The most celebrated tradition in the history of the Japanese sword. From Shintōgo Kunimitsu in Kamakura, the Sōshū school perfected the nie-laden steel that reached its apex in Masamune — whose Ten Disciples carried the style across the provinces — before the late Odawara workshop continued it under the Hōjō into the Edo period.
Era
1288 — 1868
Members
42
Kokuhō
20
Jūbun
60
Jūbi
61
Tokujū
146
Jūyō
545
For Sale
23
Phase 01
相州Sōshū1288 – 1385
18smiths20Kokuhō59Jūbun59Jūbi146Tokujū499Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
Phase 02
末相州Sue-Sōshū1356 – 1868
24smiths0Kokuhō1Jūbun2Jūbi0Tokujū46Jūyō
Other smiths of this phase— students & parallel lines
The The Sagami Sōshū School (相州), active 1288–1868 in Sagami Province across 42 documented smiths: 20 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 60 Jūbun, 61 Jūbi, 146 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 545 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · Sōshū (相州) · 1288 – 1385
Steel "bright and clear," with thick *ji-nie* and *chikei* entering frequently, is the constant the NBTHK returns to in nearly every blade of this phase, and it marks the moment the Soshu tradition reached its summit in Sagami. The chapter opens when Shintogo Kunimitsu carried the refined *ko-itame* and restrained *suguha* of the Awataguchi line into Kamakura and began laying *nie* more thickly across both *ji* and *ha*; from that foundation the tradition advanced through Yukimitsu and reached its peak in Masamune, whom official records place "at the very summit." The sampled blades cluster around the masters who carried this manner forward: Go Yoshihiro of Matsukura-go in Etchu, counted among the *Masamune Juttetsu* and represented here by numerous *ō-suriage* katana, and the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who stand "next after Sadamune" and extend the phase with dated works running from Enbun 2 (1357) to Shitoku 4 (1387). The window spans late Kamakura proportions through the broad Enbun-Joji forms of the fourteenth century.
The phase reads as *itame-hada* mixed with *mokume*, often tending toward standing or flowing grain, carrying very fine *ji-nie* laid thickly with *chikei* threaded densely throughout; over this the *hamon* is founded on *notare* mixed with *gunome*, *ko-gunome*, and a *chōji* flavor, with deep *nioi*, thick *nie*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running well, the *nioiguchi* bright and clear. This is precisely the distance the school traveled from its Awataguchi roots: where that foundation held a tight, restrained *suguha*, the Go katana break into wide *yakihaba*, *nie-kuzure*, and *yubashiri* (one setsumei records *nie* that "gathers, thickens, and congeals"), with a *bōshi* tempered so deeply it becomes *ichimai* and sweeps in *hakikake*. Go himself sits one step calmer than Masamune and Norishige, his *chikei* and *kinsuji* more reserved but his *ji* and *ha* a step brighter, the *hada* often masame-inclined; one wide-*suguha* example with *ko-midare* shows how close the quiet end of his range stays to the Kunimitsu manner. The Nanbokucho turn is sharper still: Hiromitsu and Akihiro orchestrate *hitatsura* through intermingled *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* over *gunome-chōji*, including the round-headed *dango-chōji*, on wide *hira-zukuri* *sunobi* tanto and wakizashi, an effect "not seen in earlier Soshu works." Here the classic phase divides from the later Sue-Soshu continuation, whose Muromachi smiths inherited the vocabulary without the depth of *nie* and clarity of steel recorded in these blades.
A collector separates this phase because it holds the recognized masters at full strength. Go achieved the highest designation through the unmistakable brightness of his *ji-ha* alone, despite no surviving signed works, and the sample carries the weight of that reputation: the *meibutsu* Nakagawa-Go owned by a retainer of Oda Nobunaga and later the Tokugawa house, the "Kabuto-giri" Go inlaid by Hon'ami appraisal, the Okubo-Go transmitted in the Odawara Okubo family, and blades held by the Uwajima Date and Chikuzen Kuroda houses, with names recorded in the *Kyoho Meibutsu-cho*. The kantei points are concrete and repeated: Go's active *nie-ashi*, masame tendency, and *ichimai* *bōshi*; Akihiro's dated five-character "Soshu Akihiro" signatures, whose shift from full to abbreviated dating after Eiwa lets a viewer place a blade in time; and the near-indistinguishability of Hiromitsu and Akihiro, parsed only by scale and the prominence of *dango-chōji*. These are the works that define the Soshu apex, against which both the Awataguchi foundation and the Sue-Soshu aftermath are measured.
Masamune (正宗) — Mainline · 1288-1293. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. The published sources place Masamune of Sagami among the disciples of Shintogo Kunimitsu, the three smiths Yukimitsu, Norishige and Masamune who further emphasized *chikei*, *kinsuji* and *nie* within the Soshu tradition (*Soshu-den*) that Kunimitsu had founded, and led it toward completion. Masamune in particular, the NBTHK writes, handled several kinds of steel of differing carbon content with skill, and, by bringing the subtleties of *nie* to their highest refinement, did much to elevate the artistic quality of the Japanese sword. Among the three the same notes return again to a single judgment: that his *ji* and *ha* are "the most refined"[[c:1]], and that he stands at the very summit of the tradition.
The characteristic manner the published descriptions assign to him is a *midareba* whose main tone is *notare*, over which the temper rises intensely active: the *nie* becomes dense and breaks and clots, *kinsuji* leap and move, *nie* that spills into the *ji* forms *yubashiri*, and conspicuous *chikei* are woven throughout the *jigane*. This, the sources say, is a richly varied manner that may be called "Masamune's own invention"[[c:2]], and they return to one image for it: the impression of viewing *haboku* (破墨) splashed-ink landscape painting. The forging is *itame* mixed with *mokume*, with a standing tendency in places, *ji-nie* thick and *chikei* frequent; the *boshi* runs *midare-komi*, at times flame-like on one face. It is in this freedom that "the exquisiteness of *nie*"[[c:3]] reaches its limit.
The published record describes his work in two broad modes: one that, like Norishige, appears to take its models from old Ko-Hoki and Ko-Bizen pieces, and the *notare*-based *nie* mode above. Where his manner approaches Norishige the notes mark the kinship plainly, writing of one blade whose large *chikei* and thick *yubashiri* "recall the matsukawa-hada"[[c:4]] of Etchu Norishige; yet on close examination, the same source records, the *jigane* shows neither the blackish tone nor the clouded iron color of Norishige, the *nie* surpasses his in brilliance, and the *nakago*, tapering toward the tip rather than flared at the *kurijiri*, decides the appraisal for Masamune.
As to form, the published sources record that his *katana* run either to standard *mihaba* with *chu-kissaki* or to a broader width with a slightly extended *chu-kissaki*, while his *tanto* tend to the eight-*sun* range with shallow *uchizori*. From these points his principal period is reckoned the late Kamakura period, the lower limit reaching the beginning of Nanbokucho, so that the old account that he died in Koei 2 (1343) cannot, the notes say, be dismissed out of hand.
He is *Sai-jo saku* in Fujishiro's grading, and the weight of designation behind his name is the heaviest in the field: nine of his blades are National Treasures, the most of any smith, with ten Important Cultural Properties, and beneath them twenty-three Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty-four Juyo. Almost all that survives is *osuriage-mumei* attribution, accepted as the work of a high-rank Soshu master (*Soshu joko*); signed pieces are exceedingly rare, four blades in the official record against fifty-seven unsigned: three *tanto*, and the Meibutsu Kinoshita Masamune, the *tachi* of which the published sources write that among Masamune's rare ubu *tachi* it is the only one whose signature cannot be denied. The Meibutsu Ashiya Masamune carries a *shu-mei*, a red-lacquer attribution of Hon'ami Kocho, and the Meibutsu Ikeda Masamune *katana*, an Important Cultural Property, a gold-inlaid attribution by the Hon'ami: inscriptions added by later appraisers, not the smith's own signature.
The provenance recorded against his blades is exceptional, sixty-three works carrying a history through the men who held the country: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Ishida Mitsunari, Honda Heihachiro Tadakatsu, Kobayakawa Takakage, the Maeda Family, the Owari Tokugawa Family and the Imperial Family. Nineteen of his blades are locked forever in the National Treasure and Important Cultural Property tiers and can never trade; the rest are held largely by the Tokyo National Museum, the Kyoto National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Maeda Foundation, Eisei Bunko and Atsuta Jingu. A Masamune coming into open hands is among the rarest events in the field.
Sadamune (貞宗) — Mainline · 1329-1331. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. At its twenty-seventh Tokubetsu Juyo session the NBTHK designated the O-Horidashi Sadamune, a katana of the Kyoho Meibutsu-cho whose name records that Tokugawa Ieyasu discovered it at Fushimi; Ieyasu gave it to Maeda Toshitsune in Genna 2 (1616). Its maker, Sadamune, called Hikoshiro (彦四郎), was the pupil of Masamune and by tradition later his adopted son, by some records his son, and succeeded him as the second generation of the Soshu mainline, working from the very end of Kamakura into early Nanbokucho. The published sources repeat that for him "no certain signed work exists at all"[[c:1]]: the entire oeuvre is mumei, settled by Hon'ami kinzogan and shu-mei attribution inscriptions and by origami, and his manner is known by triangulation, for "what bridges Masamune and Nobukuni is Sadamune"[[c:2]].
The kantei line against the master is qualitative and constant. In nearly half of his designation texts the NBTHK states the standing formula that "compared with Masamune, his appeal lies on the whole in a calm, relaxed notare-based midareba"[[c:3]]. One text details the contrast: the forging somewhat calmer than Masamune's, the hada standing less, the ji-nie sparser, the workings of kinsuji and inazuma somewhat scarcer and quieter. His own positive signature is the chisel. He is the carving master of Soshu: bonji, suken, gomabashi, sanko-ken and kurikara recur far beyond anything on Masamune, Yukimitsu or Norishige, and "the twin grooves were a specialty of Sadamune"[[c:4]], cut on katana and tanto alike, a meibutsu katana being named Futasujihi Sadamune for them. The published sources add that the horimono is precisely what was not seen in Masamune: his carving "follows the line of Daishinbo, excelling in kasane-bori, the layered relief carving, which he passed to his pupil Nobukuni"[[c:5]].
The jigane is an itame mixing mokume, on the finest pieces kneaded close and minutely covered in ji-nie, with chikei entering finely and incessantly, at times with a slightly standing tendency. Over it the hamon runs as a shallow notare mixing gunome, ko-gunome and ko-choji, ashi and yo entering, the nioiguchi deep, the nie thick, bright and clear, kinsuji and sunagashi working through the ha, hotsure and yubashiri at the habuchi; the boshi is midare-komi or sugu with ko-maru and hakikake, often with a pointed tendency. The texts name as the mark of his deki "the beautifully shining nie peculiar to the top rank of Soshu-den work"[[c:6]]. Around this mainstream two poles stand. "Suguha is rare"[[c:7]] in him: the few quiet pieces carry a suguha-cho with shallow notare feeling and ko-gunome spaced wide, and a Tokubetsu Juyo tanto in this manner is said to recall the Kokuho meibutsu Fushimi Sadamune. A prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin tanto in suguha shows how such quiet pieces are settled: Honma Junji read its sugata, chikei, kinsuji and nie as Soshu-den work of the upper rank, and gave it to Sadamune "from the accomplished carving of bonji and suken and the ken-form nakago tip"[[c:8]]. At the livelier pole the gunome grows prominent, rough nie mixes in places, tobiyaki and yubashiri scatter and the boshi sweeps up in flame-like hakikake; a few works show a hitatsura-like feeling, yet the texts measure the limit exactly, "never going so far as Hiromitsu and Akihiro"[[c:9]].
His sugata divides into two types for tachi and tanto alike, and the NBTHK dates each blade by which build it shows. The earlier keeps the Kamakura-end style the texts call old-fashioned (古調): blades of ordinary width with chu-kissaki, and small tanto with little or no sori, the smallest of them likened to the meibutsu Taikogane Sadamune. The later is the grand Nanbokucho build that carries most of the surviving work: o-suriage mumei katana of wide mihaba with little taper and an extended point, and wide sunnobi hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi of thin kasane, very often ubu. On the ubu pieces the nakago itself is a tell, funagata with a ken-form tip and katte-sagari yasurime, called "exactly the rule of Sadamune"[[c:10]]. Kata-kiriha-zukuri was a construction he favored, the celebrated example being the Kiriha Sadamune handed down in the Kishu Tokugawa family as the sword of its first lord Yorinobu. Old Edo-period papers are sometimes corrected at designation: blades papered to Takagi Sadamune or to Yukimitsu have been re-judged as Soshu Sadamune.
Among Masamune's students the published sources call him the one who carries the master's manner most faithfully, his skill next to the master's; at the top of his range the boundary runs against Masamune himself. Of a Juyo Bijutsuhin katana formerly of Ikeda Nakahiro, Honma Junji remarked that the hamon shows more variation than the usual work, a flame-like boshi and brilliant nie, and that he "would rather see it as Masamune"[[c:11]]. Downstream the same triangulation holds: his gentler notare and his horimono are exactly what reappear in Nobukuni, and it is through Sadamune that the Soshu carving tradition passes to that pupil and his line.
Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku, and eighty-eight designated works stand on record: four National Treasures, twelve Important Cultural Properties, three prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, twenty-three Tokubetsu Juyo and forty-six Juyo, sixty-nine blades in the two upper NBTHK tiers together. The meibutsu carried by his attributions are many. The four National Treasures are the Kikko Sadamune katana, with a tortoiseshell-and-flower crest engraved on its tang, the Terasawa Sadamune tanto, called a typical work of his, the Fushimi Sadamune tanto with its Hon'ami shu-mei, and the Tokuzen'in Sadamune ko-wakizashi, "especially flamboyant among his works"[[c:12]]. Beside the O-Horidashi stand the Kiriha, the Zentokuin given by the shogun Hidetada to Maeda Toshinaga, the Ujiie of the Kyoho Meibutsu-cho, the Taikogane, the Futasujihi, and the Shishi Sadamune, a treasured sword of Toyotomi Hideyoshi burned in the fall of Osaka and retempered by the first-generation Yasutsugu. Forty blades carry recorded provenance: one katana is recorded as presented by the shogun Ienobu and worn by Ietsugu, another was given by Tsunayoshi to Yanagisawa Yoshisato in Genroku 10 (1697), and transmissions run through the Owari and Kishu Tokugawa, Maeda, Date, Mori, Ikeda, Satake, Hachisuka and Takatsukasa houses. For the collector very little of this can ever trade. The National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties are patrimony outside the market, and recorded examples rest in the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Mitsui Memorial Museum and the Sano Art Museum. What can realistically be met is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, sixty-nine blades, nearly all o-suriage mumei katana or sunnobi wakizashi resting on Hon'ami attributions; such a blade comes to market only rarely, and a piece carrying the twin grooves or the layered relief carving, the chisel his master never showed, is an event when it does.
Norishige (則重) — Mainline · 1308-1314. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Norishige worked in Etchū at the end of Kamakura, a pupil of Shintōgo Kunimitsu and a brother-student of Yukimitsu and Masamune, with whom he carried the Sōshū tradition to its maturity. Older texts such as the Kokon Mei Zukushi list him among Masamune's ten disciples, but the dated blades that survive, in the Shōwa, Engen and Ōan years, and the form of his tachi and tantō, lead the published sources to read him by the Muromachi-era account as a pupil of Shintōgo Kunimitsu and a brother-student of Masamune, perhaps a little the earlier of the two.
The common manner, and the one that bears his name, is matsukawa-hada (松皮肌). His itame stands boldly, often in a large pattern mixed with mokume, and through it thick chikei enter abundantly until the surface reads like the bark of a pine; the steel is dark, the ji-nie thick. The published sources place him closest of the great Sōshū hands to Masamune, yet note that he expresses the changes of nie even more openly than Masamune[[c:1]], so that the ha and the hada together show what they call the ten-thousand changes of nie[[c:2]]. The bold standing grain laced with thick chikei is the mechanism behind the pine-bark, and it runs through the great majority of his work.
Over that hada runs a notare mixed with gunome in deep nie, the nioiguchi subdued and sunken, the opposite of bright Bizen, alive with abundant kinsuji and sunagashi, with nijuba and drifting yubashiri. The bōshi is a point the older profiles got wrong: it does not merely turn back in a small round, it sweeps out strongly in hakikake into a midare-komi, at times pointed or burned through in yakizume, the brushed nie of the tip continuous with the restless ji below. The sunken nioiguchi and that swept, nie-broken bōshi are as much his signature as the bark itself.
There is a second manner, and it is the refined one the connoisseur prizes. On his rare signed tachi and his early dated signed tantō the hada does not stand as much as usual; the forging tightens to a calmer fine ko-itame, the ji and ha both quieter, the steel brighter and more clearly lit, the chikei and kinsuji more restrained. A representative signed tachi is marked as calmer in ji and ha than his usual work[[c:3]], its small-notare temper sunk over the swirling Norishige grain still legible beneath; an early signed tantō of Shōwa 3 is read as standing less, brighter, and connecting to Shintōgo Kunimitsu and Yukimitsu[[c:4]], his earlier hand. This fine, bright forging is not a lapse from the matsukawa but a distinct and highly regarded facet of him.
For recognition the two manners share the same core: thick dark chikei, a subdued sunken nioiguchi, kinsuji and sunagashi running busily, and the swept hakikake bōshi. The subdued nioiguchi parts him from the bright nioiguchi of Bizen; the openly varied nie and the heavier standing grain part him from Masamune, whose chikei runs through a tighter, quieter jigane. Where the bark is absent, on the fine signed pieces, the chikei and the sunken nioiguchi carry the attribution. Fujishiro grades him Sai-jō saku, and among all swordsmiths his Tokubetsu-Jūyō count stands near the very top.
His signed work is itself a rarity: it is mostly tantō, and signed tachi are so few that an earlier appraisal could count only two[[c:5]]; the designated corpus today holds four — two Important Cultural Properties and two Tokubetsu-Jūyō — the rest of his work ō-suriage and mumei. The named blades carry the histories of the great houses: a signed tachi passed from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's circle and through Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, who bestowed it at the Yanagisawa residence, into the Yanagisawa family, while others descended through the Shimazu, the Maeda, the Hosokawa and the Ii. A few of his own works look back to Ko-Bizen and Ko-Hōki for an archaic flavor. His pine-bark forging did not die with him; his pupil Tametsugu carried it west, where it became the mark of the later Etchū smiths.
Kunimitsu (國光) — Mainline · 1293-1322. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. In the tenth month of Einin 1 (1293), a blade left the Kamakura forge of Shintogo Kunimitsu bearing the long signature Kamakura junin Shintogo Kunimitsu saku[[c:1]], the oldest of his dated works. The published sources count Awataguchi Kunitsuna and the Bizen smiths Kunimune and Sukezane as the pioneers of Kamakura sword-making, settlers from older centers; the first smith of Sagami itself, who cut his Kamakura residence and his dates into the nakago, was Kunimitsu[[c:2]]. His designation texts open with one standing sentence for half a century: he is the de facto founder of the Soshu tradition, and the raising of the three masters Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige is counted his great achievement[[c:3]]. Tradition makes him the son of Awataguchi Kunitsuna and a pupil of Bizen Saburo Kunimune, a transmission the sources say still leaves room for study. His dated work runs to Gentoku 3 (1331), and a tanto of Showa 4 (1315) signed with the Buddhist name Koshin is read as late work, beside the dates of Kagen and Tokuji.
What survives is, before all else, the tanto: hira-zukuri and mitsu-mune, of ordinary width with uchizori, ubu and signed with the two-character mei. The sources state his formula in a single sentence: at a glance the work suggests Awataguchi, but the conspicuous chikei and kinsuji expressed in ji and ha point to this smith[[c:4]]. He excels in suguha across its whole range, ito, hoso, chu and hiro[[c:5]]; as a master of the tanto he is paired with Toshiro Yoshimitsu, the two named twin peaks (短刀の名手として藤四郎吉光と双璧). The temper is bright with small nie, crossed by fine kinsuji that flicker; the appraisers have called this play the old man's whiskers (翁の髭) from of old and count it the great point of his work. Honma adds a habit of the hand: the temper ordinarily hardens down past the machi toward the mune; a few authentic pieces instead drop the yaki slightly there. The boshi runs sugu to a calm ko-maru, at times lightly swept; suken, bonji and gomabashi are carved on many blades, and the kanmuri-otoshi construction recurs.
The jigane is where his Awataguchi schooling shows. He forges a ko-itame or a tightly knit itame, and lays over it ji-nie thick and often mijin, minutely fine; chikei enter incessantly, the steel is clear, and nie-utsuri frequently stands. The standing hada that came to mark the mature Soshu tradition is almost wholly absent in his own blades, and grows only by degrees in the men after him; the sources note it chiefly in his rare midare work, while the norm is a surface so refined it passes for Awataguchi until the chikei and kinsuji betray it. The ha-nie of these quiet lines is singled out as well, the light-beautiful nie the texts call particular to the upper rank of Soshu work[[c:6]]. From this refined, nie-laden suguha his three pupils drew out the nie-midare of the mature tradition.
Tachi are another matter: the sources repeat that the tachi are rare and nearly everything extant is tanto[[c:7]]; the survivors are slender, with high koshizori, funbari and a compact point, forged exactly as the tanto. The signed tachi that the sources assign by their signature to one of his sons, the meibutsu Mutsu Shintogo among them, are recorded under the later-generation Kunimitsu. The osuriage mumei katana attributed to him belong here too, and the sources are explicit that such a judgment names Kunimitsu and his three sons collectively[[c:8]]. One such blade carries a Kyoho 7 (1722) origami of Hon'ami Kochu at seventy gold pieces. A small minority departs from the suguha norm altogether: a Juyo Bijutsuhin tanto tempers its lower half in a large midare, the text stating plainly that his midareba is scarce and this piece well made. Honma reads in that scarcity the proof of the school: midareba exists, if rarely, in Kunimitsu, and suguha, if most rarely, in Masamune, the two together confirming the relation of master and pupil. A single katakiriha tanto, retempered, is the only one of its construction in his work.
The name ran on past the founder. The old registers give him three sons, Kunihiro, Kunishige and Kuniyasu, all said to have signed Kunimitsu later, and only Kunihiro is met with under his own name; since the hands cannot yet be divided by workmanship, the sources divide them by the mei. Three signed tanto recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection carry mei unlike the Aizu Shintogo, yet the entry finds no taint of a false signature in any of them and suggests that the sons may best be seen as daisaku-daimei hands for their father[[c:9]]. The founder's two-character signature follows the rule the appraisers call saji kitakanmuri (左字北冠), the interior of the kuni character cut in the left-hand manner with the crown set toward the mune, in both a fine and a thicker chisel, and the texts admit rare authentic exceptions. On tachi the mei sits on the haki-omote toward the mune; an ubu signed odachi of 96.1 cm is read as Kunihiro's Kunimitsu mei from its workmanship and deep, bold carving, and so belongs to Kunihiro. The carving is itself a legacy: the layered horimono later seen in Sadamune is judged to begin with Shintogo, and the work on his blades is connected with Daishinbo Yukei, transmitted as his pupil and a master of the chisel.
Much of this oeuvre is patrimony. Three blades hold the rank of National Treasure and ten more are Important Cultural Properties, preserved in museums, shrines and long-held collections; seven are prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, among them tanto of the Seikado and the Kurokawa Institute. The provenance roll runs deep. The meibutsu Kojiri-toshi Shintogo passed from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Osaka treasury through the fire of the summer siege, was retempered by the first Yasutsugu, and descended in the Tokugawa shogun house; his tanto are handed down in the Uesugi of Yonezawa, the Echizen Matsudaira, the Satake, the Hosokawa and the Ogasawara, and one blade entered the collection of W. A. Compton in recent times. Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku, and sixty-nine designated works stand on record, the great majority signed, most often with the two-character mei in an ubu nakago, the long signature met only a few times. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, seven and thirty-nine blades, forty-six in the two tiers together, most of them signed tanto of the classic refined manner. Such pieces are held closely and reach the market only rarely; when one does appear, it carries the signed work of the smith in whose forge the Soshu tradition began.
Yukimitsu (行光) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Yukimitsu worked in Sagami at the close of the Kamakura period, a pupil of Shintogo Kunimitsu and a brother-student of Masamune and Norishige, and he is read by the published sources as slightly the senior of the three. With those two he carried his teacher's new Soshu tradition forward and brought it to completion[[c:1]]. The surviving signed work is limited to tanto cut with the two-character mei 行光[[c:2]], so the smith is known above all through o-suriage mumei attributions, and the great houses kept his blades for that reason. Two signed tanto stand at the head of that small group. The National Treasure tanto in the Tokyo National Museum is called his typical work and is set beside the tanto listed as Gyobutsu in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection as its twin[[c:3]]. Of that second tanto the inventory writes that its kurikara relief is probably where Soshu carving begins[[c:4]].
The foundation is a Soshu jigane of unusual quality. The forging is an itame, often mixed with mokume and with passages of nagare-hada, tightly worked yet with the grain standing in places; over it the ji-nie lies thick and fine, and abundant chikei (地景) enter, the steel clear and lit. This bold itame laced with thick chikei is the constant beneath every manner he works, and the old texts say as much when they speak of the breadth of his range[[c:5]]. Whatever the temper above it, the published sources return to one point that holds across all of his work: the ji and ha are richly charged with nie, with chikei, kinsuji and yubashiri conspicuously active, displaying the marvel of nie[[c:6]].
His quieter manner descends directly from Shintogo. Over the chikei-laced jigane runs a suguha, or a suguha tending to shallow notare, mixed with ko-gunome and small ashi and yo, the nioiguchi somewhat deep and thickly covered in nie, with hotsure and drifting yubashiri at the habuchi and fine kinsuji and sunagashi within. The judges read these mumei attributions as the gentle, small-patterned side of him, noting that the unsigned attributed pieces are mostly a calm suguha or a shallow quiet midare and that the jigane is on the whole in the Shintogo manner[[c:7]]. This is the register that connects him most plainly to his teacher.
His bolder manner is the one the older profiles understated, and the boshi is where it shows. Far from a plain ko-maru that simply turns back, the temper of the point most often sweeps out strongly in hakikake (掃きかけ): the published sources record it as midare-komi with vigorous brushing that builds into a flame shape[[c:8]], the point at times pointed or burned through in yakizume, and on the calmer pieces as a straight run into a small round that still brushes out[[c:9]]. Beneath that point the temper opens into a notare-based midare with gunome and ko-gunome, sometimes a large-patterned midare reaching toward hitatsura, the kinsuji and sunagashi running busily and the nioiguchi deep and bright. The corrected reading of the boshi, ko-maru carrying conspicuous hakikake into a midare-komi and at times a pointed return, belongs with the thick chikei as a recognition key for him.
For the connoisseur the two manners share the same core, and that core is what carries an attribution when the mei is gone. The thick dark chikei, the deep bright nioiguchi of the upper Soshu hands, the busy kinsuji and sunagashi, and the swept hakikake boshi recur whether the temper above is a calm suguha or an open midare. The breadth of range is itself part of the fingerprint: where Masamune and Sadamune run hotter and larger in pattern, Yukimitsu keeps the quieter, smaller-patterned hand, and the judges place him toward Shintogo and Norishige and explicitly apart from Masamune and Sadamune. On one Tokubetsu-Juyo tanto they rate the make a notch finer than Sadamune's reach, while across his range the temper stays the more restrained. Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku, and among all swordsmiths his Tokubetsu-Juyo total stands near the very top.
Acquirability follows from the rarity. Of the works on record the overwhelming majority sit in the Tokuju and Juyo tiers, with a small number locked away forever as National Treasure and Important Cultural Property and never tradeable, and a single Kokuho among them. The recorded holdings read as a roster of the great collections and shrines: the Tokugawa Museum and the Uesugi Jinja, the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum, the Kurokawa Research Institute, the Tokyo Fuji Museum, the Kunozan and Nikko Toshogu among them. The provenance chains carry the same weight, the named blades having passed through Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Hosokawa, the Uesugi and the Date houses, with the Meibutsu Oshima Yukimitsu among the famous wakizashi. A blade by this smith is for practical purposes unattainable on the open market, and the rare piece that does surface trades at the very top of the field.
Go Yoshihiro (義弘) — Mainline · 1299-1302. Kokuhō, Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Go is the name by which Yoshihiro of Matsukura-gō in Etchū is known, and the published sources place him among the ten disciples of Masamune[[c:1]], one of the supreme names in the whole study of the sword. Like Sadamune he left no genuine signed work; every blade that carries his name is mumei, and nearly all are ō-suriage, an attribution resting on the judgment of the Hon'ami and the later appraisers, so the smith survives only through his manner and through the great houses that kept him. He stands at the very end of the Kamakura period and the opening of the Nanbokuchō, when the Sōshū tradition that Masamune had brought to completion was carried west into Etchū.
The jigane is the first thing the published sources reach for. It is an itame, often mixed with mokume and with a flowing nagare-hada that stands up a little, and in places it inclines strongly to masame; over it the ji-nie lies microscopically fine and thick, and chikei enter frequently, so the steel reads bright and clear. The appraisers make a point of the masame-gokoro worked into the hada (柾ごころ), one of the tells they list for his hand, and they single out that the ji and ha together come up a degree brighter and clearer than his fellows[[c:2]].
The hamon is built on a notare, broad and gentle, with ko-notare and gunome mixed in and the temper height tending to broaden from the base toward the monouchi. Ashi and yō enter, the nioiguchi is deep, and the nie lies thick and even, breaking in places into nie-kuzure with standing nie-suji; through the ha run abundant kinsuji and sunagashi, with occasional yubashiri spilling into the ji. Set beside Masamune and Norishige, the published sources call his chikei and kinsuji the calmer (穏やか), yet they note the nie-ashi working busily within the ha and the whole coming up brighter, which is exactly where they locate him.
The bōshi is where Go is most distinctly himself, and it is the feature the published record names outright as a major characteristic of his hand: the point is tempered deep, sweeping with hakikake (掃きかけ) and breaking into a nie-kuzure so that it becomes an ichimai-style bōshi, the whole tip hardened nearly solid. A representative Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana records it precisely, the bōshi burned deep into a single sheet, collapsing in nie and brushing out in hakikake[[c:3]]. Where it does turn back it settles into a quiet ko-maru, the return sometimes running long; but the deep, swept, single-sheet point is the signature, and a profile that gives him only a calm ko-maru has misread the smith.
For the collector the recognition runs in this order: a clear itame with thick fine ji-nie and frequent chikei, masame creeping into the hada, a deep-nie notare carrying kinsuji and sunagashi, and the deep ichimai-swept bōshi above it[[c:4]], the entire ji and ha lit a degree brighter than the surrounding masters. That brightness and clarity is the discriminator the appraisers use to part him from Masamune himself and from Norishige, whose hada stands up more and whose matsukawa is the heavier. Fujishiro places him at Sai-jō saku, the highest rank, and among all Sōshū hands his is reckoned at the summit.
Because nothing of his is signed and so little survives, Go is among the least attainable of all names. Of the work on record a few sit as National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties that can never trade, and the named meibutsu carry the histories of the great daimyō: the Ōkubo Gō (大久保江), which bears a Hon'ami gold-inlay attribution and descended to the Ōkubo of Odawara, and the Kabutokiri Gō (兜切り江), once of the Mizuno family. Others pass through the Uwajima Date family, one of them bestowed by Tokugawa Hidetada on the first lord of Uwajima and kept thereafter as a house treasure, while further blades descended through the Maeda. To meet a Gō at all is to meet a blade the appraisers judged worthy of the very first names, held for centuries by the houses that could command it.
Hiromitsu (廣光) — Mainline · 1352-1364. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Following Sadamune, the two smiths who emerged in Soshu in the Nanbokucho period were Hiromitsu and Akihiro; nearly every NBTHK commentary on his blades opens with that sentence. A disposition toward *hitatsura* can already be found, though rarely, in Sadamune, where it amounts to no more than an artless prominence of *yubashiri*; with Hiromitsu and Akihiro the sources see "the completion of the full-fledged hitatsura hamon"[[c:1]], an invention that influenced the later Sagami smiths and swordsmiths of other provinces alike. The two "developed an innovative and lively style"[[c:2]]. Hiromitsu stands in the Soshu mainline descending from Shintogo Kunimitsu, after Masamune and Sadamune; the Muromachi genealogies divide between the two schools, and the prevailing reading assigns a first generation to Masamune's circle and a second, the master of the Bunna through Joji years, to Sadamune's.
Nearly everything that survives under his name is the *hira-zukuri* ko-wakizashi and *sunnobi* tanto of the Enbun and Joji type, wide in *mihaba*, thin in *kasane* and shallow in *sori*; reliably signed *tachi* are exceedingly rare. He tempers a *midare* fronted by *choji* and mixed with *gunome*; within it appears his round-headed clove, the *dango-choji* (団子丁子), the form the published sources single out as his individuality. *Tobiyaki*, *yubashiri* and *muneyaki* spill across the *ji* until the whole blade is fired as *hitatsura*. *Nie* lies thick, *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through the *ha*, and the *nioiguchi* is bright and clear. The *boshi* enters as *midare-komi*, rising to a point or breaking into a flame-like form, and returns deeply, often burning down the *mune*. An Enbun 5 (1360) wakizashi of the Bizen Ikeda line is called "typical and outstanding"[[c:3]], its individuality read in the *dango-choji*.
The jigane beneath this temper is *itame*, tending overall to stand, with thick *ji-nie* and frequent *chikei*, at times mixed with *jifu*. Of a Bunna 5 (1356) wakizashi the sources write that the activity within the *ha* and the character of the *nioiguchi* carry "an atmosphere recalling Masamune in a single thread"[[c:4]]. In places an exceptionally bright *nie* breaks down into the *ji*, and the *yakiba* often widens toward the upper half until the temper fills the whole surface.
His dated work opens with Kanno (1350) and runs through Bunna, Enbun, Koan and Joji. Akihiro's dates begin only at Enbun and continue past him into Oan, Eiwa, Koryaku, Shitoku and Meitoku, eras never seen on Hiromitsu, so his seniority is held certain. He cuts the long *mei* Sagami no kuni junin Hiromitsu[[c:5]] with the date written out in full, and the published record is categorical that he never signs Soshu ju (相州住), Akihiro's form. A rare two-character *mei* stands beside it, undated and more angular in its chiselling; the Seikado Bunko, the Nezu Museum and the Kurokawa Institute each preserve one, with *suguha* pieces of quality among them, and Honma left the generational question open, asking whether "the two-character signature might be the first generation and the long signature the second"[[c:6]]. A quieter register also runs beside the flamboyant standard. The Bunna 2 (1353) tachi of the Echizen Matsudaira line, the sole surviving example of his title *mei* Saemon-no-jo, shows a *midare* wholly small in pattern with few *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki* and inconspicuous *muneyaki*; the sources describe "a calm hitatsura"[[c:7]] imparting "a somewhat archaic feeling"[[c:8]], and a *nie-utsuri* stands out in its *ji*.
The discriminators against Akihiro are concrete. The signature rule is one; the build is another, for Akihiro's *taihai* more often runs smaller, read as the chronological transition of shapes, while a Joji 3 (1364) wakizashi of the Kishu Tokugawa line is described as "larger even than usual, with real presence"[[c:9]]. The *dango-choji* is the third. Against the contemporaneous *hitatsura* of the Kyoto smiths the line is structural: his favored temper "differs from the Kyoto Hasebe school in that choji forms its main body"[[c:10]], where Hasebe Kunishige and Kuninobu work theirs over a base of small *notare*. In Bizen terms, the sources note, he is an exact contemporary of the so-called Enbun Kanemitsu.
Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku. Forty-five designated works are on record: two Important Cultural Properties, nine Tokubetsu Juyo, twenty-three Juyo and twelve Important Art Object certifications, the tiers in part overlapping, for the Saemon-no-jo tachi and an Enbun 3 wakizashi, its stolen inscriptions restored as *shumei*, both later advanced to Tokubetsu Juyo. Signed pieces dominate, thirty-two against nine unsigned, nearly all dated, anchoring his chronology era by era. Three named blades stand in the record: the meibutsu Okurikara Hiromitsu[[c:11]] of the Date family; the Kikkawa family blade styled "Furiwakegami Masamune"[[c:12]] since the Edo period, re-judged to Hiromitsu at its certification; and the Uesugi house tanto styled Kashagiri (火車切). His provenance runs through the daimyo houses, the Kishu Tokugawa, the Echizen Matsudaira of Fukui, the Bizen Ikeda, the Satake, the Nanbu, the Date and the Uesugi, with the Mitsui among the modern collectors. The two Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, and several of the finest remaining pieces rest in the Nezu Museum, the Seikado Bunko, the Sano Art Museum and the Kurokawa Institute. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the Tokuju and Juyo tier, thirty-two blades of partially recorded whereabouts, most of them held rather than traded; a signed and dated Hiromitsu ko-wakizashi comes to market only rarely, and when one does it is among the few chances the field offers at the perfected *hitatsura* of Soshu.
Akihiro (秋廣) — Mainline · 1346-1370. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Akihiro worked in Sagami in the Nanbokucho period, and the published sources place him with Hiromitsu as the two pillars of late Soshu. In Sagami of that age, they write, the smiths who stand next after Sadamune in both period and technique are Hiromitsu and Akihiro, the pair who drew the daring hitatsura that earlier Soshu work had never shown. His person is transmitted three ways, as Hiromitsu's son, his younger brother, or a pupil of Sadamune, but the dated works settle the order: read against Hiromitsu's, his blades are certainly the later, and the line is left open while the ranking is not.
The form is the period itself. He worked almost entirely in the wide, somewhat elongated hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi with mitsu-mune and shallow sori, and of the tachi the sources record that almost none reliably signed survives[[c:1]]. The jigane is a standing itame mixed with mokume, large in pattern, the grain rising and flowing in places, with thick ji-nie, frequent chikei, and at times a faint nie-utsuri. Within the pair this is the first tell: his jigane stands out more than Hiromitsu's, somewhat rougher, at times with an untamed look, the steel left more openly active than his partner's.
What carries his name is hitatsura. Over that standing itame he tempers a midare of choji, gunome and ko-notare, deep in nioi and thick in nie, with frequent kinsuji and sunagashi, while tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki work up over the ji and mune until the whole blade becomes the full temper. The boshi runs midare-komi with hakikake, often pointed, the return burned down long to join the muneyaki, and on the most flamboyant pieces it breaks into a flame-like nie-kuzure. The bright, clear nioiguchi over a chikei-rich standing itame, with the temper escaping into the ji, is the recognition core that the published record returns to again and again, naming the hitatsura the area both men did best[[c:2]].
He is not a single register, and the published sources widen the reading deliberately. His usual pieces run smaller than Hiromitsu's, the choji subdued and the yakiba somewhat small for the width of the blade, which is named as the very place an Akihiro attribution is read against his partner. A few grand dated wakizashi of the Joji and Oan years overturn that contrast, larger even than Hiromitsu and showing the round dango-choji, so that the sources call them the image of Hiromitsu[[c:3]]. At the other pole stand quiet works in notare with gunome where the tobiyaki and yubashiri hardly show, one Important Art Object tanto called rare for not being hitatsura, so that the attribution does not rest on the full temper alone.
The late line turns quiet again. The tanto dated Shitoku 4, near his lower limit, is a stubby, kitchen-knife build, thick in kasane and short for its width, tempered in a calm ko-notare with gunome and pointed and reverse-tendency elements, ko-nie with only slight kinsuji. The published sources read this notare as carrying on the style of Sadamune[[c:4]], note that Hiromitsu shows no such register, and ask whether Akihiro alone inherited it[[c:5]]. The Buddhist carvings of these pieces, a grass-style kurikara and a sanko-hilted ken, are called the forerunners of Masahiro and Hiromasa, with their influence reaching the Soshu smiths of the late Muromachi period. The mei is a rule of its own: he signs Soshu ju Akihiro in five characters[[c:6]], the Enbun dates cut in full like Hiromitsu, the abbreviating hand appearing from Joji, and from Eiwa onward the month and day dropped without exception, so the form of the date itself helps fix the year.
For the collector Akihiro is, among the Soshu masters, reachable. Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku, and his dated works run from Enbun 2 to Meitoku 3. No National Treasure is recorded under his name, but Important Cultural Properties and a strong run of Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo blades stand to him, two of the Tokubetsu Juyo wakizashi recognized as Important Art Objects before the war, of one of which the published sources write that its powerful chikei-woven forging and leaping hitatsura make it a fine work whose Important Art Object rank is convincing[[c:7]]. His blades descend in the great houses: a Joji wakizashi in the Kuroda of Chikuzen, the Oan wakizashi in the Date of Uwajima with a Hon'ami Kojo origami, Tokuju pieces in the Shimazu of Satsuma, and others held at the Okura Museum, the Kurokawa Institute, the Kyoto National Museum and Kagoshima Jingu. A signed Akihiro does come to market, and when one does it is among the few honest ways to hold the late-Soshu fire at first hand.
Kunihiro (國廣) — Mainline · 1312-1326. Jūbun, Jūyō. A signed tanto in the fifteenth Juyo session carries the two characters Kunihiro and, on its scabbard, an old Hon'ami note of fifty mai, and its published commentary opens with the line that has governed the smith ever since: that Shindogo Kunihiro is traditionally the son of Kunimitsu, and that old transmitted writings hold his works to show a longer boshi turnback than Kunimitsu's. Kunihiro worked in Sagami at the very end of the Kamakura period, and signed pieces dated Bunpo 2 (1318) and Genko 4 (1324) fix his time. The published sources record that Shindogo Kunimitsu had three sons, Kunihiro, Kunishige and Kunitai, all said to have later signed Kunimitsu as their father did, but that of the three only Kunihiro survives in genuine work, no reliable signed blade being known for the other two. His recorded oeuvre is the small sword, the tanto and a single short wakizashi, with one exception: a tachi signed Kunimitsu that the published sources read as his own.
His is, before all else, the Shindogo hand received whole from his father. He excelled in well-constructed tanto and tempered suguha, the sources saying plainly that he produced skillful tanto and skillful suguha. The temper is a fine suguha, hoso-suguha or a medium suguha, laid in nie with the nioiguchi bright and clear, fine kinsuji and sunagashi working within the ha, and in places kuichigai-ba, nijuba and nie-hotsure along the habuchi; here and there a faint ko-gunome or ko-notare enters the line, but the manner is the quiet straight temper throughout. Over this restraint the recognition rests on a second, contrary mark, the carving: at the base of the tanto he sets bonji with a suken and gomabashi, on the fifteenth-session piece a futasuji-hi, the devotional program of the Shindogo workshop, while the plainer pieces show only a katana-hi with an accompanying groove run as kaki-nagashi.
The jigane is the part that most binds him to Kunimitsu. He forges an itame, at times a ko-itame, well packed and minutely covered in thick ji-nie, chikei entering frequently, and over much of the work a nie-utsuri stands; on the sixty-sixth-session tanto the published commentary reads a nie-utsuri toward the mune and a straight-form utsuri nearer the edge. One late piece runs to a standing itame with mokume and flowing grain and a mottled ji, but the type is the bright, well-forged Shindogo steel. It is this reflection, the calm nie-utsuri of a closely kneaded ji rather than the midare-utsuri of Bizen, together with the nie suguha, that places his blades within his father's school at a glance, the deki on the best of them held to be not inferior to Kunimitsu.
The record divides cleanly into two registers of one form. A few ubu, two-character signed tanto anchor the smith and carry his dates; the larger body is the ubu mumei tanto judged Shindogo and then to Kunihiro in particular, several resting on old Hon'ami origami, one with a Genroku 8 (1695) paper by Hon'ami Mitsutsune. The shape is the orthodox uchizori hira-zukuri, with a tendency to furisode in the nakago, often slightly broad in width and at times sun-nobi. The tradition that Kunihiro and his brothers later signed Kunimitsu and worked as substitute hands for their father, the sources note, both explains why genuine Kunihiro signatures are so few and leaves room for further study, since some Kunihiro-dated pieces fall in the same years as Kunimitsu's own dated work.
Because the ji and ha sit so close to Kunimitsu, the kantei against the father is decided not in the steel but in the sugata and above all in the boshi. The published sources name the tell exactly: Kunihiro's tanto can be broader than the teacher's, and the turnback of the boshi is wider than anything seen in Kunimitsu, with a habit by which the kaeri leans slightly. On one tanto judged at the twentieth session the round is even a little inferior and the kaeri somewhat long, and on a piece that at first glance looks like Shindogo Kunimitsu it is precisely the broader boshi on the reverse that decides it for Kunihiro. The published commentary on one mumei tanto states flatly that it cannot be appraised as the work of anyone but Kunihiro. He stands one generation below the founder of Soshu, his father's line opening through Yukimitsu toward Masamune, so that his nie suguha tanto sit at the threshold of the tradition that would follow.
Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku. Two of his works are Important Cultural Properties, a wakizashi dated Bunpo 2 held at a shrine in Saga and a tanto dated Genko 4 with the added inscription of a Kamakura resident, and fourteen works stand at Juyo rank, thirteen tanto and one ubu signed tachi of 96.1 cm. That tachi is signed Kunimitsu, yet the published sources read it as his: its workmanship agrees with what the old texts say of Kunihiro's manner and its thick, deep carving resembles his, so that "this mei can be appraised as Shindōgo Kunihiro's Kunimitsu signature"[[c:1]]. The provenance that survives is distinguished out of proportion to the small number: one broad mumei tanto, sound and excellent in ji and ha, is recorded as a personal dagger worn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and another was formerly held by the main Tokugawa house. For the collector almost none of this can be sought. The two Important Cultural Properties are patrimony outside the market, and a recorded example rests in the Tokyo National Museum. What may realistically be met is the Juyo tier, fourteen blades in all and all but one of them tanto, very often ubu mumei pieces resting on Hon'ami attribution, nearly all small and quiet suguha works in the Shindogo manner; such a blade reaches the market only rarely, and a signed, dated Kunihiro tanto, of which only a handful exist, is a landmark when it appears.
Takagi Sadamune (高木貞宗) — Mainline · 1356-1368. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. At its twenty-second Tokubetsu Juyo session the NBTHK designated an o-suriage mumei katana whose explanation opens with the smith himself, recording that Takagi Sadamune was a man of Takagi in Goshu and "is traditionally said to be a disciple of Soshu Sadamune"[[c:1]]. He worked in Omi from the very end of the Kamakura period into early Nanbokucho, taking his name from the place he lived. The relationship to his master is the whole of his identity in the published record. An old theory once held that the two Sadamune were one man, but the published sources reject it: judging by workmanship Takagi falls a degree short of Hikoshiro Sadamune, and "seeing him as a disciple is the settled view of recent years"[[c:2]], a pupil who, like Kyo Nobukuni, carried his teacher's manner faithfully. Genuine signed work is almost absent. The texts count only one or two reliable tanto, with no tachi and no certainly dated piece, so his hand is known from a handful of small signed wakizashi and read into the mumei katana the shinsa attributes to him.
His characteristic hand is a quiet one. The temper the published sources call his specialty is a shallow notare, often a ko-notare, mixed with gunome, ashi and yo entering, the nioi deep and the nie thickly adhered, and over it sunagashi runs abundantly with frequent kinsuji and hotsure and yubashiri along the habuchi. The boshi is midare-komi or runs straight into a ko-maru with hakikake, often tending to a point. Across his blades the chisel is the Soshu devotional program his master made famous: bonji, suken and gomabashi, with a bo-hi carried through the longer pieces, and the published sources affirm that these traits in both ji and ha express the distinctive features of Takagi Sadamune. The carving is what ties the attribution to the Sadamune circle.
The jigane is where his hand parts from the master's. He forges an itame, on the better pieces mixing mokume and well-packed with thick ji-nie and entering chikei, but the grain tends to stand a little, and the steel as a whole is calmer. The standing kantei line states the contrast plainly. Set beside Soshu Sadamune, "the forging stands somewhat more, the chikei are fewer in most, the temper takes notare as its principal tone with abundant sunagashi, the workings and variation within the ha are comparatively simple, and the nioiguchi in general tends toward shizumi, the subdued quality that marks a Takagi piece"[[c:3]]. Another text puts it more shortly: "compared with Soshu Sadamune his ji and ha have less brilliance, and his chikei are fewer"[[c:4]]. The few quietest works carry a suguha-cho that turns shallowly to notare with hotsure and ko-nie, calm at first sight yet rich in activity, and his home province surfaces now and then as a coarse, zanguri texture in the hada the texts read as Goshu.
The surviving work divides cleanly into two registers, and the NBTHK dates each blade by the build it shows. Most of the record is the o-suriage mumei katana of the grand Nanbokucho shape: wide in body with little taper, a shallow or rather high sori, a chu-kissaki or an extended o-kissaki, almost always with a bo-hi run through, the period read from the wide construction alone. The other register is the small, ubu format that carries his only signatures, hira-zukuri and kata-kiriha-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi, wide and sun-nobi with thin kasane and a three-faceted mune, the nakago ubu with a ken-form tip and katte-sagari file marks. Kata-kiriha-zukuri recurs across this group, a construction that saw only a brief vogue at the end of Kamakura but that the published sources name as a form favored by Soshu Sadamune and the followers said to be his, Amaro Toshinaga and Takagi Sadamune among them. Old oshigata even reproduce Takagi pieces bearing Kenmu-era dates, though none reliable and dated together survives, and Honma recorded that the genuine signed works known to him came to only two tanto, one of them retempered.
What distinguishes him is exactly his nearness to the master, which makes him the kantei trap in person. The published sources warn that an unsigned Takagi katana can at first glance be taken for Soshu Sadamune himself. The attribution turns not on flamboyance but on the quieter tells the judges name: the standing hada, the fewer chikei, the simpler internal activity and the subdued nioiguchi. He stands at the Kamakura-Nanbokucho turn beside fellow Sadamune followers, carrying the perfected Soshu manner west into Omi rather than founding a manner of his own. His mark is a faithful, slightly quieter Soshu hand, distinguished within the school by his standing itame and shizumi nioiguchi where they fall short of the master's brilliance, and by the bonji and suken carving that anchors the attribution there.
Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin and the higher modern NBTHK tiers, thirty-nine designated works on record, two at Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty-six at Juyo, thirty-eight in the two upper tiers together. Among the prewar pieces is a signed tanto recorded as a treasured possession of the Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and several of his mumei katana rest on Hon'ami attributions, one bearing "an origami by Hon'ami Kochu"[[c:5]]. Provenance is recorded for only a handful, running through the Date family, the Mori family, the Hosokawa house and a katana set down as worn by the shogun Tokugawa Ienobu, with examples now held at the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures. For the collector almost everything here is held rather than traded. There are no museum-locked National Treasures to set aside, but the prewar designations and the long-held provenances rarely move, and what can realistically be met is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, thirty-eight blades, nearly all o-suriage mumei katana or sun-nobi wakizashi resting on Hon'ami papers. Such a blade comes to light only from time to time, and one carrying his ubu ken-form nakago, the kata-kiriha construction or the Soshu carving is the most knowable kind of Takagi Sadamune a collector could hope to encounter.
Akiyoshi (秋義) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Jūbun, Jūyō. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Mitsufusa (光房) — Mainline · 1288-1333. Jūbun. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Kunimitsu (國光) — Mainline · 1310-1333. Tokujū, Jūyō. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Other smiths
Tametsugu (爲繼) — Mainline · 1345-1350. A short tantō signed Nōshū-jū Fujiwara Tametsugu with a date of the Ōan era, certified a Juyo Bijutsuhin in 1935, is the document on which this smith's place and period rest. Tametsugu is transmitted as a son of Gō Yoshihiro and a pupil of Norishige of Gofuku-gō in Etchū, and is said to have moved later to Mino, by one account to the Fuwa district. The later published sources add the evidence of the sword drawings: two pieces signed Echizen no kuni Fujiwara Tametsugu carry dates of Enbun 2 and Ōan 2, while an extant blade signed Nōshū-jū Fujiwara Tametsugu is dated Ōan 7. From these they conclude that he moved from Echizen to Mino between Ōan 2 and Ōan 7[[c:1]]. No example reads as resident in Etchū, the judges noting that "there is none signed Etchū-jū"[[c:2]]. Because his dates fall in the later Nanbokuchō period, the sources hold that the traditional link to Yoshihiro and Norishige "still leaves room for examination in point of chronology"[[c:3]].
His manner is the one the published commentary names outright: "a Norishige-style forging on which is tempered a Mino-style gunome with pointed togariba, displaying a manner of its own"[[c:4]]. The entries repeat a settled description of his hand. The *itame* stands, *ji-nie* adheres, and the temper is based on *notare* mixed with *gunome*, with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* in the *ha* and a subdued *nioiguchi* in *nie*[[c:5]]. The *sunagashi* is the most insistent of these features, described again and again as running frequently and conspicuously through the edge. *Togariba* are folded into the *notare*, and the sources observe that the signed works carry "a stronger Mino flavor"[[c:6]].
The *jigane* is the constant of his work. It is *itame* mixed with *mokume* and at times a large grain, flowing in places, with thick *ji-nie* and *chikei* entering, and the steel tends to a dark tone. Several entries point to the grain rising white in places, "the so-called northern-provinces steel"[[c:7]]. Some blades are said at first sight to recall the great Sōshū smiths, yet "the slightly subdued nioiguchi is where he is to be judged Tametsugu"[[c:8]]. As the common thread of the authenticated unsigned blades the published sources give an *itame* "that stands and darkens, worked in nie, with a sinking nioiguchi"[[c:9]], and they add that "there is no suguha"[[c:10]] among them. The *boshi* runs *midare-komi* and is "vigorously brushed"[[c:11]], turning in a *ko-maru* or, on shortened naginata, finishing in *yakizume*.
His record falls into two registers. The great body of it is *o-suriage* unsigned katana attributed from style, broad Nanbokuchō blades with an extended *kissaki*. Against these stand the signed works, of which the sources write that "certain signed works by this smith survive in very small numbers, long ones especially few"[[c:12]]. Besides the Ōan tantō they include an Ōan-dated naginata cut down into a katana, its *yakizume* *boshi* a result of the alteration, and an *ubu* tachi signed in five characters Fujiwara Tametsugu saku, its signature close to the Nōshū-jū signatures on his wakizashi. The judges are candid that the signed work is coarser in make, while "among the unsigned attributions there are examples of quite good workmanship"[[c:13]]. Of the Echizen and the Mino works, a note on the tantō records that "in general the latter have the larger pattern in the ha"[[c:14]].
What sets him apart is read from his own blades. His work favors a large *notare* midare, and on that basis the published sources hold that it "differs from Shizu and Kaneshige"[[c:15]]. Beside his master the difference is one of degree: "his hada stands less than Norishige's and his chikei are fewer"[[c:16]]. One entry describes the whole effect as "exactly a mixture of the northern provinces and the Mino manner"[[c:17]]. His range also reaches beyond that idiom, one shortened katana being judged "workmanship in the Yamato Shikkake manner"[[c:18]].
For the collector Tametsugu is a Nanbokuchō name met almost entirely through attribution. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties. Seventy-six designated works stand on record: seventy-five Juyo blades across many sessions and the single prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, the Ōan tantō, which was in the collection of Akaboshi Tetsuma when certified and whose inscription the sources call "of high documentary value"[[c:19]]. The five-character signed tachi is recorded at Atsuta Jingu, and most other whereabouts go unrecorded. Unsigned katana attributed to him come to market from time to time among Juyo Sōshū-den blades, and one of them the published commentary calls "a quintessential example of Tametsugu"[[c:20]]. A signed and dated Nōshū-jū Fujiwara Tametsugu is a different matter, the evidence that fixes the name, and a privately held example is among the uncommon encounters of the period.
Daishinbo (大進房) — Mainline · 1293-1299. Daishinbo Yukei is said to have been a son of Shintogo Kunimitsu, and one tradition holds that he was the senior fellow apprentice (*anideshi*) of Yukimitsu. From ancient times he has been renowned as a master of blade carvings (*horimono*), and it is conjectured that among works by Yukimitsu and Masamune there are carvings executed by his hand. No indisputably authentic signed work has yet been encountered, though a *sasaho*-form yari bearing a signature reading "Daishinbo" has been designated, with the NBTHK concluding that this represents a different individual from the Kamakura-period tradition.
The works attributed to Daishinbo display the principal characteristics of Soshu craftsmanship. The finest example (Juyo, 50th Session) shows an *itame* forging mixed with *mokume* and *nagare-hada*, with "thickly adhering *ji-nie*" and frequent *chikei*, while the *hamon*, founded on "a shallow *notare* mixed with *ko-gunome*," contains deep *nioi*, thick *nie*, and conspicuous *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* with slight *yubashiri*. This piece retains an *origami* by Hon'ami Kotsune with a valuation of 350 *kan* issued in Enpo 4. A second attributed tanto (Juyo, 22nd Session), transmitted in the Shimazu family, is accompanied by a black-lacquered gold *hiru-maki aikuchi koshirae* preserving Momoyama taste, itself previously designated Juyo.
What distinguishes the Daishinbo attribution is the union of blade and carving: the 50th Session tanto bears an excellently executed relief of a *bonji* and *hitotsu-hitsuji Kurikara*, and the NBTHK notes that "within the forging -- where *chikei* appears frequently -- there is a discernible thread that calls to mind Shintogo Kunimitsu." With no authenticated signed blades, Daishinbo remains an elusive yet consequential figure whose influence on later Soshu *horimono* is deeply embedded in the tradition.
Kunitsuna (國綱) — Mainline · 1288-1333. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Yoshihiro (吉廣) — Mainline · 1361-1362. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Akiyoshi (秋吉) — Mainline · 1368-1375. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Phase 2 · Sue-Sōshū (末相州) · 1356 – 1868
When the great Kamakura masters had passed and the country slid into the wars of the late Muromachi, a residual *Soshu-den* held on in Sagami under a new patron. The Later Hojo, ruling from Odawara castle, kept smiths at hand, and it was from this orbit that the leading name of the window emerged: Tsunahiro, transmitted as a retained smith of the Odawara Hojo who took the character *tsuna* from Hojo Ujitsuna. The first generation's earliest dated works fall in the Tenbun era, and the line runs forward in the conventional reckoning through Tensho, Keicho, Kan'ei, and Manji, the third generation drawn west to Tsugaru by Tamenobu to forge daisho before returning home. Around him stood a wider Sagami population working the same idiom: Hirotsugu of Kamakura, whose strongest hands cluster near the Meio and Tenbun years; Hiromasa and Soso, names carried across several indistinct generations; Masahiro, reaching back toward Joji; and the Odawara group of Yasuharu, Yasukuni, and Fusamune, the last praised above all for his carving. These smiths inherited the manner of the Nanbokucho apex at a remove of generations rather than by direct descent from the mainline of Masamune and Sadamune.
The signature of the phase is the open declaration of the full temper. The forging stays *itame* mixed with *mokume*, the grain inclined to stand (*hadadachi-gokoro*), with *ji-nie* and *chikei*; over it the smiths ran a *notare*-and-*gunome* ground that climbs the upper half into *hitatsura*, *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* firing across *ji* and *mune*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* threading the *ha*. This is the *hitatsura* and *o-midare* learned from Hiromitsu and Akihiro, but pushed toward display: the Hirotsugu katana of the 61st Juyo runs its temper so high it reaches the *shinogi*, mixing *choji*, *togariba*, and *yahazu-gata* into a demonstrative *yakidaka* pattern. The contrast with the classic apex is precise and the appraisers mark it. Where Masamune raised *nie* to its deepest refinement over a bright, clear steel, the Sue-Soshu *ji* tends to *shirake*, a whitish cast standing in for that clarity, and the *nioiguchi* inclines to *shizumi*, a sunken or subdued quality rather than depth. The 238th Jubi record states the point plainly for the first-generation Tsunahiro: the *ji* and *ha* carry abundant *nie*, yet the very shape of the *hamon* departs from that of Hiromitsu and Akihiro. The temper is broader and busier across the surface, but it lacks the quiet command and the leaping interior activity of the original.
To *kantei* the window is to separate this demonstrative late temper from the classic *Soshu-den* it imitates: a standing *itame* with *shirake*, a wide *hitatsura* worked with *yahazu* and crescent *tobiyaki*, a *nioiguchi* that sinks rather than deepens, and signatures reading *Soshu-ju* with full given names rather than the *o-suriage mumei* of the great forebears. The named hands carry the distinctions, Fusamune through his dense, precise *horimono* of *kurikara* and *bonji*, Tsunahiro through his crescent *tobiyaki* and high *monouchi* fire, Hirotsugu through a *hitatsura* vigorous enough to recall Hasebe. Provenance keeps these blades close to power: several are recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, one bearing the ownership inscription of Akimoto Yoshihide of Kozuke, another the *Hachiman Daibosatsu* invocation of a Sengoku warrior, the Tsunahiro commission tied by its dated *nakago* to the Tsugaru house.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Jūbi, Jūyō. Tsunahiro (綱広) is the smith who closes the Sōshū tradition. His earliest dated work falls in the Tenbun era (1532 to 1555), and the published sources take that *shodai* as the foremost representative of the Sōshū smiths of the Muromachi period, the one who, in their words, "most faithfully preserved the Sōshū-den style and was most active during the Tenbun era"[[c:1]]. He is transmitted as a descendant of Hiromasa who first signed Masahiro and, summoned by Hōjō Ujitsuna to Odawara, received the character *tsuna* and changed his name accordingly. The name then became a lineage-name carried into the Edo period, the second generation placed in Tenshō, the third in Keichō, so that "Tsunahiro" denotes a workshop sustained for generations under the Later Hōjō at Odawara rather than a single hand. He is signed and *ubu* almost throughout, the five-character Sōshū-jū Tsunahiro *mei* cut low on the *omote* toward the *mune*, the dated 1548 *tachi* and the Tenbun 22 (1553) *wakizashi* anchoring the *shodai* to whom the later generations are referred.
His characteristic hand is the late-Sōshū *midareba* built toward full temper. Over the *ji* he tempers a *gunome-midare* into which *chōji*, the *yahazu* arrow-notch tooth, *togariba* and *ko-notare* are mixed, the *ha* widening as it rises toward the tip; *nie* attaches well with *sunagashi*, and *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* are then carried across the *ji* until the whole becomes *hitatsura*. The *yahazu* tooth, set into the *gunome* and rising with it, is the structural tell the judges keep returning to when they call a blade typical of him. The full-temper *hitatsura* is the manner the published sources name his forte, descending, they say, from Hiromitsu and Akihiro, "a skilled maker in the line following Hiromitsu and Akihiro, whose work contains much that is noteworthy in the *hitatsura* style said to have been established by them"[[c:2]]. On one *wakizashi* the *hitatsura* shows crescent-shaped *tobiyaki*, which the judges name a distinctive feature of his hand[[c:3]].
The *jigane* behind this is read together with the temper, for the full temper depends on it. He forges an *itame* mixed with *mokume* and *nagare-hada* that stands and runs, the grain open rather than tight, with *ji-nie* well attached and *chikei* entering, and against this open steel the *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* gather into *hitatsura*. The standing grain is named on half his work and the flowing grain on more than a third, so the late-Sōshū *ji* is itself part of the recognition, not merely a backdrop. The *bōshi* runs in *midare-komi* to a *ko-maru* or pointed return, often *hakikake*, with a long *kaeri* sometimes tempered down. The carving is a further marked tell, true and grass *kurikara*, *bonji* set on a lotus pedestal, and incised invocations such as Hachiman Daibosatsu and Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō, which the judges repeatedly call distinctive of late-Sōshū work.
Against this flamboyant rule stands a documented exception. The dated 1548 *tachi* leaves the *hitatsura* range altogether for a *chū-suguha-chō* broken by *ko-gunome* with *ashi*, the *nioiguchi* tight with *ko-nie*, and the published sources call it an unusual work for him while noting that examples of the kind are occasionally met among his *tantō* and *wakizashi*. The generations are the other axis along which his work is read. The judges set out the accepted scheme, the first in Tenbun, the second in Tenshō, the third in Keichō, the fourth in Kan'ei and the fifth around Manji, and then appraise several undated blades by their overall bearing rather than by a date. A wide, *sun-nobi wakizashi* with strongly developed *sakizori* is placed around Genki to Tenshō, and several *shinogi-zukuri katana* are judged no earlier than the third generation, the judges leaving a closer determination to future study[[c:4]]. The hand is continuous across these generations, the same *yahazu gunome-midare* over a standing *itame-mokume ji*, so that the later work is recognised as Tsunahiro by the inherited range rather than by any changed manner.
What sets him apart is read off his own grounded traits rather than by borrowing a comparison. The published sources do compare him to the Nanbokuchō masters whose *hitatsura* he inherits, and the comparison cuts both ways: he is placed in the line of Hiromitsu and Akihiro, yet of his Important Art Object *tantō* the judges note that the shape of its *hamon* "differs from those associated with Hiromitsu and Akihiro"[[c:5]], distinguishing his hand from the very smiths he descends from. His own tell is the *yahazu* tooth woven into a *gunome-midare* that widens to the tip and is overrun into *hitatsura*, over a standing, *chikei*-laced *itame*. Standing at the end of the Sōshū line, he is the smith who, as the judges put it, adorns that tradition's final flourishing, his Tenbun *shodai* the documented origin against which the later workshop is dated. The published sources name him within the Sue-Sōshū group as one who "is well known and highly skilled"[[c:6]], his output large and many works surviving.
Tsunahiro is *Jō saku* in Fujishiro's grading, with a *Tōkō Taikan* valuation of four hundred *man*. The weight of designation behind his name is broad rather than rarefied: his standing rests on ten Jūyō blades together with an Important Art Object *tantō* and an early postwar Special-Preservation-tier *wakizashi*, the higher tiers above Jūyō not represented among his work. Among those ten the judges single out his *hitatsura* pieces as representative, one a work in which "Tsunahiro's forte is fully displayed"[[c:7]], another a representative Sōshū blade of the Muromachi period. The provenance recorded against his blades is distinguished and real: the *wakizashi* dated Tenbun 22 bears the ownership inscription of Sakurai Daigaku, a senior retainer of the Later Hōjō house, and afterward passed to Ōkubo Ichiō, the Meiji connoisseur who became the first mayor of Tokyo; the 1548 *tachi* carries a leather-covered iron mounting once cherished by Inukai Bokudō. Three further blades are recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection: an undated *hitatsura* katana with a grass *kurikara* that its commentary gives to the first generation, a thick *hira-zukuri wakizashi*, and a *wakizashi* dated Genki 4 (1573) that bears the ownership inscription of Akimoto Saemon Gorō Fujiwara Yoshihide of Kazusa, whose Genki date the commentary calls highly instructive[[c:8]]. Most designated blades, his included, are held rather than traded, but his are not beyond reach in the way a Kamakura masterwork is: a Jūyō Tsunahiro, signed and *ubu*, comes to the collector of late-Muromachi Sōshū from time to time, with patience, and is among the most rewarding things that close of the tradition offers.
Yasukuni (康國) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Jūbun. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Hirotsugu (廣次) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Jūyō. Hirotsugu of Kamakura in Sagami is known from four designated works, three of them placed in the Meio era at the close of the fifteenth century and one in the late Muromachi period. The earliest anchor is a wakizashi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, signed Soshu-ju Hirotsugu saku and dated Meio 9 (1500). The published sources describe him in a single line: 「広次は相州鎌倉に住した刀工で、銘鑑にはその初代を建武としているが、現存するものでは室町時代中期を遡るものはなく室町時代後期を代表する相州鍛冶といえる」 (Hirotsugu lived at Kamakura in Soshu; the reference books put a first generation in Kenmu, but no surviving work predates the mid-Muromachi period, and he may be regarded as a representative Soshu smith of the late Muromachi period). Honma's inventory adds that of the works it had examined the Meio-dated pieces are the oldest, and that a Tenbun-dated blade signed as a resident of Shimada in Suruga is held to be by the same man.
Two of his Juyo katana are signed in two ways. The earlier designation, of 1971, bears a two-character mei, Hirotsugu, cut with a fine chisel beside the *mekugi-ana*. Its jigane is *ko-itame* with *ji-nie* and *chikei*, and the hamon is a *gunome-midare* with a *choji* feeling. The *yakihaba* is narrow in the lower half and widens from the middle upward into a flamboyant *midare* with *tobiyaki*, deep in *nioi*, with *ashi*, *yo* and *sunagashi*. The blade is carved with a *kusa-kurikara* on the *omote* and *bonji*, *gomabashi* and *rendai* on the *ura*. The published sources call it 「地刃の出来が優れ、彫物も見事で、室町時代の相州物の典型である」 (excellent in jigane and hamon, splendid in its carving, and a typical piece of Muromachi Soshu work).
The second katana, designated in 2015, has a six-character signature, Soshu-ju Hirotsugu saku, and is placed 「その銘振りや作風からおよそ明応年間の作と推されるものである」 (from the manner of the signature and the workmanship, to around the Meio era). It has a deep *sori* with *sakizori* and a thick *kasane*. The jigane is *itame* mixed with *mokume* and *nagare-hada*, with thick *ji-nie*, *chikei* and a faint *utsuri*. The temper runs high enough to reach the *shinogi*, mixing *gunome* with *choji* and *togariba*, with frequent *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* and *uchinoke* along the tops. The published sources close with 「匂口は締まりごころに明るく冴えるなど、出色の出来映えを示している」 (the *nioiguchi* is inclined to tightness, bright and clear, showing outstanding workmanship).
The wakizashi of the Honma inventory shows a standing *itame* of whitish cast, a *gunome-midare* with *sunagashi*, a *boshi* with *hakikake*, and *bo-hi* with *soe-hi* above *bonji* and a lotus pedestal. Across the Meio works the constants are a *gunome* temper with *sunagashi*, carving in the Soshu manner, and that date.
The fourth work, a katana designated Juyo in 2021, is judged by its mei and build to be by a somewhat later Hirotsugu of the end of the Muromachi period, after the skilled makers of the name known around Meio or Tenbun. It is wide, with an extended chu-kissaki, and its *itame* mixed with *mokume* stands throughout, thick in *ji-nie* with frequent *chikei*. The temper runs high in *notare* with *gunome*, *choji*, *togariba* and *yahazu*-shaped elements, and with *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* it becomes *hitatsura*, thick in *nie*, the *nioiguchi* bright, with frequent *kinsuji* and *sunagashi*. The published sources write that at first glance it recalls the Hasebe school of the Nanbokucho period[[c:1]], a powerful *hitatsura* strong in *nie*, and that it shows the high skill of this Hirotsugu.
Kiyohira (清平) — Mainline · 1673-1681. Jūyō. Kiyohira (清平), also known as Tsujimura Gorōemon, was the fourth son of the first-generation Kashu Jinroku Kanewaka. A blade dated Genroku 2 (1689) bearing the inscription "aged seventy" establishes his birth in Genna 6 (1620). He moved to Edo around the end of the Keian era[[c:1]], and a blade dated Joo 2 (1653) already bears the inscription "made in Bushu Edo." Later retained by the Inaba family of Sagami, he signed works from Kanbun 2 (1662) onward as "resident of Odawara Hachimanyama[[c:2]]." His style is grounded in the character of Kaga workmanship inherited from his father Kanewaka and elder brother Kagehira, yet he established "an individual sphere of expression on that base."
Kiyohira's *kitae* characteristically shows *itame-hada* that overall flows and becomes *masame*-inclined -- a feature the NBTHK identifies as "a characteristic of this lineage." The *hamon* presents *notare* mixed with large *gunome*, *ko-notare*, and *ko-gunome*, with deep *nioi* and abundant *ko-nie*; *ashi* enter well, and *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* appear throughout. What distinguishes Kiyohira from typical Kaga production is the conspicuously stronger adherence of *nie*, prominent *chikei* and *nie-suji* in both *ji* and *ha*, elements tending toward pointed forms within the temper, and a bright *nioiguchi*. The *boshi* typically shows shallow *notare* or *sugu* with *ko-maru* and a deep return.
The NBTHK recognizes Kiyohira's finest works as "superior pieces" that are simultaneously "precious as documentary material." His *utsushi* of the celebrated *meibutsu* "Fudo Kuniyuki" -- the only known such copy by his hand -- is praised for its conscious evocation of the original through a slightly narrow *yakihaba* with *yubashiri* and *nijuba* overlaying the *yakigashira*. Gold-inlaid *kinzogan* cutting-test inscriptions on several works further enhance their documentary significance. Kiyohira's oeuvre represents a distinctive synthesis of the Kaga tradition with an individual intensity of nie expression that sets him apart within the broader Kanewaka lineage.
Fusamune (總宗) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Jūyō. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Masahiro (正廣) — Mainline · 1362-1392. Jūbi, Jūyō. Soshu Masahiro is a lineage of smiths working in Sagami Province that continued for four or five generations, traditionally transmitted as descending from the youngest son of Masamune. The first generation, styled "Soshu Masahiro," produced works bearing era names such as Joji and Meitoku, with the earliest known dated example inscribed Sadaharu 2 (1363). However, from the standpoint of chronology, it is not feasible to connect Masahiro and Masamune directly; rather, it is necessary to posit the existence of one additional intermediary figure between them. The line extended to the end of the Muromachi period, and it is also said that the fourth generation changed his name to Tsunahiro; however, the distinctions among the second and third generations are not clearly established.
The Masahiro line works in a Soshu-den idiom characterized by *itame-hada* forging, sometimes mixed with *mokume*, with abundant *ji-nie* and *chikei*. The *hamon* favors a *notare*-based composition mixing *gunome* and *choji*, enriched with well-entering *ashi* and *yo*, and accompanied throughout by *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*. In more vigorous examples, *tobiyaki* develops into an overall *hitatsura*-like manner, and the *nioiguchi* is bright and clear with *ko-nie* adhering well. The *boshi* typically enters in *midare-komi*, and the manner of cutting the inscription "Soshu-ju Masahiro" closely resembles the practice seen in Akihiro, indicating the shared technical milieu of late Soshu tradition. Early-generation works frequently display *hira-zukuri* construction with *mitsu-mune*, broad *mihaba*, thin *kasane*, and *sun-nobi* proportions with *sakizori* — the characteristic Nanbokucho-period form — and many bear accomplished *horimono* including *bonji*, *kurikara*, *dokko-sho*, and *rendai*.
The NBTHK consistently praises the Masahiro line as displaying the excellence of the Soshu tradition, with workmanship of both *ji* and *ha* rated as excellent and of upper-level quality. Well-preserved examples are noted as *kenzen* — sound in condition — and the carvings executed on the blades are repeatedly described as splendid. Works such as the tachi recorded in *Nihonto Taikan* show connections with Hiromitsu and Akihiro through their *minayaki*-like tempering, further attesting to the line's place within the broader circle of later Soshu-den masters who carried forward and sustained the legacy of the Masamune tradition through the Muromachi period.
Other smiths
Hirotsugu (廣次) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Hiromasa (廣正) — Mainline · 1444-1456. Hiromasa is the mid-Muromachi Sagami smith whose few signed and dated blades fix one of the most divided names in late Soshu work. Three of his four designated swords carry a date, the tachi of Hotoku 2 in 1450 and Kosho 2 in 1456 and the wakizashi of Bunan 5 in 1448, all cut Soshu-ju Hiromasa on an unshortened tang, and it is on these dated pieces that the whole line turns. The published sources are explicit about the difficulty, observing that the Hiromasa name was borne by several generations active continuously from the Nanbokucho period through the Muromachi, each a capable hand, yet that signed examples bearing a date are exceedingly few. Their own words on one of the dated tachi run 「広正は同名が何代かあって、南北朝期から室町時代に及んで活躍しており、それぞれに上手であるが、現存する有銘且つ年紀のあるものは極めて少い」[[c:1]], a name worked by several hands across two centuries of which the dated survivors are the rarest. This maker is transmitted as the third-generation Hiromasa of Sagami, and he belongs to Sue-Soshu, the late Sagami line that carried the Soshu-den of Masamune and his successors Hiromitsu and Akihiro down through the Muromachi period.
His characteristic hand is the gunome-midare that builds into hitatsura. Over the temper he scatters tobiyaki above the habuchi, and on three of the four blades these detached spots gather with yubashiri and muneyaki until the tempering spreads across the whole blade as the all-over hitatsura that the late Sagami school made its own. The nioiguchi stays tight and ko-nie adhere well, ashi and yo enter the temper, and sunagashi runs through it repeatedly, with kinsuji and a choji-like temper mixed with ko-gunome on the latest katana. This is the Soshu-den read in its Muromachi register, where the restrained suguha and ko-midare of the Kamakura founders has given way to a more demonstrative all-over manner. On the quietest of the four, the Bunan wakizashi, the tobiyaki gathers only near the monouchi rather than flooding the blade, so the same hand can be watched stepping back from full hitatsura toward a small midare with gunome.
The jigane is the standing Sagami steel from which that temper rises. He forges sometimes a tight ko-itame and sometimes an itame that stands and opens into hadadachi, at one point mixing ohada, and ji-nie adheres across it. The construction is the middle Muromachi bearing of Sagami, a shinogi-zukuri tachi or katana of standard width with sakizori and a chu-kissaki, at times grown suntsumari and deep in sori, while the wakizashi is a broad hira-zukuri grown sun-nobi with high sakizori. The boshi answers the disturbed temper, turning in midare-komi on most of the blades, standing ichimai with a long turnback on others, and on the Kosho tachi brushed in hakikake to a pointed return. Across both faces he cuts conspicuous horimono, bonji and a grass-style kurikara, and within a koshi-hi or bo-hi he sets a sanko-ken or paired gomabashi rods in raised relief, the carving fine and the relief well-raised. The published sources count this carving among the distinctive merits of every one of these blades; of the Hotoku tachi they write 「地刃に時代の様相と相州物の伝統的な作風を見せ、彫物もまた特色あるもので見事である」[[c:2]].
Because the generations cannot be told apart with certainty, the dated and ubu-signed pieces do double duty as workmanship and as documents. The undated katana of the 25th session is judged to date to around the Hotoku era on the evidence of the others, the published sources stating plainly of the name 「年紀作は稀であり、各代の区別は明確にし難い」[[c:3]], that dated works are rare and the several generations difficult to separate. So the record proceeds by anchoring the rest of the line to the few inscriptions that survive, and the Bunan wakizashi adds an instructive accident: its date inscription was reduced to a soko-mei on the tang reverse when a bo-hi was carved in later, legible but, in the words of the published commentary, regrettable, a detail that itself records the carving habit of the line. The hand is read as one Sagami manner across these four, not as separate styles, the variation between full hitatsura and a quieter monouchi temper being the range of a single workmanship rather than the mark of distinct masters.
Within the Sagami succession Hiromasa stands at a working centre rather than at a founding edge, the school whose technical identity is bold hitatsura over a standing itame with accomplished carving. His own midare-utsuri-free, nie-laden jiba and his pointed, disturbed boshi set him within that idiom rather than against any rival, and the published sources read each of his blades as the period itself made visible, calling the Kosho tachi 「この時代の相州物の典型的且つ代表作の一口」[[c:4]], a typical and representative example of Sagami work of its time. The line he carries is bound forward into the principal Odawara-Soshu succession, for the school commentary transmits that the first-generation Tsunahiro, active in the Tenbun era, was a descendant of Hiromasa, summoned by Hojo Ujitsuna to Odawara and granted the character tsuna to change his name, a lineage reaching into the shinshinto period. His mid-Muromachi hand, with its hitatsura and its devotional carving, stands among the foundational manners that the later Odawara smiths, Tsunahiro and Tsunaie among them, carried to the end of the feudal age.
Hiromasa is known through a small and uniformly signed designated record of four Juyo blades, the wakizashi of the 17th session, two tachi of the 18th, and the katana of the 25th, every one ubu and cut Soshu-ju Hiromasa, three of them dated. His skill is rated Jo saku in the Fujishiro ranking, and the published commentary calls his work splendid, the workmanship of the dated tachi excellent and the carvings distinctive. There are no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties among his blades, and no provenance is recorded for any of them, so the honest measure of his standing is the rarity itself, the few ubu and dated survivors of a name that several generations worked across two centuries. For a private collector his swords are encountered only seldom, all four at the Juyo level, none locked away as national patrimony but none coming to market with any frequency either; a signed and dated Hiromasa, of the kind the published sources hold up as the documentary anchor of the whole divided name, is among the less common things a student of late Soshu work is likely to meet, and a quiet reward when one does, for in it the Muromachi register of the Soshu-den can be read whole.
Hiromasa (廣正) — Mainline · 1469-1487. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1558-1570. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1592-1605. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Yasuharu (康春) — Mainline · 1521-1528. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Fusamune (總宗) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Fusamune was a Sōshū swordsmith working at Odawara in the early sixteenth century, in the Eishō era of the late Muromachi period, and the published record places him by name beside Yasuharu and Yasukuni. The published sources draw a clear distinction within the late Sōshū tradition: alongside Tsunahiro and the others who remained at Kamakura, a separate body of smiths lived at Odawara under the Hōjō, and these are collectively called the Odawara Sōshū. Their workmanship, the sources note, does not differ greatly in its fundamentals from the Tsunahiro line, but it is set apart by two things, a tendency toward somewhat small and compact blade forms, and a fondness for dense, meticulous carving on the blade. Within that group it is Fusamune above all whose horimono carries a long reputation, and the published sources return to it on blade after blade, recording of one that 「殊に総宗の彫は巧緻であると評されており」[[c:1]], that his carving in particular is praised as exceptionally refined, and noting that it is customary for his works to bear such carving, 「巧緻な刀身彫刻を有するものが常である」[[c:2]].
That carving is the first thing to name in his work, because the published sources name it first. Within the grooves and recesses of his wakizashi he cut Kurikara, the dragon entwining a sword, in raised relief, together with bonji, a dokko-hilted ken, a sankō-ken, futasuji-hi, and on one blade an incised invocation reading Hachiman Daibosatsu. The sources call this dense relief within the hi and the hitsu a particular forte of his, and on his most accomplished pieces they describe carving of a layout they regard as proper to late Sōshū, recording a 「末相州独特の構図の倶利伽羅」[[c:3]], a Kurikara of a composition distinctive to the late Sōshū manner. The temper that accompanies it is an angular-leaning gunome-midare, the structure the sources say is often seen in Odawara Sōshū work. Into it he mixes gunome-chōji, ko-gunome and pointed elements, the heads in places breaking into a compound, doubled pattern and a koshi-biraki, waist-opened structure, and in places sloping reversely against the cutting edge. Ashi and yō enter, the nioiguchi is tight and nioi-dominant with ko-nie along it, and tobiyaki is carried into the ha. The bōshi turns in midare-komi, pointed with a deep return on some blades and finishing in ko-maru on others.
The jigane beneath this temper is a controlled steel rather than an openly standing grain. He forges an itame mixed with mokume, comparatively tight and well packed, and on his finer blades a closely gathered ko-itame; ji-nie adheres across it and chikei enter throughout. It is the standing, tightened jigane of Odawara, and the published sources read its soundness as part of his quality, judging more than one blade sound in both ji and ha. The sugata sits with this jigane: a hira-zukuri or shinogi-zukuri wakizashi with mitsu-mune, the kasane thick, the mihaba wide or of standard width with sakizori appearing in the upper half, the proportions short and compact in the way the sources note is often seen in works by Fusamune and his circle. Across the recorded blades the temper widens and contracts within this one idiom, from a mainly suguha-chō base into which gunome and a chōji feeling are mixed, to a fuller gunome-midare with the compound and waist-opened heads, the published sources reading each as the characteristic style of the smith.
At the bright end of his range the temper opens fully into hitatsura, and the sources treat this as the late-Sōshū manner shown at its most flamboyant. On one wakizashi the gunome takes in chōji and arrow-nock-like yahazu elements, the tobiyaki spreads, muneyaki appears along the back, and the whole becomes a thickly tempered hitatsura with abundant nie, the bōshi deeply tempered and finishing in hakikake. The published sources read this piece, with chōji standing out conspicuously within its midare and a Kurikara of the late-Sōshū layout on its omote, as 「総宗としても華やかな出来映えの一口」[[c:4]], a brilliant and flamboyant example even within Fusamune's own work, and find in it the traits of late Sōshū strongly manifested. The same record also preserves the other side of his standing within the group, the wakizashi jointly signed by Kagesō and himself, 「景総と総宗の合作の脇指である」[[c:5]], a collaborative work by two of the representative makers of Odawara Sōshū. Kagesō cut his signature on the omote and Fusamune on the ura, and from that placement the sources infer that Kagesō held the senior position, while noting that the nature of their relationship is not clearly known.
That collaboration also fixes Fusamune's place in the line, for the published sources note that works by Kagesō are exceedingly rare whereas Fusamune's survive in greater numbers, so that within the Odawara circle it is largely through his own signed wakizashi that the group's hand is read today. He worked the same idiom as his Odawara contemporaries, the angular gunome with its compound and koshi-biraki structure on a tight, nioi-dominant nioiguchi, but the sources single him out from them on the carving and on the quality of his jigane and temper, which they read as showing the smith's distinctive traits to outstanding effect. His is the Odawara face of late Sōshū rather than the Kamakura face of Tsunahiro: not the openly standing steel of the older Sagami masters but a tightened itame-mokume, and a gunome that leans angular and compound rather than into broad notare, carried always with the dense relief carving the published sources repeat is 「殊に総宗の彫りは巧緻であるとの定評がある」[[c:6]], of long-standing repute.
Fusamune's recognized work survives on a small number of Important Sword designations, from the twenty-eighth session of 1981 through the fifty-sixth of 2010, all of them signed wakizashi, cut in a bare two-character mei or in the fuller Sōshū-jū Fusamune saku form, one the joint blade with Kagesō. He has no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property on record, nor any Tokubetsu Jūyō, so the population a collector may encounter is this group of Jūyō wakizashi and whatever signed blades of his stand below them, held in long-private hands and coming to notice only from time to time. None of the recorded blades carries a documented daimyō or temple provenance; what gives them their standing is the carving and the soundness of steel the published sources praise on each, and the rarity of a signed Odawara Sōshū blade good enough to reach the Jūyō level. A signed Fusamune, its dense Kurikara intact and its angular gunome or full hitatsura sound in ji and ha, is among the better ways to hold the late-Sōshū Odawara manner in a single blade, a smith more readily met than the great Kamakura names yet seldom seen, and a deliberate acquisition rather than a chance one.
Hiromasa (廣正) — Mainline · 1466-1467. Hiromasa was a swordsmith of Soshu (Sagami Province), a name borne by several generations active continuously from the Nanbokucho period through to the end of the Muromachi period. Dated examples are rare, making it difficult to distinguish the individual generations with clarity; however, surviving dated works include blades inscribed Bun'an 5 (1448), Hotoku 2 (1450), Kosho 2 (1456), and Bunmei 3 (1471), placing the documented activity firmly within the mid to late Muromachi period. A separate Hiromasa of the Sa lineage in Chikuzen Province, traditionally regarded as a son of Yukihiro, is also known from the mid Nanbokucho period around the Shohei era, and one blade attributed to this Sa Hiromasa bears a gold-inlaid attribution reading "Ranoke."
The *jigane* of Hiromasa's Soshu-line works is characteristically an *itame-hada* tending toward standing grain, with *ji-nie* and *chikei*. The *hamon* takes the form of *gunome-midare*, frequently mixed with *tobiyaki* that develops into *hitatsura* (full-temper); *ashi*, *yo*, *sunagashi*, and *kinsuji* appear, and the *nioiguchi* tends toward tightness. The *boshi* typically enters in *midare-komi*, sometimes becoming *ichimai* on the *omote*, and returns with a pointed tendency. A notable hallmark of this smith's output is the *horimono*: virtually every signed blade bears elaborate carvings -- *bonji*, grass-style *kurikara*, *sankoken*, *dokko-sho*, *hatahoko*, and *renben*, often executed in raised relief (*ukibori*) within grooves. These carvings are consistently described as "skillfully executed" and "splendid," and they constitute a defining feature of Soshu-made blades of this era. The Sa-lineage Hiromasa, by contrast, displays a *suguha*-based *hamon* upon which *nie* adheres well with a bright, clear *nioiguchi* -- features that "strongly manifest the characteristics of the Sa tradition."
Works by both lineages receive consistent praise. Of the Soshu Hiromasa, the NBTHK observes that his blades display "both the period character of Muromachi workmanship and the traditional manner of the *Soshu-den*," and individual pieces are assessed as "one representative masterpiece among Soshu works of this era." Of the Sa Hiromasa, the forging with *ji-nie* accompanied by *chikei* and a bright, clear *nioiguchi* leads to the assessment that the blade is "an especially fine example" among works attributed to this smith. Across both traditions, the name Hiromasa represents a sustained lineage of skilled craftsmanship that preserved regional forging idioms through several generations.
Hiromasa (廣正) — Mainline · 1356-1361. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Kunitsugu (國次) — Mainline · 1504-1521. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Masahiro (政広) — Mainline · 1362-1368. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunaie (綱家) — Mainline · 1532-1555. Tsunaie served as a retained smith of the Hojo house of Odawara in Sagami Province and is regarded, together with Tsunahiro, as among the more skilled makers of the late Soshu tradition. His period of activity is placed around the Tenbun era (1532-1555). Many of his works bear a five-character signature reading "Soshu-ju Tsunaie," though two- and three-character signatures are also encountered, the latter cut in bold strokes toward the *mune* side of the tang.
Tsunaie's workmanship is closely similar in style to that of Tsunahiro, and like his contemporary he specialized in fully tempered *hitatsura*. A representative *wakizashi* displays large *gunome* mixed with small *notare*, with *tobiyaki*, *ashi*, and *ko-nie* producing a vigorous *hitatsura* effect, while abundant *chikei* appear in a closely forged *itame-hada* with *ji-nie* and *muneyaki*. His *tanto* show a wide *yakihaba* with *ko-notare* mixed with *gunome*, the *boshi* turning in *ko-maru* with a long *kaeri* carrying *yakisage* that continues as *muneyaki* down to the base. The *kitae* across his productions is a dense *itame-hada* with well-adhering *ji-nie*. Tsunaie's *horimono* are likewise executed with considerable skill -- *bonji*, *koshi-hi*, *rendai* in layered carving, *gomabashi* carved *kaki-nagashi* -- adding a decorative dimension that complements the bold temperwork.
The NBTHK has designated both *tanto* and *wakizashi* by Tsunaie as fine works, with individual pieces judged a *kasaku* or *kessaku* among his extant productions. His surviving corpus, though modest in number, demonstrates a consistent command of the late Soshu idiom in forms ranging from compact *hira-zukuri* *tanto* with *uchizori* to *sun-nobi* *wakizashi* of wide *mihaba* and shallow *sakizori*.
Hiromasa (廣正) — Mainline · 1375-1379. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Hirotsugu (廣次) — Mainline · 1492-1501. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1781-1789. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1789-1801. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1748-1751. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.
Tsunahiro (綱廣) — Mainline · 1501-1504. Smith of the Sagami Sōshū School.