NihontoWatchAntique Japanese Sword Katana attributed to Masatsugu with NBTHK Hozon Certificate 【Description】 This blade is attributed to Suishinshi Masatsugu (水心子正次), who was active during the late Edo period (the early – mid 19th century). Masatsugu was born in the 1oth year of the Bunka era (1813) and his real name was Kawabe Hokushi. It is said that he was adopted by Suishinshi Masahide (水心子正秀) for his excellent skills as a swordsmith, and was trained by Takei Naotane (大慶直胤), an apprentice of Suishinshi Masahide: both Suishinshi Masahide and Taikei Naotane are known as the three most renowned swordsmiths during the late Edo period (the other is Minamoto Kiyomaro). Then, Masatsugu became Naotane’s son-in-law later, and took over the main family of Suishinshi. Also, he forged blades as an Okakaekaji, a swordsmith who exclusively forged swords for a specific domain or clan, to serve the Akimoto family like Masahide and Naotane. Suishinshi Masahide was born in the third year of the Kan-En era (1750) in the Yonezawa domain in Dewa province (Today’s Yamagata/Akita prefecture). His birth name was Suzuki Sanjiro (鈴木三治郎). When he was about 18 years old, he started learning blacksmithing techniques from a local blacksmith named Yoshizawa Sanjiro, who specialized in producing farming tools in Dewa Koku. Later on, Masahide decided to become a swordsmith. In 1771, when he was 22 years old, he moved to Musashi Koku (Today’s Tokyo) to become an apprentice of Miyagawa Yoshihide, also known as Shitahara Yoshihide. Masahide learned sword-forging techniques under this master, who belonged to Shitahara School, one of the most prestigious schools in this area. After finishing his apprenticeship, he returned to Dewa Koku. His craftsmanship was widely recognized in the province. In 1774, Masahide started to serve Akimoto Tsunetomo, the head of the domain, because of his superb sword-forging techniques. It is said that he began to use Suishinshi as his title during this time and changed his maker’s name to Kawabe Gihachiro Masahide. In 1781, he moved to the Edo City, settling in a house owned by the Akimoto clan. He was always curious to know various sword-forging techniques. He started to search how Japanese swords were made during the late Heian-Azuchi Momoyama period (late 12th-late 16th century: KOTO era), especially the ones made with SOSHU DEN and BIZEN DEN traditions. He often visited the offsprings of renowned swordsmiths in the old days to know the secret of old sword-forging techniques. One of the most notable episodes is when he visited Yamamura Tsunahiro, an offspring of Masamune, one of the historical figures in Japanese sword forging. And he improved his craftsmanship there as well. Back in the day, the mainstream Japanese swords were less curved and muscular. However, he started to feel something was missing in those blades made in his days by exploring ancient Japanese swords. Therefore, he announced Token Fukko Ron (刀剣復古論), where swordsmiths need to go back to the old way the blades were forged. This theory resonated with many sword makers back then. Eventually, this theory became mainstream. While he published about ten books on how to forge Japanese swords and other related topics, he was also passionate about training his apprentices. Many apprentices who had learned sword-forging techniques from him later became famous swordsmiths, such as Chounsai Tsunatoshi and Takei Naotane. Considering this fact, he played an essential role in the late Edo period. He is listed as Edo Sansaku (One of the three most prestigious swordsmiths). The other two are Taikei Naotane (大慶直胤) and Minamoto Kiyomaro (源清麿). Taikei Natane was born in the seventh year of the Anei era (1778) into a family that made sickles, a farming tool, for living in Dewa Koku (Today’s Yamagata prefecture). From a younger age, he got interested in becoming a swordsmith while learning blacksmithing skills. During the late Kansei era (1789-1801), he left his hometown and moved to Edo Ci
NihontoWatchSuishinshi Masahide School水心子正秀派
Offered by Samurai Museum
Shinshinto · Musashi
68 pieces on the market now
At Hamachō in Edo, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nineteenth, Suishinshi Masahide[[c:1]] gathered the school that would turn Japanese swordmaking back toward its medieval models. Born Kawabe Gihachirō at Akayu in Dewa in 1750, signing first as Suzuki Takahide and then Eikoku, he studied under the Shitahara smith Yoshihide of Musashi, took the name Masahide in An'ei 3, and served the Akimoto house of Yamagata before settling in Edo, where he worked for nearly fifty years. He is the founding figure of the shinshintō and the theorist of the fukko-tō (revival-sword) doctrine, the argument that the sword ought to return to its Kamakura forms. Around that teaching he drew a large body of pupils, among them Taikei Naotane, who would give the revival its fullest practical form, the future second Masayoshi (Hosokawa Morihide), and a wider Edo and provincial following that carried the program into the Mito, Yonezawa, Tsuyama, and Tatebayashi domains. The shared vocabulary of the school is the deliberate reach back into the koto traditions, worked over a tightly forged, often muji-toned ko-itame with thick ji-nie. Masahide's own prime hand was the Ōsaka-utsushi, the surging tōran-midare of Tsuda Sukehiro opening from a long yakidashi and the broad suguha after Inoue Shinkai, betrayed on even his closest copies by a blackish, coarse nie that spills from the ha into the ji. Naotane gave the revival its Bizen and Sōshū faces: a reverse-leaning chōji-midare with angular kaku-gunome and saka-ashi, modeled on the late-Kamakura Osafune masters Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu and anchored by a consciously revived midare-utsuri that no ordinary shinshintō steel carries, set beside a Sōshū notare with its whorled uzumaki-hada and coarse, striped nie. The pupils divided this inheritance along their own lines. Jirōtarō Naokatsu, Naotane's adopted son, took a Bizen-den led by a kataochi-gunome from Kanemitsu with a pervasive saka-gakari slant and chōji- or midare-utsuri in the ji.
Suishinshi Masatsugu reproduced Naotane's two traditions, Sōshū and Bizen, down to the cut of his signature. Through Masayoshi the Bizen current passed to his heir Hosokawa Masamori of Tsuyama, whose chōji clusters mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba. The Osaka wave traveled separately into Mito through Naoe Sukemasa, who set a Shinkai-styled suguha and a Sukehiro tōran over a clear ko-itame, while Chōunsai Tsunatoshi of the Uesugi service carried a nioi-deki chōji mixed with gunome, suguha, and tōran-midare, often with carving by his own hand. To kantei the school is to weigh a tradition consciously copied against the period marks the copy cannot shed: the constant of the line is that the hamon is never the pure nioi-deki of old Bizen but carries nie throughout, a difference the NBTHK names outright as the divide between koto and shinshintō. The revived utsuri in Naotane and Naokatsu, the spilling nie in Masahide, the whorled uzumaki-hada shared across the line, and the broad, thick-kasane late-Edo sugata are the surest tells, narrowed further by the school's habit of full, dated signatures that make these smiths among the most exactly knowable of their age. Masahide stands at the head as the teacher and theorist, his finest work in his Ōsaka copies rather than the doctrine he proclaimed; Naotane stands ahead of him in execution, his Bizen-den held the finest among the shinshintō. Their pupils define the late-Edo Osafune and Sōshū revivals as practiced through Edo and the domains, with Naokatsu and Masatsugu read as the next hands after Naotane and Masayoshi. The provenance of the school runs through domain commission and bestowal (Mito blades forged at the Kōrakuen by lordly order, Tsuyama and Yonezawa fief work, Naotane's Sanada daishō and a tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection) rather than ancient daimyō transmission, fitting for a movement that, within a single generation at Edo, redrew the direction of nineteenth-century swordmaking by turning it back toward the old models. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Naotane直胤 | 1801-1837 | 40 |
| Masahide正秀 | 1777-1817 | 28 |
| Sukemasa助政 | 1804-1825 | 8 |
| Jirotaro Naokatsu直勝 | 1805-1858 | 7 |
| Masayoshi正義 | 1791-1860 | 5 |
The Shinshintō revival
Around 1800 Suishinshi Masahide argued in his writings that the craft must return to the old masters’ methods: the fukkotō revival. His greatest successor Naotane worked convincingly in Bizen and Sōshū manners that had been dead for centuries.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
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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¥820,000