The cloud group. At Ukan-no-shō in late Kamakura Bizen, the smiths of the Ukai school — Unshō, Unji, Unjū — shared the character 雲, "cloud", in their names and forged apart from the great Osafune mainline: a refined, dignified manner standing closer to Aoe than to their Bizen neighbours. One of the most heavily papered schools outside the mainline itself, the line ran from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era.
The The Bizen Ukai School (鵜飼), active 1280–1400 in Bizen Province across 13 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 13 Jūbun, 26 Jūbi, 11 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 223 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Bizen Ukai School (鵜飼) · 1280 – 1400
Unji (雲次) — Mainline · 1315-1335. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. From the end of the Kamakura period into the first years of Nanbokucho, the smiths of Ukan-no-sho in Bizen Province, a place name later written Ukai, all set the character Un, the cloud, at the head of their names, and the published sources know them as the Ukai school or the Unrui. Unji is the chronological anchor of the line. Tradition makes him the son of the first Unsho, and he alone left dated work: blades of the Showa, Bunpo and Kenmu eras survive, among them pieces dated Showa 4 (1315) and Kenmu 2 (1335), and the NBTHK repeats that "his period of activity is plain" (その活躍年代は明らかである). Since no dated blade of Unsho exists, the years of the whole school are fixed through these. Their make stands apart from the Osafune mainstream: within the Bizen tradition a Yamashiro cast intermingles with no small influence from neighboring Bitchu Aoe, and the published sources call the line "a distinctive presence among Bizen works" (備前物中異色の存在). Fujishiro grades Unji Jo-jo saku.
The work leans away from Osafune at every point the published record names. His tachi are of standard width, the curvature tending to wa-zori, an even arch the papers read as Kyoto-like, the shinogi set somewhat high; ubu pieces keep funbari. Where the Osafune mainline of his generation tempers choji, Unji tempers suguha: a narrow to medium line with ko-gunome, ko-choji and ko-midare mingled, the ashi and yo entering thickly and slanting in reverse in the Aoe way. The papers state that kinship outright: "the tight suguha with saka-ashi entering passes to Bitchu work" (直刃締り逆足入る出来は備中物に通じ). The nioiguchi is now tight and nioi-led, now sinking subdued under ko-nie, and kinsuji, sunagashi and hotsure work along the edge. One paper gathers the recognition into a single sentence: "the points of this smith are shown in the uniquely dark utsuri, the boshi that turns back round, and the o-sujikai yasurime" (暗部の濃い独得の映りと丸く返る帽子と大筋違の鑢目に此工の見どころを示している). To these the published sources add the habit of the chisel: the reverse-slanted strokes (逆鏨) emphasized in the mei are the hand of the whole school, not of Unji alone.
The jigane is itame mixed with mokume, knit to ko-itame on the finer blades, in places flowing toward the edge, with thick ji-nie, fine chikei, and a steel color that tends somewhat blackish. Across it stands a midare-utsuri, and characteristically the dark jifu the papers call peculiar to the Unrui mingles in the ji, and paper after paper describes "a black utsuri as if pressed in with a finger" (指で押した様な黒い映り). The utsuri is old-fashioned (古調な映り) and answers to the temper: of one strongly nie-laden tachi the record observes that "the nie of ji and ha is strong, and for that reason the utsuri of the ji hardly stands at all" (地刃の沸がつよく、ために地映りは殆んど立っていない).
The NBTHK's own division of his work is twofold: "broadly the workmanship comes in two manners" (大別して作風は二様あって). In the first the ko-itame is well knit and the suguha nioiguchi tightens, the make that can be taken for Kyoto work or for Aoe; in the second the itame stands, a reverse-slanting midare mingles into the suguha, and the nie comes on strongly. On either jigane the archaic utsuri rises, "though it is the clearer in the former" (前者の方が鮮明である). The nie-laden manner carries hotsure and sunagashi and a swept boshi, and the same paper reads these as a borrowing from a third tradition: "a Yamato flavor is added" (大和風が加味されている). A register of form crosses both: nineteen of his hundred and thirty-seven papers are naginata or blades reworked from them, the mune of the point stoned away in the conversion so that the boshi runs off the end in yakitsume, the naginata-hi with its companion groove often remaining. From the unsigned naginata-naoshi works attributed to Unji and Unju (雲重), the papers conclude that "they were also skilled in the production of naginata" (彼らは薙刀の製作にも巧みであったことが窺われる). One fully intact signed naginata stands among his Juyo; signed tanto, by contrast, are rare.
The discrimination from his father is drawn by the papers themselves. Judging a mumei katana, one Juyo paper decides: "compared with Unsho of the same school, hotsure and the like enter the edge and the nie is felt somewhat stronger" (同派の雲生に比し、刃縁にほつれ等が入り沸がやや強く感ぜられ), and the attribution falls to Unji. He is the school's nie hand: the flowing, at times masa-tinged hada belongs to him rather than to his father, his sunagashi and kinsuji run more freely, while the tightened nioiguchi is the more Unsho's. A court legend attaches to both: "Unsho and Unji are said to have gone up to the capital and served Emperor Go-Daigo, and among Bizen works theirs is the style closest to Kyoto work" (雲生・雲次は京に出て後醍醐天皇の御用を勤めたと伝え、備前物の中では最も京物に近い作風をみせている); another paper notes that "there is a tachi by Unji with a sixteen-petal chrysanthemum crest on the tang" (雲次には茎に十六葉の菊花紋のある太刀がある). The NBTHK attributes simply to Unji and lets the nengo divide the generations: one or two namesakes are recognized into Nanbokucho, and Honma writes that "the long-signed Unji I have examined seem in the main to be the first generation, but among the two-character signatures there are those in which the first and second generations are hard to tell apart" (二字銘には初、二代を区別し難いものがある).
His designated record stands at one hundred and thirty-eight works: seven Important Cultural Properties, six Tokubetsu Juyo, one hundred and twelve Juyo and thirteen Juyo Bijutsuhin, with no National Treasure among them. Forty-seven are signed against eighty-eight unsigned, nearly all of them tachi, with either the long signature Bizen no kuni ju Unji (備前国住雲次), at times dated, or the two-character Unji (雲次); the tachi dated Showa 4 is itself an Important Cultural Property. The seven Important Cultural Properties are patrimony and do not trade. Of recorded whereabouts his blades rest at the Kyoto National Museum, Atsuta Jingu, Itsukushima Jinja and the Tokugawa Art Museum; the prewar certifications add the Tokugawa Reimeikai, the Nezu Museum and the Yomei Bunko, holder of the long-signed tachi from Konoe Fumimaro. The provenance roll runs through the Ikeda family of Bizen, the Maeda, Akimoto and Mitsui families and the Imperial Family, and one suriage tachi carries on its tang a later possession inscription, an owner's cutting and not a signature, made in Tenbun 3 (1534) for Takeda Mutsu no kami Minamoto no ason Nobutora, of which the record says "the inscription is precious also as a document" (銘文は資料的にも貴重である). With one hundred and eighteen blades in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, Unji is, among the Unrui, the name a collector is likeliest to meet; even so, designated pieces are held far more often than traded; an example reaches the market only from time to time, most often a mumei katana or a naginata-naoshi wakizashi, a signed tachi rarer still.
Unsho (雲生) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. From the end of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho, the swordsmiths Unsho, Unji and Unshige worked at Ukan-no-sho in Bizen Province, a place name later also written Ukai. From their residence the line is called the Ukan or Ukai school; because every smith set the character Un, the cloud, at the head of his name, the published sources also know them as the Unrui. Unsho is named outright the school's "de facto founder" (事実上の祖). No dated work of his survives; the registers place the first generation around Kengen and Kagen (1302 to 1306), and his years are fixed through the dated blades of Unji in Showa, Bunpo and Kenmu. Tradition holds that he went up to the capital with Unji, learned forging from the Yamashiro smiths, and served the Emperor Go-Daigo as duty smith (後醍醐天皇の御番鍛冶); Honma notes the rare blades with a sixteen-petal chrysanthemum crest (十六葉の菊花紋) below the habaki that lend the tradition weight. In the school's work "Yamashiro-style elements are intermingled within the Bizen tradition" (備前伝の中に山城風が混在), with no small influence from the Aoe school of neighboring Bitchu besides, so that the line is called "a distinctive presence among Bizen works" (備前物中異色の存在). Fujishiro grades Unsho Jo saku.
The trait the judges name first is the curvature: a slender tachi with funbari at the base and a small point, arching evenly in a high wa-zori, the torii curve. The published sources observe that "whereas the Osafune work of the same period is koshizori, it presents wa-zori" (同時代の長船物が腰反りであるのに対して輪反りを呈している). He excelled in suguha, narrow to medium, mixed with ko-gunome, ko-choji and shallow notare. The ashi slant in reverse in the Aoe manner, and here and there wedge-shaped shadowy togariba enter. The nioiguchi tightens, carries ko-nie and at times sinks subdued; kinsuji and fine sunagashi run along the edge. Now and then the temper falls away slightly at the hamachi, and the published sources note that "the yakiotoshi at the base may be called Unsho's individuality" (元の焼落しは雲生の個性). The boshi turns back round, ko-maru or tending larger; even of a blade steeped in Aoe character the published record observes that his particularity shows exactly where "the boshi does not point" (帽子が尖らず). The two-character mei sits toward the mune above the mekugi-ana, the character Sho set right of Un, his habit of hand; Honma takes the comparatively large mei of this type for the first generation.
The jigane is itame, in places knit to ko-itame or mixed with mokume, with ji-nie and fine chikei, and a midare-utsuri stands. Characteristically it is what the published sources describe as "the black jifu-utsuri peculiar to the Unrui, as if pressed in with the pad of a finger" (指の腹で押したような雲類独特の黒い地斑映り), and the steel color besides tends somewhat blackish. Honma counts it a point of interest that these late Kamakura Bizen blades carry nie in both ji and ha, at times with "an utsuri even more vivid than in Osafune work" (まま極めて長船物以上に鮮明な映り).
The published sources state his range in one sentence: "his representative manners are two" (代表的作風は二様あって). In one, standing itame with mokume, ko-midare in the suguha with a reverse tendency, nie and sunagashi; in the other, closely knit ko-itame, the utsuri especially distinct, the suguha nioiguchi tight. The ubu tachi of Tokubetsu Juyo session 7 belongs to the former, with an old-toned utsuri as if pressed in with a finger (指で押した様な古調な映り). Beyond the pair lies a stronger vein. "Unsho's manner is mostly low in temper and somewhat lonely in its activity" (雲生の作風は焼きの低いやや働きの寂しいものが多く), yet other works are known with a somewhat wider yakiba, conspicuous ashi and yo and strongly attached nie, a make that connects to Unji; the folded-signature katana of Tokubetsu Juyo session 21 is read exactly so, his work at full power. At least two generations are recognized, the second placed around Bunpo or Kenmu; the registers transmit the first Unji as his son, or by another account his younger brother. Long signatures are exceptional: the tanto signed Bizen no kuni Unsho (備前国雲生) is called a signature almost without parallel (他に類例が殆ど無く).
His position within Bizen is the published sources' own formula: the work of the line, beginning with its curvature, is reckoned "the closest to Kyoto work" (最も京物に近い) among Bizen products, and individual blades can be confounded with the Rai school or with neighboring Aoe. His suguha holds the Kyoto level while his ashi run saka in the Aoe way. Yet the clearly defined midare-utsuri keeps the flavor of his native tradition strongly present, and where the make breathes Aoe, the round boshi remains his own. The judges divide the kin by the temper: his yakiba mostly low and quiet in its activity, that of Unji wider and strongly nie-laden, with ashi and yo standing out. The more powerful of his own blades are read as approaching his successor; the line continues through Unshige.
Seventy-four designated works stand on record. Six are Important Cultural Properties, held as cultural patrimony, and nine more were designated Juyo Bijutsuhin before the war, among them a tachi counted one of the thirty-five blades hand-picked by Uesugi Kagekatsu (上杉景勝御手選び三十五腰), the ubu tachi of Iwasaki Koyata, now in the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, and the tachi passed from Tokugawa Iesato to the Sano Art Museum. Fifty-seven blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. Signed works are comparatively numerous for so early a smith, thirty-eight signed against thirty-four unsigned here, nearly all the two-character mei. Ten blades carry recorded provenance: the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of session 12 descends in the Uda Mori, a cadet line of the Nagato Mori; an Asano house katana carries a Hon'ami Kocho origami of 1676 valuing it at ten gold pieces; others passed through the Okochi house and the Imperial Family. The Important Cultural Properties and the museum holdings will not move. What a collector may realistically encounter is a Juyo blade, an osuriage katana attributed on the wa-zori, the dark jifu-utsuri and the saka-laced suguha, or one of the signed tachi; a signed ubu tachi comes to open hands only rarely, and is an event in the field when it does.
Unju (雲重) — Mainline · 1352-1375. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Unju, whose name is read variously as Unshige and Kumoshige, was the third-generation hand of the Bizen Ukai group, the smiths of Ukan-shō whose signatures begin with the character for cloud and who are therefore called the Unrui, the cloud group. The single dated Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi, inscribed Jōji 7 in the second month of 1368, fixes him squarely in the mid-Nanbokuchō, succeeding the line's founder Unshō and his successor Unji. The published sources set the group apart from everything around it: their manner, they write, differs from the mainstream Osafune work of the day and stands instead close to the Yamashiro Rai school and the Bitchū Aoe school, so that within an essentially Bizen character there is mixed the flavor of Kyoto Rai and of Bitchū Aoe, a temperament strong enough that they call the cloud group plainly the most unusual presence among Bizen swords. The Meikan records Unju as a son of the second Unshō, and dated work survives bearing the Bunwa, Jōji and Ōan eras.
His characteristic hand is the opposite of the flamboyant clove-flower for which mid-Nanbokuchō Osafune is known. Unju's forte is the *suguha* and the *suguha*-toned line, shallowly *notare*, on which ride *ko-gunome*, *ko-chōji* and a small *midare*, with *ashi* and *yō* entering and *ko-nie* adhering. What lifts that quiet edge out of plain Bizen is the *nie* activity worked through it: *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* run frequently in the *ha*, with *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba* and *uchi-noke*, an activity foreign to the *nioi*-based Osafune *chōji* and proper instead to the Rai and Yamato strains the sources attach to his group. On the Jōji 7 tachi the temper crowds in *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba*, *uchi-noke*, *nijūba* and *yubashiri*, with deep *nioi* and vigorous *nie*, some of it coarse. The *bōshi* is a *sugu ko-maru* or, on the Yamato-cast pieces, a *yakizume* sweep.
The *jigane* is where the group's Kyoto leaning shows most plainly. Unju forges an *itame*, frequently mixed with *mokume* and standing somewhat, with *ji-nie* well applied and *chikei* entering, and over it a faint *utsuri* rather than the bright *midare-utsuri* of standard Bizen. The published sources note that the cloud group's steel differs from other contemporary Bizen in its *mokume* cast, its *ji-nie* and its scant *utsuri*, the inheritance of a line that, in the persons of Unshō and Unji, is said to have gone up to Kyoto to train and afterward served Retired Emperor Go-Daigo. On the most Yamato-leaning blades the forging runs almost entirely into *masame*, the edge breaks into *kuichigai-ba* and *hotsure*, and the *bōshi* finishes *yakizume*, a strain the published sources read as Yamato workmanship within an otherwise Bizen body.
He survives in two faces. The first is the small group of *ubu*, signed pieces, several carrying a written-down date: the Jōji 7 tachi, a Jōji 6 tantō, a Bunwa tachi, a Jōji naginata. On these the deep, thickly built tang on the edge side, the steeply angled file marks, the reverse-chisel emphasis of the signature characters, and above all the practice of cutting the date straight down beneath the long signature are, the sources say, features that answer entirely to Aoe practice, "matters entirely in accord with Aoe work" (全く青江物に相通ずる). The second face, far the larger, is the body of *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him, broad Nanbokuchō blades with shallow *sori* and extended points, the silhouette of greatly shortened *ōdachi*. On these the published commentary accepts the traditional attribution from period and lineage, observing that the rounded *bōshi* and the *suguha* with small *chōji-ashi* are points of appreciation of the cloud group, "the things to look for in Unrui" (雲類の見どころ), rather than a feature unique to Unju alone.
What sets Unju apart is exactly what the judges name when they reach for a comparison. His *ji* and *ha* are repeatedly said to be of a kind that at a glance could be taken for Aoe, "a workmanship that, at first sight, could be mistaken for Aoe" (一見青江に紛れる), and his group is placed close to the Yamashiro Rai school, so that the dated tantō's quiet *suguha* over a tight, faintly reflective *jigane* reads almost as a Bitchū piece until the Bizen *ji-nie* and the cloud-group signature settle it. The sources sum the whole effect in a single phrase: that within a Bizen temperament are mixed the airs of Kyoto Rai and Bitchū Aoe, "an individuality so strong it is distinctive among Bizen works" (備前気質の中に京の来派や備中青江派の趣が混在するなど個性が強く異色である). He stands at the third remove from the Kyoto-trained founders, carrying their restrained idiom forward while the broadening shapes and deepening *nie* of his own generation, touched by the transmitted Sōshū manner, press it toward the Nanbokuchō.
For the collector Unju is a rare and individual name rather than a flowing supply. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through a single Tokubetsu Jūyō, a body of Jūyō, and three prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, some fifty-seven blades across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers and sixty designated works on record in all. Only thirteen of these are signed, and dated signed work is rarer still, which is why the published sources prize the inscribed pieces for their documentary value as much as their quality. His blades are preserved in long-held collections and institutions, among them the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures; one *naginata-naoshi* wakizashi carries a *handachi* mounting said to descend in the Date family, and the prewar designations passed through the Nanbu and Iwasaki houses. Because almost none can ever trade, and because his mumei katana surface only seldom and his signed and dated pieces seldomer, a privately held Unju is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of the most Kyoto-inflected corner of Bizen.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Jūbi, Jūyō. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Tokujū. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unjo (雲上) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Other smiths
Morikage (守景) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Undo (雲同) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unji (雲次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unjo (雲上) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unju (雲重) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unsho (雲生) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Live·Ukai lineage
鵜飼
The Bizen Ukai School
The cloud group. At Ukan-no-shō in late Kamakura Bizen, the smiths of the Ukai school — Unshō, Unji, Unjū — shared the character 雲, "cloud", in their names and forged apart from the great Osafune mainline: a refined, dignified manner standing closer to Aoe than to their Bizen neighbours. One of the most heavily papered schools outside the mainline itself, the line ran from the late Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era.
The The Bizen Ukai School (鵜飼), active 1280–1400 in Bizen Province across 13 documented smiths: 0 Kokuhō (National Treasures), 13 Jūbun, 26 Jūbi, 11 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 223 Jūyō.
Phase 1 · The Bizen Ukai School (鵜飼) · 1280 – 1400
Unji (雲次) — Mainline · 1315-1335. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. From the end of the Kamakura period into the first years of Nanbokucho, the smiths of Ukan-no-sho in Bizen Province, a place name later written Ukai, all set the character Un, the cloud, at the head of their names, and the published sources know them as the Ukai school or the Unrui. Unji is the chronological anchor of the line. Tradition makes him the son of the first Unsho, and he alone left dated work: blades of the Showa, Bunpo and Kenmu eras survive, among them pieces dated Showa 4 (1315) and Kenmu 2 (1335), and the NBTHK repeats that "his period of activity is plain" (その活躍年代は明らかである). Since no dated blade of Unsho exists, the years of the whole school are fixed through these. Their make stands apart from the Osafune mainstream: within the Bizen tradition a Yamashiro cast intermingles with no small influence from neighboring Bitchu Aoe, and the published sources call the line "a distinctive presence among Bizen works" (備前物中異色の存在). Fujishiro grades Unji Jo-jo saku.
The work leans away from Osafune at every point the published record names. His tachi are of standard width, the curvature tending to wa-zori, an even arch the papers read as Kyoto-like, the shinogi set somewhat high; ubu pieces keep funbari. Where the Osafune mainline of his generation tempers choji, Unji tempers suguha: a narrow to medium line with ko-gunome, ko-choji and ko-midare mingled, the ashi and yo entering thickly and slanting in reverse in the Aoe way. The papers state that kinship outright: "the tight suguha with saka-ashi entering passes to Bitchu work" (直刃締り逆足入る出来は備中物に通じ). The nioiguchi is now tight and nioi-led, now sinking subdued under ko-nie, and kinsuji, sunagashi and hotsure work along the edge. One paper gathers the recognition into a single sentence: "the points of this smith are shown in the uniquely dark utsuri, the boshi that turns back round, and the o-sujikai yasurime" (暗部の濃い独得の映りと丸く返る帽子と大筋違の鑢目に此工の見どころを示している). To these the published sources add the habit of the chisel: the reverse-slanted strokes (逆鏨) emphasized in the mei are the hand of the whole school, not of Unji alone.
The jigane is itame mixed with mokume, knit to ko-itame on the finer blades, in places flowing toward the edge, with thick ji-nie, fine chikei, and a steel color that tends somewhat blackish. Across it stands a midare-utsuri, and characteristically the dark jifu the papers call peculiar to the Unrui mingles in the ji, and paper after paper describes "a black utsuri as if pressed in with a finger" (指で押した様な黒い映り). The utsuri is old-fashioned (古調な映り) and answers to the temper: of one strongly nie-laden tachi the record observes that "the nie of ji and ha is strong, and for that reason the utsuri of the ji hardly stands at all" (地刃の沸がつよく、ために地映りは殆んど立っていない).
The NBTHK's own division of his work is twofold: "broadly the workmanship comes in two manners" (大別して作風は二様あって). In the first the ko-itame is well knit and the suguha nioiguchi tightens, the make that can be taken for Kyoto work or for Aoe; in the second the itame stands, a reverse-slanting midare mingles into the suguha, and the nie comes on strongly. On either jigane the archaic utsuri rises, "though it is the clearer in the former" (前者の方が鮮明である). The nie-laden manner carries hotsure and sunagashi and a swept boshi, and the same paper reads these as a borrowing from a third tradition: "a Yamato flavor is added" (大和風が加味されている). A register of form crosses both: nineteen of his hundred and thirty-seven papers are naginata or blades reworked from them, the mune of the point stoned away in the conversion so that the boshi runs off the end in yakitsume, the naginata-hi with its companion groove often remaining. From the unsigned naginata-naoshi works attributed to Unji and Unju (雲重), the papers conclude that "they were also skilled in the production of naginata" (彼らは薙刀の製作にも巧みであったことが窺われる). One fully intact signed naginata stands among his Juyo; signed tanto, by contrast, are rare.
The discrimination from his father is drawn by the papers themselves. Judging a mumei katana, one Juyo paper decides: "compared with Unsho of the same school, hotsure and the like enter the edge and the nie is felt somewhat stronger" (同派の雲生に比し、刃縁にほつれ等が入り沸がやや強く感ぜられ), and the attribution falls to Unji. He is the school's nie hand: the flowing, at times masa-tinged hada belongs to him rather than to his father, his sunagashi and kinsuji run more freely, while the tightened nioiguchi is the more Unsho's. A court legend attaches to both: "Unsho and Unji are said to have gone up to the capital and served Emperor Go-Daigo, and among Bizen works theirs is the style closest to Kyoto work" (雲生・雲次は京に出て後醍醐天皇の御用を勤めたと伝え、備前物の中では最も京物に近い作風をみせている); another paper notes that "there is a tachi by Unji with a sixteen-petal chrysanthemum crest on the tang" (雲次には茎に十六葉の菊花紋のある太刀がある). The NBTHK attributes simply to Unji and lets the nengo divide the generations: one or two namesakes are recognized into Nanbokucho, and Honma writes that "the long-signed Unji I have examined seem in the main to be the first generation, but among the two-character signatures there are those in which the first and second generations are hard to tell apart" (二字銘には初、二代を区別し難いものがある).
His designated record stands at one hundred and thirty-eight works: seven Important Cultural Properties, six Tokubetsu Juyo, one hundred and twelve Juyo and thirteen Juyo Bijutsuhin, with no National Treasure among them. Forty-seven are signed against eighty-eight unsigned, nearly all of them tachi, with either the long signature Bizen no kuni ju Unji (備前国住雲次), at times dated, or the two-character Unji (雲次); the tachi dated Showa 4 is itself an Important Cultural Property. The seven Important Cultural Properties are patrimony and do not trade. Of recorded whereabouts his blades rest at the Kyoto National Museum, Atsuta Jingu, Itsukushima Jinja and the Tokugawa Art Museum; the prewar certifications add the Tokugawa Reimeikai, the Nezu Museum and the Yomei Bunko, holder of the long-signed tachi from Konoe Fumimaro. The provenance roll runs through the Ikeda family of Bizen, the Maeda, Akimoto and Mitsui families and the Imperial Family, and one suriage tachi carries on its tang a later possession inscription, an owner's cutting and not a signature, made in Tenbun 3 (1534) for Takeda Mutsu no kami Minamoto no ason Nobutora, of which the record says "the inscription is precious also as a document" (銘文は資料的にも貴重である). With one hundred and eighteen blades in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, Unji is, among the Unrui, the name a collector is likeliest to meet; even so, designated pieces are held far more often than traded; an example reaches the market only from time to time, most often a mumei katana or a naginata-naoshi wakizashi, a signed tachi rarer still.
Unsho (雲生) — Mainline · 1303-1306. Jūbun, Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. From the end of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho, the swordsmiths Unsho, Unji and Unshige worked at Ukan-no-sho in Bizen Province, a place name later also written Ukai. From their residence the line is called the Ukan or Ukai school; because every smith set the character Un, the cloud, at the head of his name, the published sources also know them as the Unrui. Unsho is named outright the school's "de facto founder" (事実上の祖). No dated work of his survives; the registers place the first generation around Kengen and Kagen (1302 to 1306), and his years are fixed through the dated blades of Unji in Showa, Bunpo and Kenmu. Tradition holds that he went up to the capital with Unji, learned forging from the Yamashiro smiths, and served the Emperor Go-Daigo as duty smith (後醍醐天皇の御番鍛冶); Honma notes the rare blades with a sixteen-petal chrysanthemum crest (十六葉の菊花紋) below the habaki that lend the tradition weight. In the school's work "Yamashiro-style elements are intermingled within the Bizen tradition" (備前伝の中に山城風が混在), with no small influence from the Aoe school of neighboring Bitchu besides, so that the line is called "a distinctive presence among Bizen works" (備前物中異色の存在). Fujishiro grades Unsho Jo saku.
The trait the judges name first is the curvature: a slender tachi with funbari at the base and a small point, arching evenly in a high wa-zori, the torii curve. The published sources observe that "whereas the Osafune work of the same period is koshizori, it presents wa-zori" (同時代の長船物が腰反りであるのに対して輪反りを呈している). He excelled in suguha, narrow to medium, mixed with ko-gunome, ko-choji and shallow notare. The ashi slant in reverse in the Aoe manner, and here and there wedge-shaped shadowy togariba enter. The nioiguchi tightens, carries ko-nie and at times sinks subdued; kinsuji and fine sunagashi run along the edge. Now and then the temper falls away slightly at the hamachi, and the published sources note that "the yakiotoshi at the base may be called Unsho's individuality" (元の焼落しは雲生の個性). The boshi turns back round, ko-maru or tending larger; even of a blade steeped in Aoe character the published record observes that his particularity shows exactly where "the boshi does not point" (帽子が尖らず). The two-character mei sits toward the mune above the mekugi-ana, the character Sho set right of Un, his habit of hand; Honma takes the comparatively large mei of this type for the first generation.
The jigane is itame, in places knit to ko-itame or mixed with mokume, with ji-nie and fine chikei, and a midare-utsuri stands. Characteristically it is what the published sources describe as "the black jifu-utsuri peculiar to the Unrui, as if pressed in with the pad of a finger" (指の腹で押したような雲類独特の黒い地斑映り), and the steel color besides tends somewhat blackish. Honma counts it a point of interest that these late Kamakura Bizen blades carry nie in both ji and ha, at times with "an utsuri even more vivid than in Osafune work" (まま極めて長船物以上に鮮明な映り).
The published sources state his range in one sentence: "his representative manners are two" (代表的作風は二様あって). In one, standing itame with mokume, ko-midare in the suguha with a reverse tendency, nie and sunagashi; in the other, closely knit ko-itame, the utsuri especially distinct, the suguha nioiguchi tight. The ubu tachi of Tokubetsu Juyo session 7 belongs to the former, with an old-toned utsuri as if pressed in with a finger (指で押した様な古調な映り). Beyond the pair lies a stronger vein. "Unsho's manner is mostly low in temper and somewhat lonely in its activity" (雲生の作風は焼きの低いやや働きの寂しいものが多く), yet other works are known with a somewhat wider yakiba, conspicuous ashi and yo and strongly attached nie, a make that connects to Unji; the folded-signature katana of Tokubetsu Juyo session 21 is read exactly so, his work at full power. At least two generations are recognized, the second placed around Bunpo or Kenmu; the registers transmit the first Unji as his son, or by another account his younger brother. Long signatures are exceptional: the tanto signed Bizen no kuni Unsho (備前国雲生) is called a signature almost without parallel (他に類例が殆ど無く).
His position within Bizen is the published sources' own formula: the work of the line, beginning with its curvature, is reckoned "the closest to Kyoto work" (最も京物に近い) among Bizen products, and individual blades can be confounded with the Rai school or with neighboring Aoe. His suguha holds the Kyoto level while his ashi run saka in the Aoe way. Yet the clearly defined midare-utsuri keeps the flavor of his native tradition strongly present, and where the make breathes Aoe, the round boshi remains his own. The judges divide the kin by the temper: his yakiba mostly low and quiet in its activity, that of Unji wider and strongly nie-laden, with ashi and yo standing out. The more powerful of his own blades are read as approaching his successor; the line continues through Unshige.
Seventy-four designated works stand on record. Six are Important Cultural Properties, held as cultural patrimony, and nine more were designated Juyo Bijutsuhin before the war, among them a tachi counted one of the thirty-five blades hand-picked by Uesugi Kagekatsu (上杉景勝御手選び三十五腰), the ubu tachi of Iwasaki Koyata, now in the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, and the tachi passed from Tokugawa Iesato to the Sano Art Museum. Fifty-seven blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. Signed works are comparatively numerous for so early a smith, thirty-eight signed against thirty-four unsigned here, nearly all the two-character mei. Ten blades carry recorded provenance: the Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of session 12 descends in the Uda Mori, a cadet line of the Nagato Mori; an Asano house katana carries a Hon'ami Kocho origami of 1676 valuing it at ten gold pieces; others passed through the Okochi house and the Imperial Family. The Important Cultural Properties and the museum holdings will not move. What a collector may realistically encounter is a Juyo blade, an osuriage katana attributed on the wa-zori, the dark jifu-utsuri and the saka-laced suguha, or one of the signed tachi; a signed ubu tachi comes to open hands only rarely, and is an event in the field when it does.
Unju (雲重) — Mainline · 1352-1375. Jūbi, Tokujū, Jūyō. Unju, whose name is read variously as Unshige and Kumoshige, was the third-generation hand of the Bizen Ukai group, the smiths of Ukan-shō whose signatures begin with the character for cloud and who are therefore called the Unrui, the cloud group. The single dated Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi, inscribed Jōji 7 in the second month of 1368, fixes him squarely in the mid-Nanbokuchō, succeeding the line's founder Unshō and his successor Unji. The published sources set the group apart from everything around it: their manner, they write, differs from the mainstream Osafune work of the day and stands instead close to the Yamashiro Rai school and the Bitchū Aoe school, so that within an essentially Bizen character there is mixed the flavor of Kyoto Rai and of Bitchū Aoe, a temperament strong enough that they call the cloud group plainly the most unusual presence among Bizen swords. The Meikan records Unju as a son of the second Unshō, and dated work survives bearing the Bunwa, Jōji and Ōan eras.
His characteristic hand is the opposite of the flamboyant clove-flower for which mid-Nanbokuchō Osafune is known. Unju's forte is the *suguha* and the *suguha*-toned line, shallowly *notare*, on which ride *ko-gunome*, *ko-chōji* and a small *midare*, with *ashi* and *yō* entering and *ko-nie* adhering. What lifts that quiet edge out of plain Bizen is the *nie* activity worked through it: *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* run frequently in the *ha*, with *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba* and *uchi-noke*, an activity foreign to the *nioi*-based Osafune *chōji* and proper instead to the Rai and Yamato strains the sources attach to his group. On the Jōji 7 tachi the temper crowds in *hotsure*, *kuichigai-ba*, *uchi-noke*, *nijūba* and *yubashiri*, with deep *nioi* and vigorous *nie*, some of it coarse. The *bōshi* is a *sugu ko-maru* or, on the Yamato-cast pieces, a *yakizume* sweep.
The *jigane* is where the group's Kyoto leaning shows most plainly. Unju forges an *itame*, frequently mixed with *mokume* and standing somewhat, with *ji-nie* well applied and *chikei* entering, and over it a faint *utsuri* rather than the bright *midare-utsuri* of standard Bizen. The published sources note that the cloud group's steel differs from other contemporary Bizen in its *mokume* cast, its *ji-nie* and its scant *utsuri*, the inheritance of a line that, in the persons of Unshō and Unji, is said to have gone up to Kyoto to train and afterward served Retired Emperor Go-Daigo. On the most Yamato-leaning blades the forging runs almost entirely into *masame*, the edge breaks into *kuichigai-ba* and *hotsure*, and the *bōshi* finishes *yakizume*, a strain the published sources read as Yamato workmanship within an otherwise Bizen body.
He survives in two faces. The first is the small group of *ubu*, signed pieces, several carrying a written-down date: the Jōji 7 tachi, a Jōji 6 tantō, a Bunwa tachi, a Jōji naginata. On these the deep, thickly built tang on the edge side, the steeply angled file marks, the reverse-chisel emphasis of the signature characters, and above all the practice of cutting the date straight down beneath the long signature are, the sources say, features that answer entirely to Aoe practice, "matters entirely in accord with Aoe work" (全く青江物に相通ずる). The second face, far the larger, is the body of *ō-suriage mumei* katana attributed to him, broad Nanbokuchō blades with shallow *sori* and extended points, the silhouette of greatly shortened *ōdachi*. On these the published commentary accepts the traditional attribution from period and lineage, observing that the rounded *bōshi* and the *suguha* with small *chōji-ashi* are points of appreciation of the cloud group, "the things to look for in Unrui" (雲類の見どころ), rather than a feature unique to Unju alone.
What sets Unju apart is exactly what the judges name when they reach for a comparison. His *ji* and *ha* are repeatedly said to be of a kind that at a glance could be taken for Aoe, "a workmanship that, at first sight, could be mistaken for Aoe" (一見青江に紛れる), and his group is placed close to the Yamashiro Rai school, so that the dated tantō's quiet *suguha* over a tight, faintly reflective *jigane* reads almost as a Bitchū piece until the Bizen *ji-nie* and the cloud-group signature settle it. The sources sum the whole effect in a single phrase: that within a Bizen temperament are mixed the airs of Kyoto Rai and Bitchū Aoe, "an individuality so strong it is distinctive among Bizen works" (備前気質の中に京の来派や備中青江派の趣が混在するなど個性が強く異色である). He stands at the third remove from the Kyoto-trained founders, carrying their restrained idiom forward while the broadening shapes and deepening *nie* of his own generation, touched by the transmitted Sōshū manner, press it toward the Nanbokuchō.
For the collector Unju is a rare and individual name rather than a flowing supply. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through a single Tokubetsu Jūyō, a body of Jūyō, and three prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, some fifty-seven blades across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers and sixty designated works on record in all. Only thirteen of these are signed, and dated signed work is rarer still, which is why the published sources prize the inscribed pieces for their documentary value as much as their quality. His blades are preserved in long-held collections and institutions, among them the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures; one *naginata-naoshi* wakizashi carries a *handachi* mounting said to descend in the Date family, and the prewar designations passed through the Nanbu and Iwasaki houses. Because almost none can ever trade, and because his mumei katana surface only seldom and his signed and dated pieces seldomer, a privately held Unju is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of the most Kyoto-inflected corner of Bizen.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1338-1342. Jūbi, Jūyō. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1321-1324. Tokujū. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Moritsugu (守次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unjo (雲上) — Mainline · 1278-1288. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Other smiths
Morikage (守景) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Undo (雲同) — Mainline · 1319-1321. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unji (雲次) — Mainline · 1345-1350. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unjo (雲上) — Mainline · 1352-1356. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unju (雲重) — Mainline · 1384-1394. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.
Unsho (雲生) — Mainline · 1317-1319. Smith of the Bizen Ukai School.