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About the maker

Fukuoka Ichimonji Yoshifusa吉房

In the mid-Kamakura period the swordsmiths of the Fukuoka Ichimonji school of Bizen collectively developed a style of splendid, sumptuous large-pattern o-choji-midare, and within that company the published sources single out Yoshifusa, together with Sukezane and Norifusa, as the smith who "forged especially large-patterned midareba" and stands as "a leading master representing the school" (特に大模様の乱れ刃を焼き、同派を代表する上手である). The NBTHK measures his standing by the designations themselves, writing that, as his National Treasures attest, "his technical ability is especially outstanding" (技術が特に秀抜である). Six of his blades are National Treasures today, a count exceeded by only one smith in the entire record, with three Important Cultural Properties beside them, and Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. The hand the published record assigns to him is the apogee of the Ichimonji manner. "Yoshifusa is characteristically distinguished," one designation text states, "by a hamon of large choji-midare showing variation in the height of the hardening, into which fukuro-choji and kawazu-ko choji are intermingled" (吉房は焼幅に高低のある大丁子乱れに袋丁子、蛙子丁子の交じった刃文に特色がある). The fukuro-choji, a vertically elongated and slightly angular cluster, is named his specialty (得意とする袋丁子), and the sources find his character plainly declared wherever it appears. Across the blade the large clusters rise and fall in a flamboyant midare, set somewhat lower around the monouchi and near the base. Ashi and yo enter vigorously, the temper is nioi-dominant with ko-nie, and kinsuji and sunagashi run through the ha, with tobiyaki in places. Again and again the descriptions close on a nioiguchi that is "bright and clear" (匂口明るく冴える). Beneath that temper lies an itame jigane mixed with mokume, recorded in nearly every blade and in places taking on a standing-grain tendency. Ji-nie adheres, frequently in a minute, dust-fine layer, and fine chikei are woven through it. Above all the published sources record the midare-utsuri, present in the great majority of his work; on his finest pieces it "stands vividly" (乱れ映り鮮やかに立つ). The boshi keeps no single habit: it runs midare-komi, at times with a pointed tendency, or holds straight and turns back in ko-maru, the point often swept with hakikake. That flamboyance is the center of a wider range. The published sources note repeatedly that his workmanship runs from the brilliant hand to calmer constructions in a suguha-toned manner mixing ko-choji and ko-gunome, and they judge one such restrained tachi close to the work of Osafune Nagamitsu. Another blade, a small-pattern midare with thick nie, is finished in an archaic style that "at first glance evokes the manner of Ko-Bizen" (一見、古備前の風を想わせる). A third, kept to a low yakiba over ko-choji, is said to "call to mind, in a continuous vein, Ko-Ichimonji" (一脈古一文字を想起させる), and stands near the National Treasure Yanome Yoshifusa of the Shimazu family in both workmanship and signature. One Tokubetsu Juyo blade carries coarse ha-nie thick enough that the commentary calls it "a strength that may be described as nie-deki" (沸出来と言うべき刃沸の強さ). Signed works survive in comparative abundance, forty-one signed against five unsigned in the present record, almost all in a two-character mei cut with a thick chisel, and a dozen tachi keep their ubu nakago. The signatures fall into several distinct manners, and from that breadth of mei and of style the sources allow that "there is also a theory proposing the existence of multiple smiths using the same name" (複数の同名工の存在を考える説もある). His place in the school is drawn in those same terms. At the head of the great choji manner the record sets Yoshifusa, Sukezane and Norifusa, and of the three it is Yoshifusa whose name the commentaries bind to the fukuro-choji and to the marked rise and fall of the yakiba. A bright, nioi-dominant choji over a vivid midare-utsuri is the image of the Fukuoka Ichimonji at its peak, and his rendering of it became the model against which later Ichimonji and Osafune smiths were measured. The calmer register, judged close to Nagamitsu, shows how short the step was from this manner to the Osafune mainline that followed it. Sixty-two works are recorded under his name. The six National Treasures and three Important Cultural Properties are patrimony preserved beyond the market, and the published record names among the former the Yanome Yoshifusa transmitted in the Shimazu family, the celebrated Okadakiri, and the tachi handed down in the Matsudaira family of Saijo in Iyo. Nineteen blades carry a recorded history, and the roll of former owners runs through the first houses of the country: Oda Nobunaga and Oda Nobukatsu, the Tokugawa shogunal house and Tokugawa Ietsuna, the Hitotsubashi Tokugawa, the Mori of Chofu, the Satake of Akita, with one blade treasured by Togo Heihachiro and others passing to the Imperial Family in the era of Emperor Taisho. Of recorded whereabouts his blades rest with the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Seikado Bunko, the Hayashibara Museum of Art, Meiji Jingu, Ise Jingu and Nikko Toshogu. The field a private collector may realistically encounter is the thirty blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, and most of these are held rather than traded; a signed Yoshifusa comes to the market only rarely, and is a landmark when it does.

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