The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
This Katana is signed by Yamashiro Kami Fujiwara Kunikiyo and holds a 47th NBTHK Juyo Token certification. The blade features a dense Koitamehada and Mokumehada Jigane with a blackish appearance, and a bright Niedeki Futo-Suguha Hamon with Koashi and Nie. It is a powerful and well-shaped masterpiece from the Edo period, specifically the Kanei era, and comes in a shirasaya.
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NihontoWatchmei · Meireki-Genroku (1655-1698) · nagasa 71.36cm · sori 1.36cm
Echizen (Fukui), the Horikawa-derived line: the second-generation Yamashiro-no-kami Kunikiyo (Shinbei) and the successors of the name · Echizen · around 1624-1682
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 49%
3 pieces on the market now
A tanto signed beneath the chrysanthemum crest with the character 一 and dated the eighth month of Tenna 2 (1682) is the fixed point of the second-generation Yamashiro no Kami Kunikiyo. The published sources call it the work of the second generation, its jigane and hamon clear and bright and the workmanship good, and they value its date as documentary evidence. He was Shinbei, the second son of the founder, the Shinshu-born pupil of Horikawa Kunihiro who served the Matsudaira house, followed his lord to Fukui in Echizen, and took the title Yamashiro Daijo in Kan'ei 4 and Yamashiro no Kami in the following year with leave to cut the chrysanthemum crest. Of the smiths who carried that title through several generations, the published sources rank the founder as the most skilled and the second generation as the next most accomplished.
A second work is given to him outright: a wide hira-zukuri wakizashi, a shape the published sources call uncommon both for this smith and for his line. Over a ko-itame with ji-nie it carries large gunome that break boldly in and out, a little tobiyaki mixed in, ashi entering well, sunagashi running, the nioi deep and the nie abundant. The texts call its jigane and hamon exceptionally splendid. Its carvings are rare as well as accomplished, and although the hand that cut them is unknown, the blade is held to be a representative example of the Echizen-bori of the day. A gold-inlaid kesa-otoshi cutting test is recorded on it.
Three katana are read toward him through the signature. Each adds the character 一 beneath the chrysanthemum crest, and the published sources state the rule they work from: no first-generation work is known with the 一, which appears from the second generation onward. Of two of them they add that the inscription closely resembles that of the Tenna 2 tanto, so that each may be the second generation's work. They are equally careful to say that the generations of Kunikiyo, above all the first and the second, cannot at present be clearly divided, and that the question awaits further research.
On these katana he tempers the suguha the published sources call the manner Kunikiyo was best at. A chu-suguha leans faintly toward notare in places, with small ashi, deep nioi and thick ko-nie. The habuchi frays here and there in hotsure with a small yubashiri, fine kinsuji and sunagashi run through it, and the nioiguchi is subdued. The boshi runs straight into a ko-maru with hakikake. On one blade the texts find the nioi deeper and the ko-nie thicker than in his usual work of this kind, the activity of ji and ha easy to see. The jigane is an itame with mokume or ko-itame, the hada standing finely, the ji-nie dust-fine and thick, fine chikei entering, and the steel takes a blackish cast. The published sources read this as the characteristic quality of hokkoku-gane, the steel of the northern provinces, shown clearly and yet refined. The shinogi is somewhat wide for the mihaba, the body full in hiraniku with funbari at the base, and the texts find the sturdy shape imposing and pleasing.
He also tempers a midare. One katana with the 一 carries small gunome, gunome and pointed gunome with a vigorous rise and fall of the hardened edge, deep in nioi and thick in ko-nie, gathering in places into muranie, with kinsuji and sunagashi and a subdued nioiguchi. The published sources set out the balance plainly: Kunikiyo's favoured manner was suguha, yet this kind of midare is also part of the work, and on this blade they see the maker's ability in a jigane that stays refined although the hada stands.
His designated record is a handful of signed, ubu Juyo blades, and the published sources place him through two kinds of evidence: the two pieces they name his outright, and the 一 beneath the crest, read against the dated Tenna 2 tanto. Because the founder and his successors kept one style and one manner of signing, the boundary between father and son remains open in the texts themselves, and a collector who meets a Kunikiyo with the 一 meets a blade the published sources lean toward the second generation without claiming certainty. Such blades come to light from time to time; the dated tanto and the carved wakizashi remain the pieces by which the second generation is known.
Where Kunikiyo stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
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Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Shinto · Yamashiro
77 pieces on the market now
At Ichijo Horikawa in Kyoto, from Keicho 4 (1599), Horikawa Kunihiro gathered the pupils whose work the published sources name with his own as the opening of the shinto age. Kunihiro himself reached forging late and by a roundabout road. Born Tanaka and serving as a warrior under the Ito of Obi castle in Hyuga, he wandered the provinces after that house fell, forging where he stopped, his earliest dated blade cut in Hyuga in Tensho 4 (1576); his itinerant Tensho-uchi looked to late Soshu and late Seki, often run toward a hitatsura-like effect over devotional carving. The settlement in Kyoto changed that. There his stated aim, the sources write, lay in the revival of the Soshu-den tradition, the leaning strongest toward Shizu, and around that ideal he trained the men who carried his manner forward: Dewa no Kami Kunimichi, Kuniyasu, Osumi no Jo Masahiro, Echigo no Kami Kunitomo, the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke, with later and minor hands reaching Settsu, Echizen and Edo. Many of them, born like the master at Obi, followed him from Hyuga to the capital. The shared vocabulary is read first in the steel. The school forges an itame mixed with mokume that stands up, the grain raised into the loose, granular surface the commentaries name outright, the zanguri hada particular to Horikawa work, with ji-nie lying thick and chikei entering; on many blades a mizukage rises obliquely from the machi. Over that ground the prime manner is the Keicho-shinto sugata, wide with little taper and an extended chu-kissaki or o-kissaki, the build likened to a Nanbokucho odachi cut down, tempered in a notare and gunome with thick nie, sunagashi and long kinsuji, the nioiguchi often sinking into shizumi. Within that frame the pupils diverge sharply.
Kunimichi runs the flamboyant Shizu copy fully out and turns his boshi pointed in the Mishina manner, the Sanpin boshi the school otherwise does not show. Masahiro keeps the same Soshu-den worked at lower temperature, his temper calm and his mokume conspicuous; Kuniyasu and Kunitsugu stand closest of all to the master and signed for him. Kunitomo turns alone toward late Seki, his gunome round-headed and his chisel the finest in the group, and the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke carry the zanguri steel south into Osaka, the latter keeping the Ishido clove he was born to. Hiroyuki holds suguha over a blackish steel that recalls old Yamato, and the two Echizen Kunikiyo forge a dark, dense hokkoku-gane under a calm chu-suguha. A collector seeks Horikawa because the school stands at a hinge: Kunihiro is read as the first hand of the new-sword age, and the line he taught runs forward into the Osaka tradition through Kunisada and Kunisuke and into Echizen through Kunikiyo. To kantei the work, read the steel first, the standing zanguri surface and the oblique mizukage, then the sinking nioiguchi and the Soshu-revival notare with its sunagashi and kinsuji; the individual hand declares itself in the departures, Kunimichi's pointed boshi, Kunitomo's Seki gunome and compact tang, Kuniyasu's reversed file marks and two-character mei, Hiroyuki's kiri-yasuri. The founder and his closest pupils sit at the top of the line, Kunihiro signing almost everything he made, the large kata-ochi two-character mei beside his long residence signatures; because Kuniyasu, Masahiro, Kunitsugu and Hiromi worked as his daisaku, a share of the blades signed Kunihiro are in fact theirs. Provenance runs through the houses of the founder's own story and of the country, the Hyuga Ito he had served, the Shimazu of Kagoshima, the Imperial Family and Toyotomi Hideyori, with the tachi Kunihiro dedicated to the Hataeda Hachimangu still in the shrine's keeping. A signed Horikawa blade reaches a private collection only from time to time, carrying on its nakago the hand with which the new sword begins. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunihiro國廣 | 1573-1613 | 148 |
| Kunimichi國路 | 1615-1624 | 74 |
| Kunisada國貞 | 1624-1646 | 86 |
| Kunitomo國儔 | 1596-1615 | 27 |
| Masahiro正弘 | 1596-1615 | 16 |
Kyōto: the revival workshop
The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
A blade of top-grade workmanship and condition, formally judged to rank with a nationally recognized Important Art Object (Jūyō Bijutsuhin). Awarded only at the NBTHK’s competitive annual examination.
Of Japan’s roughly 2.5 million registered swords, only 12,357 (about 1 in 202) have ever attained Jūyō.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
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