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About the maker

Shizu Kaneuji兼氏

Shizu is in origin a place name in Mino: because Masamune's pupil Kaneuji came to live and forge there, the name passed from village to man, and in the appraisal tradition a blade attributed simply Shizu means Kaneuji (単に志津と呼んだ場合は兼氏を意味することになる). He began in Yamato as a Tegai smith signing 包氏, entered the gate of Soshu Masamune, and at Shizu changed the writing to 兼氏. Counted from old among the Masamune Juttetsu, he is, in the sentence his designation texts repeat, the one whose manner stands closest to Masamune (それらの中にあって正宗に最も近い作風を示す刀工の一人). No dated work survives; the sources fix his period from the Kanno 1 (1350) date of his reputed pupil Kanetsugu, the very end of Kamakura into early Nanbokucho. One gold-inlaid katana goes further: in settling there he created the foundation of the Mino smiths (美濃刀工の基を創造した). The kantei against the master is stated in one clause: what differs from Masamune is that masame mixes into the kitae and the gunome run linked within the ha (鍛に柾ごころが交じり、刃中に互の目が連れる点にある). His itame flows and leans toward masame far more often than in Masamune, Sadamune, Norishige or Yukimitsu, the Tegai hand surviving inside finished Soshu work. The pointed teeth are a second tell, togari-ba mixing into his gunome across much of the corpus where on the Soshu homeland smiths they are an occasional accident. Where Masamune's midare never shows the same form twice, Kaneuji lets two or three gunome of one shape run linked in series, and the texts call the linked ko-gunome his habit of hand (処々小互の目が連れた手癖). The boshi sweeps with hakikake and turns back gently round, the calm round return named among his traits. The manner itself is grand Nanbokucho work. The katana run wide with little taper, shallow in sori, the kissaki extended or grown to o-kissaki. The jigane is itame mixed with mokume and flowing hada, the ji-nie thick, minute on the finest pieces, with fine chikei entering incessantly. Over it he tempers a notare base with gunome, ko-gunome and togari-ba, the nioiguchi deep, the nie thick and bright with rough nie in places; kinsuji, sunagashi, yubashiri and tobiyaki work through ha and ji, and the boshi runs midare-komi or notare into ko-maru or o-maru with hakikake. Yamato shows through this Soshu surface at the edge, in hotsure, kuichigai-ba, nijuba and uchinoke. The first Tokubetsu Juyo text settled a first-glance Soshu masterpiece on exactly these points, reading the flowing itame, pointed gunome and swept, yakizume-like boshi as a Yamato air (大和風が見られ); another finds the Yamato temperament (大和気質があらわれ) in the masa-leaning kitae and shallow return; a recurring formula resolves the whole: Yamato-den with Soshu-den added (大和伝に相州伝を加味し). Signed works are exceedingly rare, the record repeating it in nearly the same words across decades (兼氏有銘の作は極めて稀れ): eight signed records stand against one hundred thirty-six titled mumei, the kiwame sustained by gold-inlaid and red-lacquer attribution inscriptions and by Hon'ami origami: the Edo kinzogan of Sugawara Naganori, a Hon'ami Kochu origami of Kyoho 3 (1718) at 1,500 kan, the tanto whose gold-inlaid name Hanagatami is attributed to Hon'ami Koetsu. The rare signed pieces form a register of their own, maru-mune tachi, some carved with futasuji-hi whose tips sit slightly low, and ubu tanto with uchizori, short for their era; the sources turn the point into a trait: builds that never become especially long are rather characteristic of Kaneuji. Within the mumei corpus two poles stand apart. At the bold extreme the yaki rises and falls strongly, tobiyaki and long yubashiri scatter, and the boshi fills with fire: one Tokubetsu Juyo katana is called a blade of particular daring among Shizu attributions (志津極めの中でも殊に覇気のある一口); another, of Enbun-Joji build with a flame-form boshi burning down the mune, is named the very finest of the smith's attributions (同工極め中の白眉); a third, gold-inlaid, is so daring that the text takes the Kaneuji kinzogan as confirmed by the work itself. At the calm extreme the temper sits low and even, a shallow notare with ko-gunome; one signed Jubi tachi in suguha-cho stands apart even from his other signed blades. At least two Kaneuji are thought to have worked in Nanbokucho; Honma records that on the whole the large mei belong to the first generation, the small to the second and after, the first generation's signature angular and large in its cutting (初代銘は角張って大きいところが特徴である). The appraisal tradition keeps a lattice of distinct targets around him. A Shizu attribution in the broad sense, the so-called O-Shizu, can reach past the first Kaneuji to the second and third generations and the direct pupils; blades of the direct line are marked as not descending to what is called Naoe Shizu (所謂直江志津と称するところまで下るものではなく). Naoe Shizu is the school after the move to Naoe in the same province, its jigane showing, against the master's, the feeling of less ji-nie with chikei growing fewer (地沸が少ない感があり地景も少なくなる); one katana published at Juyo session 15 as Naoe Shizu was raised at Tokubetsu Juyo session 7 as den Shizu. The boundary runs upward as well. The katana that opened his Tokubetsu Juyo record had carried a Hon'ami Koyu origami to Sadamune and a sayagaki to Masamune; the NBTHK settled it as Shizu on the flowing itame, pointed gunome and swept boshi, calling it the finest deki among Shizu works (志津の作中の最高の出来). What he founded ran forward: the Mino tradition the sources credit him with beginning, and, two and a half centuries on, the Keicho revival of Soshu-den that Horikawa Kunihiro built above all on the model of Shizu. Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku. He has no National Treasures; six blades are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony outside the market, among them three signed tachi and the meibutsu Inaba Shizu, the tanto his texts cite as the yardstick for his short blades. Nine works are prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin; nineteen Tokubetsu Juyo and one hundred twenty-two Juyo make one hundred forty-one blades in those two tiers, of one hundred fifty-six designated works on record. Thirty-two blades carry recorded provenance, a roll running through Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hidetada, Maeda Toshitsune, Kuroda Nagamasa, the Date, Satake Yoshinobu, the Hosokawa marquis house, the Naito of Nobeoka, the Owari Tokugawa and the Choshu Mori; the Kuroda Shizu, a Tokubetsu Juyo blade, carries the sayagaki of Hirai Chiba. One tanto, given by Ii Naomasa to Kimata Seizaburo Morikatsu after the Wakamiko standoff with the Hojo in Tensho 10 (1582), descended in the Kimata, first house of elders of the Hikone Ii. Of recorded whereabouts today, holders include Futarasan Jinja, the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Sano Art Museum. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier; those blades are held closely, and one comes to market only rarely. When it does, the nakago is almost always bare, the attribution reading simply Shizu, in this tradition the name of one man.

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