The southern school where Sōshū steel met Kyūshū. Founded in Chikuzen by Samonji — son of Jitsua and a student of Masamune — the Sa line carried the Sōshū tradition into the Nanbokuchō, from the founder’s celebrated 大左 work through the later Sue-Sa generations.
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
The Chikuzen Sa School (左文字) Lineage
The The Chikuzen Sa School (左文字), active 1330–1450 in Chikuzen Province across 74 documented smiths: 4 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 14 Jūbun, 20 Jūbi, 42 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 258 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Ō-Sa (大左) · 1330 – 1344
At the head of the Sa line stands its founder, the smith who cut the single character 左 on his tang and is read in the published genealogies as Saemon Saburo, called O-Sa or Samonji. The NBTHK setsumei place him as the grandson of Sairen and son of Jitsua, the old Chikuzen succession of Ryosai, Sairen, and Jitsua whose steel ran sunken and rustic in a *suguha* the school inherited from Yamato. Since the Muromachi sword books he has been counted among the pupils of Masamune of Sagami, one of the Masamune Juttetsu, and the judges treat that *Soshu-den* schooling as the pivot of his identity: against the provincial manner of his forebears he is the reformer who carried the Sagami idiom into Kyushu. His working life falls in the early Nanbokucho period, and the single 左, often paired with 筑州住 on the reverse, becomes the founding mark from which the whole line takes its name. This is the apex generation, the work of O-Sa's own hand rather than the broader Sue-Sa pupils who follow.
What the setsumei describe is a steel that runs bright and clear where the older Kyushu work ran dark. The *jigane* is a well-knit *itame*, tight *ko-itame* on the small *tanto* and standing more open on the wide *katana*, carrying dust-fine *ji-nie* thickly, abundant *chikei*, and a faint *nie-utsuri*; the verdict recurs that *ji* and *ha* alike run limpid and *saeru*, one judge noting steel that shows "absolutely none of the whitish cast or blackish tone" of lesser Kyushu work. Over that ground O-Sa tempers a *Soshu-den* *notare* mixed with *gunome* and *ko-gunome*, the *nioi* deep and the *nie* thick, with *ashi* and *yo* entering and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* drawn through the *ha*; *yubashiri*, *tobiyaki*, and *muneyaki* appear on the broader blades. The *boshi* is the structural signature the judges look to: it thrusts up (*tsukiage*) to a pointed tip, runs long *hakikake*, and returns at length. The *tanto* are small, of thin *kasane* and *hira-zukuri*, with a withered (*kare*) *fukura*. Set against this, the later Sue-Sa hands read as weaker and more standardized, their *midare* shallower and their *ji* less keen, so that O-Sa stands alone for the force of his pointed *boshi* and the brilliance of his Chikuzen steel.
For kantei, the setsumei route attribution first through the *ji* and the point: the bright, clear *ji-nie* free of whiteness is what separates an O-Sa blade from its Soshu fellows when the thrusting, pointed *boshi* alone will not, and the record divides cleanly into signed *hira-zukuri* *tanto* of flowing fine chisel and *osuriage-mumei* *katana* papered Den Sa. Signature works anchor the phase: the Kosetsu Samonji (江雪左文字), repeatedly named his only surviving signed *tachi* and a National Treasure, and the Danjo Samonji in *kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri*, held by the Uesugi house. Named *meibutsu* run through the great families: the Onishi Samonji passed through the Doi and Tokugawa to Arima of Kurume, the Homoji to Tachibana of Yanagawa, others to the Owari Tokugawa, the Sendai Date, the Sakai of Himeji, and the Inaba; one *tanto* recorded in the Kotoku Toezu was among the personal swords of the Taiko, Hideyoshi himself. The Sa school is the place where the Sagami manner becomes a Kyushu one, and these blades are the record of that transformation in O-Sa's own hand.
Sa (左) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Sa, commonly called O-Sa or Samonji, is the Chikuzen smith who carried the Soshu manner into Kyushu and stands, by the count of the Muromachi sword books, among the pupils of Masamune. The published sources read the single character 左 he cut on his tang as an abbreviation of Saemon Saburo, and place him as the grandson of Sairen and the son of Jitsua, the line of Chikuzen smiths descended from the old Kyushu tradition. That tradition, in the words the NBTHK restates on blade after blade, was one whose 地刃が沈み、鄙びた直刃調のもの, a sunken, rustic suguha inherited from Yamato. Against it O-Sa is the reformer: he broke wholly from his grandfather's and father's manner and is credited with having 垢ぬけした乱れ刃の作域を創作, founding a clear, unprovincial midare style, and so lifting Chikuzen work to a rank it had never held. Around him a large school formed, his pupils Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyasu, Hiroyuki and Sadayoshi each carrying the manner into the Nanbokucho years and into the later history of the Kyushu blade. He worked in the Genko and Kemmu years of the early Nanbokucho period.
What the change amounts to is a steel that runs bright and clear where the old Kyushu work ran dark. His ji is an itame, well knit on the small tanto and standing open on the grand katana, carrying ji-nie laid down dust-fine, 地沸微塵, and frequent dark chikei. The published record returns again and again to the same judgment, 地刃共に澄んで明るく冴える, that ji and ha alike are limpid, bright and lucid, and on the finest pieces the NBTHK adds that the ji has neither the whiteness nor the blackness of lesser Kyushu steel. Over that ji he tempers a notare base mixed with gunome and ko-gunome, the *nie* deep and the *nioiguchi* bright, with *ashi* and *yo* entering and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* drawn throughout the *ha*. The reform is summed in a recurring phrase the sources use for his new manner, 地景や金筋の目立つ乱れ主調の新作風を樹立した, an irregular temper led by conspicuous *chikei* and *kinsuji*.
The single feature that most reliably marks his hand sits in the *boshi*. Across his surviving work the temper of the point thrusts up and runs to a sharp tip with a long brushed return, 突き上げて先が尖って迫力があり, the published sources noting its force and its long *kaeri* even on pieces where they decline to fix the individual hand. On the tanto a faint *nie-utsuri* rises in the ji, the *ko-itame* knits tight, and the *ha* keeps a quieter, more even register; on the wide katana the temper grows fuller, *yubashiri*, *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* appear, the *nie* thickens and at times turns rough, and the whole carries what the NBTHK repeatedly calls a *haki*, a martial spirit. The activity is read first in the ji and in the point, and the bright Chikuzen *ji-nie*, free of whiteness, is what tells him from his Soshu fellows when the *boshi* alone will not.
His record divides cleanly into two registers, and the division is the key to reading him. The signed pieces are almost all small tanto, *hira-zukuri*, with little or no *sori*, thin *kasane* and a withered *fukura*, signed in fine, flowing chisel 左 on the omote and 筑州住 on the ura; these the NBTHK calls his canonical work, one such described as 左文字の見どころを余すところなく示した典型作, a typical piece showing every point of recognition, another as 相州伝上工の実力を遺憾なく発揮した, the full skill of a first-rate Soshu hand. The grand katana, by contrast, are *osuriage-mumei*, wide in the body with little taper and a *kissaki* extended in the Nanbokucho manner, papered as Den Sa. A third group is read only to the school: a piece marked simply 左, or carrying a red-ink 三木左, often means the broad excellence of the Sa line rather than the master himself, the published sources cautioning that 個名は特定し得ないまでも, even where the individual name cannot be settled, the thrusting, pointed *boshi* should not be overlooked. The old books' placing of him in Masamune's circle the NBTHK treats with care, allowing the point remains open while holding the Soshu influence on his reform to be plain.
Against his Soshu peers the distinction is drawn by his own grounded traits rather than by theirs. His bright, clear ji and the thrusting *togari-boshi* set him apart, and the recurring institutional verdict that ji and ha run limpid and lucid is the through-line that holds the two registers together as one hand. Within Kyushu the contrast is sharper still, and the sources make it the heart of his importance: where Sairen and Jitsua before him left a sunken, rustic *suguha*, O-Sa's *midare* is the bright unprovincial style that reorients the whole tradition, his pupils and the later Kyushu smiths working in his light. He is, in the plainest terms the record allows, the smith through whom the Soshu manner becomes a Kyushu one.
His is a Sai-jo saku hand by the Fujishiro rating, and the designations bear the standing out: among the works on record are three National Treasures, foremost the 江雪左文字, the Kosetsu Samonji, the only signed tachi of his to survive, with six Important Cultural Properties and twenty-one at Tokubetsu Juyo besides, some seventy-three designated works on record in all. The named meibutsu run through the great houses: the Onishi Samonji, held by the Arima lords of Kurume; the 弾正左文字, the Danjo Samonji long treasured by Uesugi Kagekatsu; pieces preserved in the Owari Tokugawa house, where one stood among the highest-graded blades of the collection, in the Date house of Sendai, the Sakai of Himeji, the Tachibana of Yanagawa, the Makino, and the Matsudaira of Shirakawa, one katana having passed through the hands of Hideyoshi himself. For the private collector the position follows from this history. The National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties are heritage held in public and long-private hands, not things that trade; of the rest the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo blades, fifty or so across the recorded tiers, are more findable than the works of the very rarest Kamakura names, yet a signed tanto or a securely papered Den Sa katana comes to market only rarely, and is a landmark of a collection when it does.
Phase 2 · Sue-Sa (末左) · 1338 – 1450
When the single character 左 passed from the founder's hand to those of his pupils and sons, the Sa workshop of Chikuzen entered the chapter the sword books gather under the name Sue-Sa. The NBTHK names the line repeatedly: Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu, Sadayoshi, with Kōan and Sadakuni read among them, each said to have taken up the master's manner. The succession is also a dispersal. Yasuyoshi, called a son of O-Sa, carried the style north from Chikuzen into Chōshū (Nagato), where his descendants and the smith Akikuni continued it; Hiroyasu, transmitted as a son of Yukihiro, is recorded as moving later to Aki. The dated work places this phase from the early *Nanbokuchō* years through Shōhei and Eiwa and on into the *Ōei* era of early Muromachi, by which point the Chōshū Yasuyoshi name had clearly passed to a second-generation hand whose pieces the judges separate by signature and workmanship from those of the first.
The inherited idiom is the *Sōshū-den* manner the founder brought from Sagami, read now at a generational remove. The ground stays *itame* mixed with *ko-itame* and *mokume*, the grain standing (*hada-dachi*), carrying thick *ji-nie* and frequent *chikei*, over which the smiths temper a *notare* or *suguha* base mixed with *gunome*, *ko-gunome*, and pointed (*togari*) elements, with *ashi* and *yō* entering, deep *nioi*, thick *ko-nie*, and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* drawn through. The *bōshi* thrusts up (*tsukiage*) to a pointed tip with *hakikake* and a long return, the one trait the setsumei hold to across the whole line. Against the founder, the register shifts. Where O-Sa stands for bright, clear *ji-nie*, the Sue-Sa setsumei more often note a steel of darker, blackish cast and a *nioiguchi* tending toward *shizumi* (subdued). The pattern standardizes: signed work survives chiefly as *tantō*, and the judges remark that a strongly distinct individuality is hard to isolate among them. A Bizen lean enters at the edges, the setsumei reading in Yasuyoshi a *nioi*-dominant temper with *bō-utsuri* near the *ha* that mingles a Bizen character, and noting faint *utsuri* in several Hiroyasu blades.
A collector reads Sue-Sa against the apex through the same two anchors the school is judged by, ground and point, but inverted in emphasis. Because brilliance no longer settles the matter, *gunome* prominence becomes the working key: the Hon'ami house long appraised the most vigorously *midare* blades of the "Sa ichirui" to Kunihiro, and the conspicuous-*gunome mumei* *katana* repeatedly fall to Hiroyasu, while the pointed, brushed *bōshi* with its long *kaeri* keeps the attribution within the line. The named masters anchor the phase, Kunihiro for the boldest large-pattern *midare* enlivened by *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki*, Yasuyoshi for the Bizen-tinged Chōshū work, Sadakuni recorded as a son of Kunihiro whose few surviving *tantō* approach the founder's hand, Kōan and Hiroyasu reaching across into *Ōei*. The provenance threads through the great houses the setsumei cite: the signed Yoshihiro *tachi* from the Bizen Ikeda family, a Sadakuni *tantō* held by the Mōri, Hiroyasu blades transmitted in the Kuroda, Takasu Matsudaira, and Hisamatsu houses, several carrying Hon'ami Kōchū and Kōon *origami*. For the student of *Sōshū-den*, Sue-Sa is the Sagami manner held one step past its Chikuzen height, transmitted, divided across provinces, and carried into the Muromachi age.
Yasuyoshi (安吉) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. A tanto dated Shohei 17 (1362) and signed Choshu ju Yasuyoshi[[c:1]], today a Juyo Bijutsuhin, anchors nearly everything the published sources say about Yasuyoshi of Chikuzen. Its hand is identical to his customary signature, and on that identity rests the account repeated at the head of entry after entry: Yasuyoshi was the son of O-Sa (大左), succeeded him as the second generation of the Samonji line, and later moved from Chikuzen to Nagato. His dated work runs from Shohei 17 into the Joji era, and an Important Cultural Property tanto signed Sa Yasuyoshi saku is catalogued with the earlier date Shohei 12 (1357). The name did not end with him, for descendants or pupils carried it in Nagato into the early Muromachi period, the line the sources call Choshu-Sa (長州左). Across half a century of designations the NBTHK assigns him one constant character, stated in almost the same words each time: his is the work in which, "within the Sa family a Bizen temperament intermingles"[[c:2]].
The signed record has a strict shape. Every signed Yasuyoshi the published sources describe is a tanto or ko-wakizashi in hira-zukuri, most of them wide and sunnobi, thin in kasane and shallow in sori, the full mid-Nanbokucho stance; where O-Sa's tanto stay small, his mostly run large. The published sources state plainly that no authenticated signed tachi exists, so the tachi and naginata in their pages survive as osuriage mumei attributions. One Important Cultural Property tachi, held at Shirasaki Hachimangu in Yamaguchi, is nonetheless catalogued as signed Yasuyoshi, known so far only from its brief plate. The mei itself is a large two-character signature cut with a somewhat thick chisel below the mekugi-ana at the center of the nakago. On occasion it is prefixed with the character Sa, a form headed by the meibutsu Hitotsuyanagi Yasuyoshi (一柳安吉), an Important Cultural Property. The record is just as exact about an absence: works signed Sa Yasuyoshi (左安吉) and Choshu ju Yasuyoshi both survive, but "one does not see examples signed Chikushu ju Yasuyoshi"[[c:3]].
His jigane is an itame that flows and often stands, mixed with mokume, with ji-nie attached. Over it rises a whitish shirake-utsuri, a bo-utsuri, or a sugu-utsuri near the edge, and the published sources name this flowing, standing forging with its whitish cast the viewing point of the smith. The hamon is a shallow ko-notare mixed with gunome, ko-gunome and pointed elements, nioi-dominant with ko-nie. Ashi enter, fine sunagashi runs through, and kinsuji appear here and there. The boshi runs midare-komi or thrusts up in tsukiage fashion, leans slightly toward the edge, and ends pointed with light hakikake and a rather long return. Set against his father the judgment is plain: the brilliance of ji and ha falls short of O-Sa, one early entry stating without ceremony that "his skill as well does not reach his father"[[c:4]], and the boshi, lacking O-Sa's sharpness, often falls into a leaning tendency. These same qualities form the stated kantei trap. Nioi-dominant with ko-nie set in, his work "at first sight strays among Osafune pieces such as Kanemitsu"[[c:5]], and the standing utsuri only strengthens the impression.
Two registers complicate the portrait at its edges. A minority of his smallest tanto, nearly O-Sa's own size with a slightly withered fukura, keep close to the master: dust-fine thick ji-nie, fine chikei, at times a nie-utsuri, a bright clear nioiguchi with kinsuji and sunagashi sweeping through, the boshi pointed, a make the published sources call "truly mistakable for O-Sa"[[c:6]]. On the Tokubetsu Juyo tanto signed Sa Yasuyoshi, the character Sa is fluent and close to O-Sa's own hand while the two characters of Yasuyoshi show a somewhat naive chisel; whether such pieces prove the tradition that O-Sa himself signed Yasuyoshi in his last years, or are instead Yasuyoshi's earliest work, the NBTHK leaves open for future study. At the other edge stand the Nagato years. The Nagato-signed work takes nie more strongly than his usual nioi-dominant hand. On a tanto the published sources call one manner of the Nanbokucho Choshu Yasuyoshi, ji and ha take nie strongly, the notare grows bold with kuichigai-ba mixing in, sunagashi sweeps with kinsuji entering, and the boshi thrusts up to a point. Oei-dated work is judged plainly a successor generation, while the Eiwa-dated pieces stand unresolved between the founder's last years and a second generation, a question the published sources repeat as a subject for future research.
On unsigned blades of the Sa type his own marks decide the attribution. Where the flowing, standing itame carries a whitish utsuri, where the temper turns nioi-dominant in small patterns, and where the thrusting pointed boshi softens into a lean, the work is likened to Yasuyoshi within the school, and several osuriage katana have been so appraised. The pointed boshi is the Sa-family inheritance he never gives up; the softness of the edge is his own. The recent entries single out "the deep nioiguchi carrying a soft feeling"[[c:7]] and the rich activity working inside the ha, finding in them a strength that remains his even where the brilliance does not match his father's.
Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku, and the record is unusually legible: forty-two designated works are on record, thirty-four of them signed against seven unsigned. Six blades are Important Cultural Properties, headed by the meibutsu Hitotsuyanagi Yasuyoshi; four are Juyo Bijutsuhin, among them the dated Shohei 17 tanto; and thirty-one stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, one Tokubetsu Juyo wakizashi praised as "the very finest within this smith's work"[[c:8]]. Twelve blades carry recorded provenance: examples passed in the Bizen Ikeda and Inshu Ikeda houses, the Tosa Yamauchi and the Maeda, one tanto certified in the ownership of Tokugawa Iesato, and another treasured by Motoda Nagazane, the Confucian scholar of Kumamoto. Of recorded whereabouts today, blades rest in the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Fukuoka City Museum, the Tokyo National Museum and the Sano Art Museum. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony and will remain where they are; much of the rest is held by institutions or in long private keeping, and a signed Yasuyoshi coming into open hands is an uncommon event, appearing only rarely and rewarding patience.
Kunihiro (國弘) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Jūbun, Tokujū, Jūyō. A small hira-zukuri tantō, signed Kunihiro saku and dated Shōhei 12 (1357), is the fixed point of his record: from it the published sources read the span of his activity, for signed work by his hand is otherwise scarce. Kunihiro worked in the Chikuzen Sa school, the Samonji line of the Nanbokuchō period, and is transmitted as a son of Yoshihiro or, by another account, of Sadayuki. The published sources place him among the leading hands carried on from Ō-Sa, in a school that, as they put it, emerged in the early Nanbokuchō and cast off the older traditional Kyūshū manner to establish a style in which the steel and temper are 'bright and clear, refined in workmanship'[[c:1]]. Within that school Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi all inherited the master's manner; Kunihiro is the one to whom the boldest, highest-tempered work was assigned.
His characteristic hand is a large-patterned irregular temper led by undulation. The published sources name two manners in his work and describe the first as 'a somewhat large-patterned midareba with notare as the main theme'[[c:2]], into which he sets *gunome*, *ko-gunome*, *ko-notare* and ha with a pointed tendency, the whole tempered high and flamboyant. The *nioi* is deep and the *nie* attaches thickly and unevenly, with coarse *nie* gathering in places; fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* spill into the *ji* and run freely, and *yubashiri*-like *tobiyaki* appears frequently. It is the showiest of the Sa-group manners, and the reason it is his: the Hon'ami house, judging Sa-group blades, tended to assign the name Kunihiro to those examples showing 'the most vigorously unsettled midare'[[c:3]].
The *jigane* is the constant beneath both manners. It is a standing *itame* mixed with *mokume* and a flowing grain, thick in *ji-nie* with bold *chikei* entering frequently, the steel carrying a somewhat blackish cast. This is the Sōshū-derived *jigane* of the Sa school, open and active, not the bright tight *ko-itame* and *utsuri* of Bizen; where the forging tightens on his smaller signed pieces the *ji-nie* grows fine and the steel brightens. Over it the *bōshi* of the prime work runs into *midare-komi*, thrusts up and ends pointed, with vigorous *hakikake* and a long return, while the quieter pieces run straight to a small round. His second manner, named alongside the first, is a *suguha*-toned temper mixed with *gunome*, calmer and seen chiefly on the *hira-zukuri* tantō and the *sun-nobi* wakizashi.
Most of his surviving record is not signed at all. The Sa school's long Nanbokuchō tachi were shortened in later centuries into katana, and the great majority of blades that carry his name today are *ō-suriage mumei*, wide in body with little taper, shallow in *sori* and large in the *kissaki*, the grand high-Nanbokuchō shape. On these the published sources affirm the Sa school from every point and judge the manner 'most fittingly compared to Kunihiro within the school'[[c:4]], precisely because the tempering is high and large in scale, the *nie* variable, the internal activity abundant and the *yubashiri*-like *tobiyaki* well marked. The signed tantō dated Shōhei 12 anchors the chronology; one signed tachi survives, published in the *Kōzan Oshigata*, and is held to be of high documentary value for the study of the whole line.
What sets him apart is named within his own school rather than against another. The hands of the Sa smiths are so closely matched that individual attribution is difficult, and the published commentary is candid about it: the attribution to Kunihiro rests on the boldness and scale of the workmanship, not on a single personal tell. He is distinguished from his schoolmates by carrying the most flamboyant, highest-tempered *midare* of the group, his bold *yubashiri* and pointed, thrusting *bōshi* the marks the judges look to. The same commentary is honest about his standing within the line, granting that his technique 'falls far short of Ō-Sa'[[c:5]]; yet on his best small work the refined, bright *ji* and *ha* are found to share 'a continuous affinity with Ō-Sa'[[c:6]], the kinship that places him among the school's leading hands.
For the collector Kunihiro is a scarce Nanbokuchō name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record reaches the Important Cultural Property rank in two signed tantō preserved at shrines, one at Kotohira-gū in Kagawa and one at Shinonome Jinja in Ehime, both heritage held in religious keeping. Beyond these, the documented blades run through the higher modern tiers, four at Tokubetsu Jūyō and the rest at Jūyō, with roughly fifty-one designated works on record in all. Their provenance reaches into the daimyō houses, a katana once held by the Tokugawa shogunal family and a blade transmitted in the Hisamatsu Matsudaira house, with examples now in the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Iwate Prefectural Museum. Signed work is exceptionally rare and the dated tantō a document in itself; of the shortened mumei katana, only a small number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a Sa Kunihiro comes to a private collector only seldom, and a signed example rarer still, a tangible record of how the Sa school carried its bright, bold manner into the height of the Nanbokuchō.
Yoshisada (吉貞) — Mainline · 1345-1359. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. A wakizashi by Yoshisada dated Shōhei 13 (1358), cut on the reverse "ninth month, day" and on the face with the orderer's name "Shu Nagamasa," is the documentary anchor of his career: from it the published sources accept that he was a direct disciple of Ō-Sa, and fix his working years in the middle of the fourteenth century. Yoshisada is a smith of the Sa, or Samonji, school of Chikuzen, one of the *Sa-ichirui* who carried the school's manner forward in the Nanbokuchō period beside Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshihiro, Kunihiro and Hiroyasu. He is traditionally held to be "a son of Ō-Sa"[[c:1]], or at least a member of his immediate circle, and he signs simply "Yoshisada" or "Yoshisada saku," a piece additionally cut "Chikushū jū" not being encountered.
His hand is read first through what the published sources allow him as his one personal characteristic. They observe that the smiths of the Sa group show comparatively few individual tells, and then single Yoshisada out: "even within the Sa group his *hamon* becomes a small-patterned design, and in this lies his stylistic individuality"[[c:2]]. That small-scale *midare* is the through-line of his work. Among signed pieces two manners are drawn. One is a calm, shallowly undulating *notare* on a *suguha* base; the other is a *gunome* temper that resembles his schoolmate Yasuyoshi but is worked, in the judges' words, "a little smaller and more compactly than his"[[c:3]]. In both the *nie* adheres well, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through, the activity carried in *ko-ashi* and *yō* rather than in tall clusters, and the *bōshi* rising with a thrusting tendency to a pointed return.
The *jigane* is the Sōshū-derived steel the whole Sa line shares, and it is the constant beneath both his manners. Over a standing *itame* mixed with *mokume* and a flowing *nagare-hada*, the grain a little open, he lays thick *ji-nie* and well-entered *chikei*, the steel at times taking a darkish cast; on several blades a whitish *shirake*-style *utsuri* drifts in the ji. Against that *jigane* the temper stays comparatively small in scale. Where his quieter pieces run a gentle *notare*, deep in *nioi* and bright, his more active pieces gather the *gunome* into the compact pattern the sources name, with occasional coarser *nie* and, near the *monouchi*, *nie-suji* and *yubashiri*-like *tobiyaki* lending a varied scenery.
The two faces of his record sit side by side. The signed work is chiefly *wakizashi* and *tantō*: the Tokubetsu Jūyō *tantō* transmitted in the Mito Tokugawa house, *hira-zukuri* and wide, with strong *nie* in both *ji* and *ha* and a bright, clear *nioiguchi*, which the published sources call "an especially outstanding piece by this smith"[[c:4]]; the dated Shōhei 13 *wakizashi* bearing the orderer's name; and the Mononobe Yoshisada *tachi*, which tempers the *koshimoto* high into a brighter, livelier *midare* and shows how far the same hand could open. The other face is the *ō-suriage mumei* *katana* appraised as his, wide and powerful, several with an extended or large *kissaki*, a *ko-nie gunome-midare* with some *chōji* feeling over the standing itame, a *bō-hi* carved through; the judges note that even these unsigned attributions tend to the same small-patterned *hamon*, so the body of his oeuvre is read through that small *midare* rather than through any single signed tell. One such *katana* carries a gold-inlay attribution to Yoshisada by Hon'ami Mitsunori.
What sets Yoshisada apart within the Sa group is precisely that small-patterned temper. Where Yasuyoshi's *gunome* stands fuller, Yoshisada's is drawn smaller and more compact; where the line as a whole is read as showing few individual features, his compact *midare*, bright *nioiguchi* and pointed, thrusting *bōshi* recur from blade to blade as his own. He belongs to the generation that held the Sa school together after Ō-Sa, neither the founder's brilliance nor a late epigone, but a sound and recognizable hand whose individuality the NBTHK locates in scale rather than in flamboyance.
For the collector he is a documented but uncommon Nanbokuchō name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through four Tokubetsu Jūyō and forty-three Jūyō blades, with two *ō-suriage* *katana* holding the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, one of them the Hon'ami Mitsunori gold-inlay piece now in the Seikadō Bunko. His blades carry distinguished provenance: the Mito Tokugawa house, with pieces traced to Tokugawa Ieyasu and Yorifusa, the Mōri family, the Bizen Ikeda family, and the Shimazu and Satake houses, with examples on deposit at the Kyoto National Museum and held in the Seikadō Bunko. The signed work is genuinely scarce, and "surviving examples in *tachi* form are exceedingly rare"[[c:5]]; most of what survives is held rather than traded, but a Jūyō-tier *mumei* attribution or, less often, a signed *wakizashi* or *tantō* comes to light from time to time, and a privately held Yoshisada is a rewarding thing for a collector to encounter, a clear document of how the Sa school read in the hands that carried it after its master.
Hiroyasu (弘安) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Hiroyasu is a smith of the Chikuzen Sa school, the Samonji line of the Nanbokuchō period, his active years fixed by two dated pieces, a tantō of Shōhei 20 and one recorded in the Umetada Oshigata of Shōhei 13. The published sources transmit him as a son, or by another account a pupil, of Yukihiro, and place him among the smiths carried on from Ō-Sa, the group broadly called the Sue-Sa. By the Nanbokuchō period the Sa school had emerged in Chikuzen and, casting off the older and somewhat rustic Kyūshū manner, taken in the Sōshū tradition to establish a style in which both ji and ha are bright and clear and run with chikei and kinsuji. Tradition adds that Hiroyasu later moved to Aki. Signed work survives only as hira-zukuri sun-nobi tantō and small wakizashi, signed tachi being unknown to the judges, so very nearly his whole katana record is ō-suriage and mumei, drawn from long Nanbokuchō tachi and naginata cut down into uchigatana, the attribution carried by the workmanship rather than by a name on the tang.
The feature that fixes his name is the gunome on his edge. Among the mumei blades the Hon'ami house judged within the Sa group, it was the ones in which gunome stands out conspicuously that were appraised to Hiroyasu, and the published sources put the point plainly, that among blades seen as the Sa lineage 「特に互の目の目立つものがよく見受けられる」[[c:1]], those in which the gunome is especially prominent are often encountered. His temper is a midare led by notare into which gunome, ko-gunome, ko-chōji and a little pointed-ha enter, the whole kept comparatively small in scale rather than gathered into towering clusters. Ashi and yō run well into it, the nie lies thick and a little uneven with coarse nie in places, and sunagashi runs frequently with kinsuji threading the line. Small yubashiri-like tobiyaki touch the edge here and there, an activity the judges find archaic and full of spirit. The bōshi runs midare-komi, thrusts up and ends pointed with vigorous hakikake and a deep return.
The jigane is the Sōshū-derived ji the whole school shares, and on Hiroyasu it stands open. It is an itame mixed with mokume, flowing grain and patches of large itame, the surface standing out rather than lying tight, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering finely and densely, the steel taking on a faintly blackish cast. This is the dark, active jigane of the Sa hands, not the bright tight ko-itame and midare-utsuri of Bizen; at most a thin nie-utsuri-like effect rises in the ji. The judges prize the clarity of the best of it, noting on one fine katana that the steel shows no cloudiness and no whitish dullness whatever, 「鉄の濁りや白気がいささかもなく」[[c:2]], while the nie lies thick and the line is bright. Over so dark and lively a ji the small-patterned gunome reads as the quieter, more intimate face of the grand Sōshū idiom the school had only lately taken up.
Within his own record the published sources draw a second manner alongside the first. Some of his work, and especially the pieces tradition has long called Hiroyasu, runs a calmer line, suguha-toned and somewhat compact, the nioiguchi taking a subdued, shizumi cast. From olden times appraisals to him were assigned to Sa-group blades showing a gently undulating midare grown somewhat small, of which the judges write that it 「やや小ずむところに少異がある」[[c:3]], that it differs slightly in being a touch compact. This subdued register sits on certain shortened katana and on the small signed work, the hira-zukuri sun-nobi wakizashi and tantō, where the gunome of the showy manner is muted and the calm line itself becomes the tell. The two faces are not phases of a career but two readings the school's connoisseurship has fixed to his name, the conspicuous gunome on the one hand and the compact, subdued midare on the other.
What sets him within the Sa school is what the judges candidly will not claim for him. Theirs is a lineage whose hands are so closely matched that individual judgment is very difficult, and the published sources grant that no single feature singles Hiroyasu out and that his skill is held to fall short of Yasuyoshi, the strongest of the group. He is distinguished instead by his own affirmed traits, the standing, blackish itame thick in chikei that marks the Sa jigane apart from Bizen, the prominent gunome the Hon'ami house reserved to his name, and the thrusting, pointed bōshi with its hakikake. He stands beside Yukihiro, Yasuyoshi, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki and Sadayoshi as one of the smiths who carried the Sa manner forward from Ō-Sa into the later fourteenth century, and his blades, where the nie is thick and the tobiyaki touches the edge, keep something of the archaic flavor the judges call 「古雅な趣を醸し出している」[[c:4]].
For the collector Hiroyasu is an attainable name among the Sue-Sa, where Ō-Sa himself is not. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through three katana at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank, two katana recognized before the war as Jūyō Bijutsuhin, and some nineteen blades at the Jūyō rank, several carrying old Hon'ami origami by Kōon, Kōchū and Mitsutada that document the long history of his attribution. His blades passed through daimyō and collector hands, the Kuroda, the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira, the Takasu-Matsudaira and other Matsudaira houses among the recorded provenances, with one Jūyō Bijutsuhin katana now in the Sano Art Museum. About twenty-two blades fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a Hiroyasu comes to light from time to time rather than rarely, and a signed wakizashi or tantō, of which the judges note signed work is extremely few, is the more notable thing for a collector to encounter, valued as much for the study of the Sa group as a whole as for itself.
Yukihiro (行弘) — Mainline · 1350-1352. Kokuhō, Tokujū, Jūyō. The National Treasure tantō signed *Chikushū-jū Yukihiro* on the omote and dated the eighth month of Kannō 1 (1350) on the ura, handed down in the Tsuchiya family, is the work by which this smith of the Chikuzen Sa school is known. Its commentary records that Yukihiro belongs to the Sa group, that few of his works survive, and that this tantō stands out among them, approaching Samonji in form, forging and *hamon* alike[[c:1]]. It also values the date as important material for knowing when Samonji and the members of his school were active. The published sources describe the Sa school as appearing at the start of the Nanbokuchō period and breaking away from the classical Kyūshū manner to establish work in which both *ji* and *ha* are bright and clear. Among its pupils, Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi, "Yukihiro is the smith whose surviving dated work is the oldest and whose workmanship comes closest to Samonji"[[c:2]].
The dated tantō shows the type plainly. It is *hira-zukuri* with a *mitsu-mune*, the *kasane* somewhat thick and the form leaning slightly to *uchizori*. The *jigane* is a *ko-itame* mixed with *mokume*, with thick *ji-nie* and *chikei* appearing well. Its *hamon* is a *ko-notare* mixed with *gunome*, slanting in reverse around the *monouchi*, well covered in *nie*, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* and a bright, clear *nioiguchi*; the temper runs down from the *machi* into the tang. The *bōshi* runs into a *midare-komi*, thrusts up to a point and turns back long. The *ubu* tang is filed in *ō-sujikai*.
His other tantō, signed, inlaid or attributed, keep the same hand. The *jigane* is a well-packed *itame* or *ko-itame* with *mokume*, at times standing a little, with dust-fine *ji-nie* laid thickly and *chikei* finely and frequently woven in; on one signed piece a *nie-utsuri* stands and the steel is clear. Over it runs a shallow *notare* with *gunome* and *ko-gunome*, *ashi* entering, the *nioi* deep and the *ko-nie* thick, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running finely, and on some blades *yubashiri*, *kuichigai-ba*, *nijūba* or *muneyaki*. The *bōshi* most often thrusts up and ends pointed with *hakikake*, the *kaeri* tempered long. Of one *mumei* tantō the published sources write that it shows "a manner connecting in a single stream to Great Sa"[[c:3]], and that "to appraise it as Yukihiro in particular is the most fitting"[[c:4]]. A quieter piece with a narrow temper and *yubashiri* is placed with him because its *ji* and *ha* are somewhat gentler than Samonji's own.
His signatures carry a scholarly question of their own. One *ubu* tantō is signed *Yukihiro* on the omote and *Chikushū-jū* on the ura, with vermilion appraisal notes, and is called precious for its inscription. Another, signed *Chikushū-jū Sa*, was designated Jūyō as a piece whose signature stands closest to that of the Kannō-dated Yukihiro, and was later raised to Tokubetsu Jūyō as an extremely rare example of Yukihiro cutting the *Sa* signature. Its small form, its forging with *nie-utsuri*, its brilliant *ji* and *ha* and its *bōshi* thrusting up to a point and turning back deeply are all read as Ō-Sa to the life. The sources therefore count him the most skilled in technique of the group, with outstanding examples that show "workmanship just like Samonji"[[c:5]]. They now raise "the possibility that Yukihiro's daisaku and daimei are included" among works signed Sa[[c:6]].
No long signed blade survives; of his longer work the published sources state flatly that "among long blades there are none with a signature"[[c:7]]. That record is carried by attribution. A *naginata* that Hon'ami Kōtoku judged Sa Yukihiro carries his gold inlay together with the ownership inscription of Asano Kii-no-kami Yoshinaga, and was handed down in the Kishū Asano family. The same house kept the *meibutsu tachi* Ō-Mihara, inlaid by Kōtoku at about the same time. Because the Hon'ami normally placed *kinzogan* only on heavily shortened blades and gave *ubu* mumei work a vermilion attribution instead, the sources call both inlays exceptional, perhaps made at Yoshinaga's order. The *naginata* itself is broad and very thick, its standing *itame* running toward *masame*, its *ko-notare* temper mixed with *gunome* and angular and pointed elements, nioi-led with a bright *nioiguchi*. Two *ō-suriage* mumei *katana* are attributed to him as well, one remade from a *nagamaki*. On the other the sources single out the *bōshi*, running into a *midare-komi* and turning back pointed, as a principal point of interest.
Fujishiro grades him *Jō saku*. Eleven designated works are on record: the National Treasure tantō, two Tokubetsu Jūyō and eight Jūyō. Recorded provenance runs through the Tsuchiya family, the Kishū Asano family and the Yanagisawa family, and of recorded whereabouts his work is held at the Tsuchiura City Museum and the Gotoh Museum. The dated National Treasure is patrimony and will not trade. His signed work is limited to a few small tantō, and most of what survives is *mumei* or attributed by inlay, so a Yukihiro in private hands reaches the market only seldom. A signed piece, or a tantō judged by the published sources to stand this close to Ō-Sa, is among the more notable things a collector of Sa school work could encounter.
Hiroyuki (弘行) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Hiroyuki is a smith of the Chikuzen Sa school, the Samonji lineage, working in the mid-Nanbokucho period around the Shohei era, and transmitted as a son of Yukihiro. He belongs to the group of followers the published sources call Sue-Sa, the smiths carried on from O-Sa after the school's founder. The Sa school emerged in the early Nanbokucho and broke with the older Kyushu manner, in which the *ji* and *ha* are subdued and rustic in a restrained *suguha*. Drawing on the Soshu tradition, it established a style in which both *ji* and *ha* are bright and clear, with *chikei* and *kinsuji* intermingled. Hiroyuki worked within that style, and his place is fixed by the few dated records the published sources preserve: a work of his said to bear a Shohei 20 date of 1365, against his father Yukihiro's piece dated Kan'o 1, in 1350. Signed work by his hand is extremely rare, so almost his whole surviving record is the *o-suriage mumei* katana, attributed to him from long Nanbokucho tachi later shortened.
His recognized hand is read most clearly in the temper. Over a wide, shallow-curved blade he tempers a line based on *suguha* that carries a shallow *notare*, into which *gunome*, angular *gunome*, *ko-notare*, pointed *ha* and *ko-gunome* enter, often in a linked succession kept comparatively small in scale. The *nie* lies thick and uneven, with coarse *nie* gathering in places, *uchi-noke* and *yubashiri* touching the edge, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running vigorously through it. The *nioiguchi* often takes a subdued, *shizumi* cast. The published sources name this manner as his tell. Among the Sa group, whose hands are so closely matched that the individual smith is hard to single out, the blade whose *gunome* stands out and runs continuously, and whose temper is comparatively restrained, is the one read as Hiroyuki. Several of his entries close on the same judgment, that the work is the one 「弘行に最も擬せられるものであり」, most readily likened to Hiroyuki.
The *jigane* is the constant beneath his work. He forges a standing *itame* mixed with *mokume* and flowing grain, with patches of large *itame* in places, thickly covered in *ji-nie*, *chikei* entering well, the steel taking a somewhat blackish, whitish-misty cast. This is the Soshu-derived Sa *jigane*, an open, *nie*-laden steel; where a reflection appears at all it is only a faint *nie-utsuri* or a whitish tendency. Beside the *gunome*-prominent line the published sources read a quieter register of the same hand: a *chu-suguha* with a shallow *notare*, *ko-gunome* and angular elements entering sparingly, fine *hotsure* along the *habuchi*, and a subdued *nioiguchi*. The *boshi* is the most constant feature of all. On most of his blades its tip ends pointed, whether it runs *midare-komi* or nearly straight, often with vigorous *hakikake*. The outright upward thrust of *tsukiage* is named on only a minority of them, and a few run straight or in a shallow *notare* to a *ko-maru*. The published sources name the pointed, brushed *boshi* among the traits that mark his work as Sa.
The two registers answer to how the blade was authenticated. The bold, *gunome*-prominent katana carry the school's spirited character, one Tokubetsu Juyo described as 「放胆で覇気に溢れた出来口」, a bold and spirited workmanship. The quieter *chu-suguha* pieces, several bearing gold-powder attributions added by the Hon'ami house, show the wide *suguha* with *hotsure* and the subdued *nioiguchi* the appraisers long read as Hiroyuki. The published sources are candid about the limits of this judgment. They class him among the Sue-Sa, of whom they say 「作風を区別することは困難である」, that distinguishing the styles of the individual smiths is difficult. They note that the gold-powder attributions on his blades are a practice begun by the Hon'ami family in the Meiji era and after. Of one such piece they grant that there is a question 「左弘行とまで断定し得るか否か」, whether it can be fixed as Sa Hiroyuki, while affirming that 「南北朝期の左の一派の作であることには異論がない」, that there is no dissent it is the work of the Nanbokucho Sa school.
What sets Hiroyuki apart is therefore a matter of degree within a closely matched school rather than a private signature. His own evidenced tells are the continuous *gunome* in a small-patterned, *suguha*-leaning temper, the standing *itame* with its blackish, *nie*-laden steel, and the pointed, brushed *boshi*. They place him beside Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi, the pupils who carried on the founder's manner. The published sources affirm his *mumei* attributions from era and school, naming his comparatively calm, *suguha*-leaning manner as the side of the Sa tradition that bears his name. He stands one generation below the founder, working the grand Nanbokucho form in the school's bright, *nie*-rich idiom.
For the collector Hiroyuki is a documented Sa name carried at the higher modern designation tiers. Fujishiro grades him Jo saku. His record runs through two Tokubetsu Juyo katana, one of them carrying a gold-powder mei by Hon'ami Ringa, two prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, and twenty-nine blades at the Juyo rank, thirty-one in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers together. His blades are rooted in daimyo provenance. One Tokubetsu Juyo is accompanied by a mounting bearing the *maru-ni-tachibana* crest of the Ii family of Hikone, and further pieces passed through the Nabeshima family, the Tsuchiya house of Tsuchiura and the Tokugawa, with one held in the Tsuchiura City Museum. Because almost his entire record is *mumei* and held in long-standing collections, a Hiroyuki seldom comes to market. When one does appear it is from the Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo tiers, and the patient collector may meet such a blade from time to time, a sound and forceful document of how the Sa school carried its bright Soshu manner into the second Nanbokucho generation.
Yoshihiro (吉弘) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Tokujū, Jūyō. Sa Yoshihiro's one signed blade is a tachi with a large two-character signature cut in a thick chisel, handed down in the Bizen Ikeda family, and of it the published sources write that 「在銘作はこの一口だけであり、資料的価値はすこぶる高い」. They cite the entry in the shogunate's official chronicle for the fifteenth day of the fourth month of Kyoho 2 (1717), recording a sword by Sa Yoshihiro given to Ikeda Tsugumasa, and take the tachi to be the blade the eighth shogun Yoshimune bestowed on Tsugumasa when he succeeded to the headship of the house; it carries an origami of the same year by Hon'ami Kochu. Yoshihiro belongs to the Sa school of Chikuzen, which appeared in the early Nanbokucho period and, leaving behind the classical Kyushu manner, established a style the published sources describe as 「地刃が明るく冴えて垢抜けした作風」. He is said to have been the son of O-Sa or one of his pupils, with a son, Sa Kunihiro, and the meikan record works dated Shohei 22 and 23 (1367 and 1368).
The published sources set him within a large following. Among the pupils and line of O-Sa active in the Nanbokucho period, signed smiths include Yasuyoshi, Hiroyuki, Yukihiro, Kunihiro, Hiroyasu, Yoshisada, Yoshihiro and Hiroyoshi, yet nearly all of their signed work is tanto and wakizashi, because the tachi of the age were great blades of over three shaku that were later shortened into uchigatana. The smiths were close in skill and their styles differ little, so that 「一々鑑別することは困難である」. What they share is a forging of flowing itame with ji-nie, and a temper described as 「湾れを主調として、互の目や丁子を交え、砂流しや金筋がかかり、匂口が冴えて沸えつき、荒沸交り、帽子が乱込んで突き上げて尖る」, a notare-based hamon with gunome and choji, sunagashi and kinsuji, a clear nioiguchi with nie and some ara-nie, and a boshi that runs in midare and rises to a point.
His blades follow this pattern. The forging is itame or ko-itame, flowing in places and mixed with mokume, tightly packed or tending to stand, with ji-nie thick and fine, chikei entering, and on two blades a faint utsuri. The temper is set on notare: on the signed tachi a very shallow notare with frequent small ashi in the upper half and gunome and ko-midare in the lower; elsewhere a ko-notare with gunome and tobiyaki, or a shallow notare enclosing ko-midare and ko-gunome[[c:1]], with ashi and yo, sunagashi and kinsuji, and ko-nie adhering well. The boshi runs in midare and rises to a pointed return, at times swept with hakikake.
The attributed katana show the full Nanbokucho shape. Greatly shortened, they are wide with a shallow sori and an o-kissaki, and of one the published sources write that it 「時代の特色を示し、地刃に同派の特長が濃い」. The broadest of them, designated Tokubetsu Juyo in 2018, has little taper and a thick kasane; its hamon is a nie-laden midare strongly coloured by Soshu-den, rich in activity within the ha and along its edge, its boshi rising to a point, and the published sources call it 「迫力ある豪壮な作風が顕現された同工極めの逸品」. It comes with a late Edo uchigatana koshirae in black ishime lacquer with scattered mijin-gai. Another katana, its kasane planed thin, looks at first glance like a naginata-naoshi and has a tsuchi-otoshi-style nijuba on the omote.
Yoshihiro has four designated works on record: two Tokubetsu Juyo, the signed Ikeda tachi and an attributed katana, and two Juyo katana, both attributed. Fujishiro ranks him Jo-jo saku, and the Toko Taikan rates him at 600. The provenance on record is the Bizen Ikeda family and Ikeda Tsugumasa, and the signed tachi is in private hands.
Sadakuni (貞國) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Tokujū. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Other smiths
Sadayuki (定行) — Mainline · 1350-1352. Sadayuki belonged to the Sa school of Chikuzen Province, a lineage that emerged in the early Nanbokucho period and broke decisively from the classical styles previously characteristic of Kyushu workmanship. Traditionally regarded as a student of Yukihiro, with an alternative transmission placing him under Yasuyoshi, Sadayuki is recorded with an extant date of Shohei 12 (1357) in the *Umetada Oshigata*, placing his activity squarely at the zenith of the Nanbokucho period. One theory holds that he later relocated to Aki Province. Signed works are few, and the overwhelming majority of attributions rely on *kinzogan-mei* appraisals, including examples authenticated by Hon'ami Koshitsu.
The designated pieces exhibit the unmistakable technical vocabulary of the Sa lineage in both *jihada* and *hamon*. The forging shows *itame* mixed with *mokume* and *nagare-hada*, with fine *hada-dachi*, thickly applied *ji-nie*, and abundant *chikei*, producing a bright and luminous *jigane*. The *hamon* is characteristically founded on a shallow *ko-notare* mixed with *gunome*, *ko-gunome*, and *togariba*, with strongly adhering *nie* and frequent *hataraki* including *kinsuji*, *sunagashi*, and intermittent *yubashiri* at the *yakigashira*. The *boshi* enters *midare-komi* and turns back with a pointed tendency, often showing *hakikake*. Where the *nie* is particularly thick, *nie-kuzure* appears along the *habuchi*, lending the temper a vigorous and expressive character.
Sadayuki's works preserve the heroic proportions of their era: wide *mihaba*, extended *chu-kissaki*, and generous *hiraniku* in the long blades, and *sunnobi* *hira-zukuri* forms in the shorter pieces. Both *ji* and *ha* are consistently bright and clear, confirming the Sa school's refined sensibility, and the sound condition of these blades attests to the enduring quality of Sadayuki's forge craft.
Akikuni (顯國) — Mainline · 1352-1375. Akikuni of Nagato is represented in the record by a katana with a folded-over signature (*orikaeshi-mei*) reading Choshu-ju Akikuni, certified Juyo Bijutsuhin on 23 February 1940 while in the possession of Kimura Minokichi of Hyogo. The published sources identify its maker with the Akikuni whom the meikan place in the Choshu Yasuyoshi group in the Nanbokucho period, around the Bunna era (1352 to 1356): 「この顕国は銘鑑に長州安吉門、南北朝時代、文和[[c:1]]頃と伝えられているものに該当するであろう」. They add a remark attributed to Honma, that among the works of Choshu Akikuni he had examined this is the oldest and of good workmanship[[c:2]].
The name was carried by more than one smith. A later paper records that the meikan list six smiths called Akikuni, from the Bunna-era smith of the Sa Yasuyoshi line to an Oei-era smith said to be the son of Choshu Yasuyoshi[[c:3]]. The same paper notes that signed works by Akikuni are comparatively few, with dated examples known from Oei and, later still, from Bun'an.
The Juyo Bijutsuhin katana, though shortened, keeps a wide body and a large point. The published sources call it an imposing shape: 「折返銘ながら身幅広く大切先の豪壮な姿である」. Its blade measures two shaku four sun. The *itame* stands slightly, with *chikei* and abundant *ji-nie*. The hamon is a *ko-nie-deki* *suguha* in tone mixed with shallow *notare*, and *sunagashi* runs through it. Paired grooves are cut on both faces and run off into the tang.
A second katana, designated Juyo Token at the 63rd session in 2017, is ō-suriage and carries a gold-powder attribution to Choshu Akikuni by Hon'ami Koson; the published sources date it to the late Nanbokucho period. Its *itame* is mixed with *nagare-hada* and stands in places, with *ji-nie*, a faint whitish *utsuri*-like effect and a somewhat dark steel colour. The hamon is based on *naka-suguha* with a slight *notare* feeling, mixed with *gunome* and *ko-gunome*. *Ashi* enter frequently, *nie* is well attached, and *hotsure*, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* appear along and within the edge. A cut mark near the *monouchi* survives from its working life.
The published sources read the two blades together. They find the later katana the most rustic in manner among the blades attributed to this smith, yet of a piece with the Juyo Bijutsuhin sword bearing the *orikaeshi-mei*, and so judge the attribution correct[[c:4]]. They single out its activity within the hamon, where *nie* gathers well, *ashi* enter freely and *sunagashi* covers the whole[[c:5]].
Between them the two papers give Akikuni a consistent manner: a *suguha*-based temper rich in *nie* and *sunagashi*, over an *itame* that tends to stand. The Bunna-period katana remains the anchor of the attribution, and the Juyo blade is judged against it.
Akikuni (顯國) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Akikuni (顯國) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Akikuni is the Nagato continuation of the Samonji line. The published sources place him among the later disciples of Sa Yasuyoshi, taken on after Yasuyoshi carried the Sa name out of Chikuzen and into Chochu, and the reference works on signatures add that he was the son of Chochu Yasuyoshi. The same works caution that the name is not quite a single man: they list six smiths who bore it, beginning with a smith of the Bunwa era in the line of Sa Yasuyoshi and including the Oei-period hand described as the son of Chochu Yasuyoshi, so that Chochu Akikuni is best read as a name handed down through the Nagato workshop. Among his extant dated works the earliest are of the Oei era, with later examples reaching into the Bunan years, which sets him in the early Muromachi period carrying a provincial, late reading of the Soshu manner the Sa line had taken up.
The published sources state his temper in a single sentence of connoisseurship, that his work includes both blades in suguha and blades in which nie develops strongly and a linked gunome-midare is formed[[c:1]]. The latter is the manner they call representative. On his tachi dated Oei 31 the gunome-midare runs linked, with ashi entering and the nie adhering, and on the signed wakizashi the same temper carries small notare, a deep nioi, with sunagashi and kinsuji drawn through. The suguha manner appears in its fuller form on his broadest katana, a chu-suguha base bearing a slight notare with gunome and ko-gunome, ko-ashi and yo entering, the ko-nie uneven in places with slight hotsure and small yubashiri, kinsuji and sunagashi present, the nioiguchi tending to sink. The boshi answers the temper face by face: straight into a ko-maru with a long return finely swept in hakikake on the suguha piece, midare-komi turning back with a pointed tendency on the mumei katana, and on the Oei 31 tachi yaki-kuzure on one face with a straight o-maru on the other.
The jigane is itame, often standing, mixed with mokume and nagare-hada, with thick ji-nie and fine chikei-like lines of steel. On his broadest katana a faint shirake-utsuri stands and the steel carries a slightly blackish cast, the marks of a peripheral late-Sa forge rather than the bright Chikuzen ji. Bo-hi are carved on both faces, at times with companion grooves running partway up the blade. Of that broadest katana the published sources write that there is a rustic character to the workmanship which, with the large kissaki, conveys a vigorous, commanding spirit[[c:2]], and they note that large-scale blades of this kind are scarce within his oeuvre, its imposing form resembling that of an orikaeshi-mei katana by the same smith certified before the war as an Important Art Object.
The signature itself is part of the kantei. Signed works are comparatively few, the standard mei cut in five characters as Chochu-ju Akikuni[[c:3]], and among the Oei-dated examples some add the title Saemon no Jo (左衛門尉) while others state the place of residence as Chochu Setozaki junin[[c:4]]. One katana carries the mei folded over on a shortened tang, an orikaeshi-mei (折返銘), the omote groove carried through into the folded portion. Because the reference works gather several Akikuni under the one name, a date and a place-name in the inscription do as much to anchor a piece as the manner of the temper. His tachi of Oei 31 is valued by the published sources for exactly this reason, the representative example of his connected gunome-midare in which his characteristic features are readily seen, both ji and ha well executed, the Oei date itself prized as documentary material[[c:5]].
The lineage to Sa Yasuyoshi is the axis on which his attributions turn, and the published sources argue it from both sides. On a mumei katana shaped like a shortened Nanbokucho tachi they concede that the workmanship does not connect directly to Yasuyoshi's own style, yet accept the handed-down attribution all the same[[c:6]]. On the signed wakizashi they read the positive case, finding in both the jihada and the hamon a current of workmanship descending from Yasuyoshi[[c:7]]. Taken together the two readings place Akikuni at the provincial far end of the Sa tradition, carrying the Samonji manner into Nagato and into the early Muromachi period with a coarser, more nie-driven character than the Chikuzen source.
Akikuni is a smith of the standing the collector meets through his designated blades rather than his name. Fujishiro grades him Jo saku, and his record on the books is five works at the Juyo level, none raised to the higher designations, a profile that fits a fine provincial hand of the Sa descent. Provenance, where it survives, is fitting to that reading: his work descended in the great houses of his own province, the Ouchi of Suo and Nagato and the Mori who succeeded them, a transmission that reads like the local history of the blade. Recorded ownership beyond that is thin, as it usually is for a smith of this rank, and no museum holding can be claimed from the record. A signed and dated Akikuni is not a blade that comes often to market, and when one does it is met as the work of a well-documented branch smith of the Sa line, a vigorous early-Muromachi piece carrying the Samonji descent into Nagato, valuable to the student of the school for the directness with which it shows a country forge working in the old tradition.
Haruakira (治劍) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Hiroyoshi (弘吉) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Morihiro (盛廣) — Mainline · 1334-1338. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Morisada (守貞) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Moriyoshi (盛吉) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadaaki (貞秋) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadahiro (貞弘) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadakiyo (貞清) — Mainline. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadayoshi (貞吉) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Sadayoshi is a smith of the Chikuzen Sa school, the line of Samonji, working in the middle of the Nanbokuchō period. The published sources place him among the Sue-Sa, the second wave of pupils who carried the school forward after Ō-Sa: "Sadayoshi is said to have been the son of Yasuyoshi and is traditionally placed among the smiths active around the Bunna era"[[c:1]]. Yasuyoshi was himself a son of Samonji, so Sadayoshi sits two generations down from the founder, in the company the commentary names together time and again, Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi. The Chikuzen Sa school had emerged in the early Nanbokuchō and broken decisively from the older, classical Kyūshū manner, establishing a new style in which both *jigane* and *hamon* are bright and clear and in which *chikei* and *kinsuji* stand out; Sadayoshi is one of the heirs who forged in that idiom.
The central fact of his record is its near-total reliance on attribution. The published sources state plainly that "extant signed works are extremely few"[[c:2]], and almost everything that survives under his name is the *ō-suriage*, *mumei* katana judged to him. What allows the judges to single him out of the school is one feature, and the commentary names it without hesitation: a calm, *suguha*-based temper. They observe that "among unsigned blades appraised to the Sa group, one frequently encounters pieces whose tempering is founded on *suguha*"[[c:3]], and it is this restrained manner, long held the key point in appraising his work, that resolves a Sa-group blade specifically to Sadayoshi. On one katana the appraisal is put as simply as it can be, that "because the overall impression is comparatively gentle and quiet, it is reasonable to determine the attribution to Sadayoshi"[[c:4]].
The *jigane* is the Sōshū-derived steel he shares with the whole Sa line. He forges a standing *itame*, mixed with *mokume* and a flowing *nagare-hada*, the grain conspicuous and at times opening; over it the *ji-nie* lies thick and the *chikei* enter frequently, the steel inclining at times toward a dark tone, and on several blades a faint, whitish *utsuri* rises along the *shinogi*. Above the *jigane* the temper is a wide *suguha* or *chū-suguha* with a shallow *notare*, into which a little *gunome* and *ko-gunome* are mixed; *ashi* and *yō* enter, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run, the *nie* gathers thickly, and the *nioiguchi* at times tends to subside. The *bōshi* is the school's constant and his most reliable structural tell, rising with a thrusting *tsukiage* tendency to a sharply pointed tip and swept with *hakikake*, the feature the judges repeatedly call typical of the Sa lineage. A *bō-hi* is generally carved through.
Within that one *suguha*-led manner the attributions divide into a quieter and a more animated register. At its calmest the line is a wide *suguha* barely undulating, the activity carried in *ashi* and *yō* and in fine *kinsuji* rather than in any tall pattern. In a number of blades the same foundation opens out: the *yakihaba* widens, the line takes a *ko-notare* with *gunome* and angular elements, the *nie* thickens and grows uneven with coarser grains, *hotsure* frays the edge, *uchi-noke* and a *nijūba*-like doubling appear, and *yubashiri* or small *tobiyaki* collect near the *monouchi*. Even at its most active the body of the temper stays *suguha*, and the pointed, swept *bōshi* holds, so the reading remains Sa-group work given to Sadayoshi. The published sources judge several of these especially well made among works attributed to the smith, the broad *yakihaba* and abundant *nie* lending a powerful, splendid impression in concert with the bold Nanbokuchō shape. The blades are wide-bodied with little taper and an extended *chū-kissaki* or *ō-kissaki*, several refashioned from *naginata*, and a handful carry a later cutting inscription in gold inlay or, in one case, only a red-lacquer character on the tang, which the judges read not as the founder's name in the narrow sense but as a mark of the Sa group as a whole.
What distinguishes Sadayoshi within his own school is exactly the thing that makes him hard to find. The commentary reads the Sa group as a line of comparatively few individual features, the smiths so close in hand that their unsigned work is hard to separate; against that, his calm *suguha* and his pointed, swept *bōshi* are what carry a blade to his name rather than to a brother's. His bright, *chikei*-laden *jigane* and the *suguha*-toned edge set him apart from the more flamboyant *gunome* and *notare* of the wider Sa circle, and his is read as the quiet, classical face of the late school, the manner in which the Sōshū inheritance is held in restraint.
Fujishiro grades Sadayoshi Jō-jō saku, and his standing in the *Tōkō Taikan* is recorded at the middle rank. He has no National Treasures, and his record runs entirely through the modern designation tiers: a substantial body of his attributed katana, more than twenty, has reached the Jūyō rank across more than a dozen sessions of shinsa, several of them judged especially fine among works given to the smith. Provenance is thin in the published record; of recorded whereabouts one blade is held by the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures, the rest passing through private hands. Because a reliably signed Sadayoshi is among the rarest things in the late Sa record, the collector encounters him almost always through these unsigned, shortened katana, and even those come to market only from time to time and with patience. A blade securely papered as Sa Sadayoshi is not beyond reach in the way a National Treasure is, but it is a quiet, considered acquisition, valued less for a famous name than for the calm *suguha* hand by which the judges still know him.
Yasuyoshi (安吉) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Yasuyoshi of Chōshū, the successor generation of the Sa-school smith of that name, is known through three Juyo designations: a wakizashi dated in the Ōei era (13th session, 1965) and two signed tantō (49th session, 2003, and 61st session, 2015). The published sources trace the name to an earlier Yasuyoshi, a son of Ō-Sa, who is said to have moved from Chikuzen to Nagato, and they record that 「その子孫が長州に栄え、これを長州左と称する」 (his descendants flourished in Chōshū, and this line is called Chōshū Sa). Works signed as Chōshū Yasuyoshi survive with Eiwa and Ōei dates, and of these the sources write that 「応永年紀のものは作柄・銘振りから明らかに代替りの安吉と鑑せられるものである」 (those dated Ōei are, from their workmanship and signature style, clearly to be appraised as the successor Yasuyoshi); whether the Eiwa pieces belong to the late years of the first generation or to the successor is left as a subject for future research.
The dated wakizashi is the anchor of this generation. It is a *hira-zukuri* blade with *mitsu-mune* and only a slight *sori*; the *jigane* is *itame* that flows into *masame* toward the edge, with *ji-nie*; the *hamon* is a shallow, broad *notare* with coarse *nie* adhering well and *sunagashi* running frequently, and the *boshi* tends toward *muneyaki* and *yakitsume*. The tang carries Yasuyoshi on the *omote* and the date with the added inscription Chōshū-jū on the *ura*. The sources judge that its workmanship carries the character of the Sa line, and add that 「応永年紀のあるものは他に類がなく、資料的にも極めて貴重である」 (no other example with an Ōei date is known, which makes it extremely precious as documentary material).
The 2003 tantō is *ubu* with a rather large two-character signature cut with a thick chisel, and because its hand is close to the Ōei-dated example it is assigned to the Yasuyoshi active from the end of the Nanbokuchō period into the Ōei era. It is broad, extended in length and somewhat thin in *kasane*. The *jigane* is *itame* mixed with *mokume* and *o-itame*, flowing in places with the grain standing out, with fine *ji-nie* thickly applied, *chikei*, and a slightly blackish steel colour; the *hamon* is *ko-notare* mixed with *gunome*, well covered in *nie* with patches of coarser *nie*, *hotsure*, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi*. Against his usual style the sources find the forging rougher, the temper larger in pattern and the *nie* stronger, so that the blade 「些か野趣をおびた作域を見せている」 (shows a range of work with a certain rustic flavour), and its long, deeply returned *boshi* with uneven *nie* adds to the force of the wide, long form.
The 2015 tantō, recorded under the same name without a generation being assigned, is also a large piece in the nine-sun range. The sources describe the usual Chōshū Yasuyoshi manner as one in which 「作柄は通常、刃沸が弱く匂勝ちの刃文で、刃に近く棒映りを現し、備前気質の混在した感のあるもの」 (the workmanship ordinarily has a *nioi*-dominant temper with weak *nie*, *bo-utsuri* near the edge, and a sense of Bizen character mixed in). This blade departs from it, with thick *nie*, prominent *sunagashi*, a bright and clear *nioiguchi*, and an *ura boshi* that breaks up into strong, flame-like *hakikake*; a two-character signed blade designated at the 31st Juyo session shows the same aspect and is accepted as one mode of his work. The sources see in it a likeness to Ō-Sa and close by calling it 「覇気の漲った一口である」 (a blade filled with vigorous spirit).
No provenance is recorded for these three blades; at designation the wakizashi was held by the Iijima family of Ibaraki and the 2003 tantō by Katō Nagakazu of Fukushima.
Yasuyoshi (安吉) — Mainline · 1379-1384. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasuyoshi (安吉) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasuyuki (安行) — Mainline · 1312-1317. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasuyuki (安行) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yukiaki (行觀) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yukisue (行末) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Hirosada (弘貞) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Ienaga (家永) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Ienaga (家永) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Kunitada (國忠) — Mainline · 1429-1441. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Morikuni (盛國) — Mainline · 1379-1381. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Moritsuna (守綱) — Mainline · 1375-1379. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Moriyoshi (盛吉) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Moriyuki (盛行) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Muneshige (宗重) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Nagahide (長秀) — Mainline · 1444-1449. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Nagahiro (長廣) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Nagaie (永家) — Mainline · 1449-1452. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Naonaga (直永) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Nobushige (信重) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Norikuni (教國) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Norimitsu (教光) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Norimitsu (教光) — Mainline · 1501-1504. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Norimitsu (教光) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Norinaga (教永) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Oishi (大石) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sa (左) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sa (左) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sa (左) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadafusa (貞房) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Sadahide (貞秀) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Shigezane (茂實) — Mainline · 1501-1504. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Takemune (武宗) — Mainline · 1624-1644. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tanenori (種則) — Mainline · 1573-1592. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tokisaki (時前) — Mainline · 1387-1389. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tokiyuki (時行) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tomohiro (朝廣) — Mainline · 1489-1492. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tomotada (友忠) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Toshinaga (耆長) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Toshinobu (利延) — Mainline · 1441-1444. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Toshiyuki (俊行) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Tsugunaga (着永) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasuhiro (安弘) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasumori (安盛) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yasuyoshi (安吉) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yoshinaga (良永) — Mainline · 1455-1457. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yoshizane (吉眞) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yukiaki (行觀) — Mainline · 1394-1428. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yukihiro (行弘) — Mainline · 1381-1384. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.
Yukisuke (行助) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Chikuzen Sa School.