the *sugata*, the fine *jigane* and the florid temper, wondered whether the blade might belong to the Ko-Aoe group and left the question to later research. The settled judgment weighs that possibility but does not accept it, concluding that, taking the workmanship and the signature characters together, "it is appropriate to regard the work as Ko-Hōki" (古伯耆物と捉えるのが妥当であろう).
For a collector Sadatsuna is, before anything else, a rare early name. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs entirely through the modern designations, two tachi at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and seventeen blades at Jūyō, nineteen in those two tiers in all. Of the signed tachi the published commentary calls one "an outstanding piece among the same maker's works, transmitted in the Tokugawa shogunal house" (同作中傑出の一口であり、徳川将軍家伝来である), and a long unsigned tachi bears a later dedicatory inscription to the Konpira shrine in Sanuki; of one of the finest mumei katana the judges write that it shows "a particularly outstanding level of workmanship even among attributions to Sadatsuna" (貞綱極めの中でも特に傑出した出来映えをあらわしている). The Tōkō Taikan values him at a high level among recorded smiths. Almost nothing of his trades: the designated blades are held in shrines, museums and long-private collections, and because signed examples are so few, a signed Ko-Hōki Sadatsuna comes to light only seldom and a privately held one is a rare thing to encounter, a document of how the Hōki tradition forged its dark, rustic steel at the very dawn of the Japanese sword.
Sanekage (眞景) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Sanekage (真景) belongs to the Ko-Hoki group of swordsmiths centered in Hoki Province, a lineage that traces its origins to the celebrated Yasutsuna. According to traditional accounts, Sanekage studied under Ohara Sanemori, a smith said to have been Yasutsuna's son, and is placed around the *Genryaku* era (1184--1185), though some scholarship has advanced the view that his activity may date somewhat earlier. Together with related smiths such as Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie, and Masakage, these craftsmen are collectively referred to as Ko-Hoki, a group that flourished from the latter part of the Heian period into the early Kamakura period. Extant works bearing Sanekage's signature are extremely rare, making each surviving blade of considerable documentary importance.
In broad terms, the Ko-Hoki style features a predominantly small *midare* temper that superficially resembles contemporaneous Ko-Bizen work; however, upon closer inspection, the forging reveals a large-pattern *itame-hada* with standing grain, mixed with *chikei* and mottled effects in the *ji* that lend a distinctly darker tone. The tempered edge tends toward a somewhat blurred, moist-looking *nioiguchi* with a conspicuously textured *habuchi*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* frequently provide the decisive highlights. The *nie* is strong throughout, producing a dense, rich surface character. Small *gunome* and small *notare* stand out within the pattern, and *yakiootoshi* at the base of the temper line is also encountered -- features that distinguish Ko-Hoki work from Ko-Bizen and impart a stronger rustic, provincial character.
Within this group, Sanekage's surviving work displays a particularly archaic quality. His *ji* and *ha*, when compared even with Yasutsuna, appear rather more old-fashioned and rustic, accepted by scholars as provincial work clearly differing from traditions such as Ko-Bizen. This pronounced archaism, combined with the exceptional rarity of signed examples, renders Sanekage an important figure for understanding the earliest phase of organized swordsmithing in the San'in region of Japan.
Sukenaga (助長) — Mainline · 1175-1199. Tokujū. Smith of the Hōki School.
Other smiths
Yasuie (安家) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Narichika (成近) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sadanawa (貞繩) — Mainline · 985-987. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tomoyasu (友安) — Mainline · 1184-1220. Smith of the Hōki School.
Amahara (天原) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arikuni (有國) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arimune (有宗) — Mainline · 1104-1106. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1232-1233. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ariyuki (有行) — Mainline · 1166-1169. Smith of the Hōki School.
Chikanori (近範) — Mainline · 1207-1211. Smith of the Hōki School.
Haranamu (原南) — Mainline · 1159-1160. Smith of the Hōki School.
Iemochi (家持) — Mainline · 990-995. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ienaga (家長) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Ietoki (家時) — Mainline · 999-1004. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsumasa (光正) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsunobu (光信) — Mainline · 990-995. Smith of the Hōki School.
Mitsunobu (光信) — Mainline · 1247-1249. Smith of the Hōki School.
Munetaka (宗隆) — Mainline · 1219-1222. Smith of the Hōki School.
Nikko (日光) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Nissho (日照) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1308-1311. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noritsune (則恒) — Mainline · 1229-1232. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sadahira (貞平) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sanemitsu (眞光) — Mainline · 1184-1185. Smith of the Hōki School.
Sanemori (眞守) — Mainline · 1175-1199. Ohara Sanemori (大原真守) of Hoki Province is traditionally transmitted as a son of Yasutsuna, the founding figure of the Ko-Hoki school. Together with related smiths--Aritsuna, Sadatsuna, Yasuie, and Sanekage--this group flourished from the late Heian period into the early Kamakura period. Sanemori's signed works employ a comparatively long inscription, characteristically a six-character *mei* cut with a thick chisel, of which the variant closely resembling the tachi preserved at Wakayama Toshogu (Important Cultural Property) is the most frequently cited. Extant signed works are "exceedingly rare," and the several signature variants make definitive authentication a continuing subject of study.
The NBTHK consistently distinguishes Ko-Hoki from contemporaneous Ko-Bizen, noting that while both schools temper predominantly small-pattern *midare*, "upon closer examination their character differs somewhat." Sanemori's *kitae* is *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume*, with the grain tending to stand; fine *ji-nie* adheres, *chikei* enters, and *jifu*-like textures are intermingled with *jifu-utsuri* standing out. A defining feature is that "the steel often takes on a blackish tone." His *hamon* is based on *suguha* mixed with *ko-midare*, *ko-choji*, and *ko-gunome*--"overall a fine-patterned irregularity"--with *ko-ashi* and *yo* entering well. The *nioiguchi* tends toward *urumi* (a moist, soft quality) and at times shows *shizumi* (subdued character), while *kinsuji*, *nie-suji*, and *sunagashi* appear with frequency. The *boshi* is typically *sugu* to *ko-maru*, and carved works--placed characteristically at the *koshi-moto*--include *bonji*, *suken*, and *koshi-bi*, providing "valuable material for understanding the distinctive nature of Sanemori's carvings." Within the Ko-Hoki group, Sanemori's tempering is noted for presenting "somewhat smaller-scale patterns of irregularity" compared to Yasutsuna.
The setsumei repeatedly invoke an atmosphere of "archaic, artless dignity" and "rustic, provincial flavor" when describing these works, a quality that "in one vein recalls Awataguchi Kuniyasu and Ayanokoji Sadatoshi." The classical *sugata*--slender, with *funbari*, high *koshizori*, and *ko-kissaki*--is described as appearing "more frequently in this smith's work" than in his father's. Multiple blades bear the addendum character "Katsu" (勝) on the *ura* of the *nakago*, a feature of unknown meaning that is "valuable as documentary material," also recorded in the *Tsuchiya Oshigata*.
Sanenori (眞則) — Mainline · 1156-1159. Smith of the Hōki School.
Shigenaga (重永) — Mainline · 1166-1169. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tamemori (爲守) — Mainline · 1233-1234. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tamesuke (爲助) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Tameyoshi (爲吉) — Mainline · 987-989. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yasumitsu (安光) — Mainline · 1264-1275. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yasunori (安則) — Mainline · 1177-1181. Smith of the Hōki School.
Yoshimori (吉守) — Mainline · 1004-1012. Smith of the Hōki School.
Phase 2 · Sue-Hoki (末伯耆) · 1334 – 1600
Where Ko-Hoki belongs to the dawn of the curved blade under Yasutsuna and the Ohara circle, Sue-Hoki names the province's late continuation, the smiths of Hoki who worked through the closing phase of the Muromachi period rather than its founding age. The setsumei gather this later body around a few documented lines. Chief among them is the *Hiroyoshi* (広賀) name, also read Hiroga and Hiroka, which the records first place around the Bunmei era (1469 to 1487) and carry on into the *shinto* period across several generations. That line is transmitted as descending from Tsunahiro of Sagami: the first Hiroyoshi is said to have gone down to Soshu Kamakura during the Tenbun era and, his study completed, returned home, after which the name divided into two houses, the Mita and the Doso. To these the commentary adds Yukikage of the Inaba *ko-kaji* (dated Choroku 2/1458) and Morihiro of the Sainoo group at Kurayoshi, placed around the Tensho era. The published sources rank Hiroga, with Wakasa Fuyuhiro, among the representative makers of the San'in region in this period.
The setsumei describe a style that has moved away from the dark, open, archaic register of the Ohara masters toward the shared idiom of late-Muromachi production. The construction is the *uchigatana* of the age: *shinogi-zukuri* with *sakizori* and an extended *chu-kissaki*, the *jigane* a tightly forged *ko-itame* with *ji-nie* rather than the large, conspicuously standing *itame* of Yasutsuna. The records read the *hamon* as belonging to two manners. One is the late-Soshu approach, with large *gunome-midare*, *tobiyaki* developing into *hitatsura*, and thickly gathered *nie*; the other follows late Bizen. A *suguha* base mixed with *gunome* and *choji* recurs across the Hiroyoshi blades, and one tanto's *explanation* notes that the school specialized in *gunome* and *hitatsura*, so that a *suguha* work stood as a rarity. The setsumei place this output close in feeling to *Sue-Bizen* Kiyomitsu, Wakasa Fuyuhiro, and Bungo Munekage, situating Sue-Hoki within a standardized San'in current rather than the singular provincial vigor of the older phase.
For *kantei* the commentary fixes the distinction differently than it does for Ko-Hoki. Where the ancient phase is held apart from old Bizen by its dark, open steel, the later Hoki blades are read against their late-Muromachi neighbors and against finer work: the Morihiro *katana* is described as approaching the impression of an old *niji Kunitoshi* and as a piece that might be mistaken for a superior (*joko*) smith's hand. The signing habits anchor identity, the long *mei* giving residence and the Mita or Doso house, with dated examples from Tenbun through Eiroku and into the Tensho era. Provenance is recorded at the modest scale of the working blade: one Eiroku 8 *katana* was made for a patron of Banshu Hiroto and long dedicated to Hiroto Shrine, the roughened *nakago* attributed to its years in that keeping.
Hiroyoshi (廣賀) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Jūyō. Hiroyoshi of Hoki Province, who signed himself Mita Gorozaemon no Jo, worked at Tsuwara through the Tenbun and Eiroku eras of the late Muromachi period, and the dated tanto of Tenbun 2 (1533), cut on the mune with an age inscription reading that it was made at sixty-one years, is regarded as the earliest dated work of his hand. The name Hiroyoshi, read Hiroga, first appears in Hoki around the Bunmei era and runs over several generations of the same signature down into the shinto period, the line dividing into a Doso-o house that forged at the Kajimachi district of Kurayoshi and the Mita house of this smith, who resided at Tsuwara and later worked between Tsuwara and Kurayoshi. The published sources transmit him as a pupil of the Sagami smith Tsunahiro, 「相州綱広の門人と伝え」, so that what reaches this corner of the San'in coast with him is the late Soshu manner of the age, carried into a province better known for Mount Daisen than for its forges. Among the several smiths who signed Hoshu Hiroga, the published sources judge those signing Mita Gorozaemon no Jo to be the most skillful, 「見田五郎左衛門尉と銘するものが特に上手である」, and they place him with Wakasa Fuyuhiro as a representative maker of the San'in region in the late Muromachi period.
The feature that most distinguishes his work is that it is two hands rather than one, a duality the published sources state outright. His blades, they write, divide into those of a Soshu-influenced character and those showing a Bizen-like style, 「相州風のものと、備前風のものと」, and certain pieces incorporate aspects of both the late Soshu and late Bizen lineages, 「末相州と末備前両派のおもむきが加味されたもの」. The Soshu side is the fuller register, a large gunome-midare, at times a koshi-hiraki gunome or an o-notare base showing a compound, double-structured feeling. Choji-ashi and yo enter thickly, frequent tobiyaki builds into hitatsura, and the temper is well filled with nie, threaded with sunagashi and a little kinsuji. The Bizen-toned side is the calmer one, a broad suguha-cho into which gunome are mixed, carrying ashi and yo with ko-nie adhering and sunagashi touched in. The boshi follows the temper beneath it, running midare-komi over the irregular work and turning back deeply, an ichimai-like feeling continuing down the mune into muneyaki, while over the straighter temper it goes straight to a rounded turnback with a long yakisage.
Under both manners lies one jigane, a tightly forged ko-itame with fine ji-nie densely adhering, mixed in places with mokume and crossed by chikei, and on the largest of the katana a faint whitish utsuri rises in the ji. On the Eiroku 8 katana the ji carries intermingled jifu, the patchy steel that gives the late San'in work its particular look, and in the tanto the ko-itame opens conspicuously into nagare-hada on both faces. The published sources draw attention to this ji directly, observing that within his steel there is a rustic flavor and a darkened, bronzy tone, 「かな色に黒味あるものがあってそこがこの派の見どころともなっている」, and they make this character of ji and ha one of the chief attractions of the group rather than a defect of provincial forging. The hamon over it is rich in nie on the Soshu pieces and bright with ashi and yo over the suguha, and on the tanto the suguha base carries a shallow notare with kuichigai-ba about the waist, the hardened width broadening above the monouchi with a suggestion of yubashiri.
The sugata is as legible as the temper. His katana are shinogi-zukuri with sakizori and an extended chu-kissaki, one a high-shinogi blade with deep sori, another koshizori with funbari at the base, the form the published sources call a quintessential Muromachi uchigatana. The tanto is hira-zukuri, wide of mihaba and thick of kasane with a receding fukura, the yoroi-doshi shape made for piercing armor, and it carries a koshi-hi on the omote and gomabashi on the ura. Every recorded blade is ubu and every one is long-signed toward the mune, most often the full Mita Gorozaemon no Jo Hiroga title with an Eiroku or Tenbun date, and at times a patron's name or, on the Tenbun tanto, an age inscription, so that his record is unusually precise in its dating. Those dated works span from Tenbun 5 (1536) through Genki 3 (1572), and the present blades carry Tenbun 2, Eiroku 1, Eiroku 4 and Eiroku 8 dates, fixing his activity firmly across the middle and third quarter of the sixteenth century.
Within the broader Hiroga name his place is that of the prized Mita branch, the hand the published commentary singles out for skill while the Doso-o house and the later same-name generations stand around it. The comparisons the sources draw are to his contemporaries rather than to his teacher. His Eiroku katana is judged in no way inferior to the works of the contemporaneous Sue-Bizen group, 「末備前派の作などに比して遜色がな」い, and his style is set close to Bizen Kiyomitsu, Wakasa Fuyuhiro and Bungo Munekage, the working smiths of the same decade across the San'in and Sanyo provinces. What sets his own blades apart within that company is grounded in their own description, the tobiyaki passing into hitatsura on the Soshu side and the broad gunome over a darkened, jifu-flecked ji on the Bizen-toned side, not in any borrowed resemblance. The Soshu manner he descends from Tsunahiro he carries as a provincial idiom, harder and more rustic than the metropolitan Sagami work, and it is that rustic note, named in the sources, that identifies the group.
The connoisseurship around Hiroyoshi is that of a skilled provincial master rather than a celebrated name. The reference texts place him at Jo-saku in Fujishiro's ranking and at four hundred points in the Toko Taikan, the assessment of a competent and collectible smith well below the first rank of the age. He holds no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties, and his designated record stands at five blades, all at the Juyo level, none yet risen to Tokubetsu Juyo. Provenance, where it survives, is real and worth naming. A naginata of his came down from Ukita Hideie into the Maeda family, the Eiroku 8 katana was long dedicated to Hiroto Shrine in Banshu, for which it was made to a patron's order, and a Mita Gorozaemon tanto is recorded in the Imperial collection. The remaining holders on record are private. For a collector this places him within reach in a way the great Soshu and Bizen names are not. A signed, ubu Hiroga katana of the wide Soshu midare with its tobiyaki and hitatsura, or one of the broad suguha-cho of the calmer manner, is the kind of dated, legible late-Muromachi work that comes to market from time to time and rewards a patient eye, a sound blade by the most skilled hand of the Hoki Hiroga line.
Arikane (有包) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Hōki School.
Arimasa (有正) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Hōki School.
Morihiro (守廣) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Jūyō. Smith of the Hōki School.
Noriteru (則耀) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Hōki School.