This is a masterpiece katana by Yoshikane of the Ko-Bizen school, dating to the Late Heian period. It features a slender form with deep sori and a small kissaki, characteristic of classical tachi. The blade exhibits a fine mokumehada mixed with itamehada, a bright nioikuchi, and frequent ashi and you, exuding an ancient elegance and high dignity. It is accompanied by a Tokubetsu Hozon Token certificate.
NihontoWatchsuriage-mumei · Ko-Bizen · Heian · nagasa 70.2cm · sori 2.4cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 1150-1220
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 5%
When a signed tachi of Yoshikane was designated at the seventh Tokubetsu Juyo session in 1980, the commentary called it "a typical work of Ko-Bizen Yoshikane in the quality of the ji and ha and in the manner of the signature alike"[[c:1]]. Yoshikane (吉包) was a smith, or more probably several smiths, of the Ko-Bizen school of Bizen province, active from the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura period. For so early a hand his works survive in comparative number and in a nearly uniform style. From the mei and the workmanship the published sources read several smiths of the name across slightly different dates, all of them judged Ko-Bizen, and they leave the question of generations open. The same name recurs a little later in the early Fukuoka Ichimonji school of the same province, so that the appraisal of any Yoshikane begins by deciding between the two. Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku.
His tachi are slender, with high koshizori and marked funbari, closing in a small kissaki that often inclines gently forward; the published sources call the figure classical and graceful, and one entry adds that pieces in which blade and nakago alike seem to carry rather little hiraniku "are frequent in Yoshikane"[[c:2]]. The forging is the first of his marks: an itame that stands out, mixing o-hada in places and patches of jifu, with ji-nie attaching well. The NBTHK states the point outright, writing that "within Ko-Bizen it is the comparatively standing hada that is the characteristic of this smith"[[c:3]]. The second lies in the temper, whose nioiguchi sinks rather than brightens; describing a Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, the published sources name the pair together, finding that "Yoshikane's character appears in points such as the sinking tendency of the nioiguchi and the standing hada of the jigane"[[c:4]].
The yakiba itself is a suguha-toned line that undulates shallowly into ko-midare, mixing ko-choji and traces of gunome. Ashi and yo enter busily, ko-nie attaches, and sunagashi and kinsuji run through the ha. At times the temper is dropped above the machi, and here the published record is careful with its own evidence, noting that yakiotoshi "is not confined to this smith but is met with from time to time in Ko-Bizen work"[[c:5]]. A midare-utsuri does appear, but it is held in check rather than bright: on the refined ko-itame blades the published sources find only a faint jifu-utsuri, while a wider o-suriage katana shows a more conspicuous midare-utsuri, so that the reflection runs from quiet to plain but never reaches the standing brilliance of the Ichimonji namesake. The boshi runs sugu to ko-maru, frequently with hakikake at the point.
The published record divides his work and his mei into two manners, a small signature on a slender blade with a suguha-toned ha against a somewhat larger signature on a wider blade quenched in ko-midare, and it states that "the former is regarded as the earlier in date"[[c:6]]. The earlier register is known above all through an o-suriage katana bearing a gold-inlay attribution by Hon'ami Kochu, designated Tokubetsu Juyo at the twenty-fifth session with an itomaki-tachi koshirae of gold nashiji bearing chrysanthemum and paulownia crests. There the standing itame gives way to a tight ko-itame with ji-nie and a faint jifu-utsuri, the ha widening into a broad suguha tone with ko-choji and ko-midare; of its jigane the commentary writes that "the excellent forging built mainly on ko-itame is praised"[[c:7]], and it finds the broad, softly inflected nioiguchi deeply appealing. The scholarship has also moved within the record itself: a Juyo tachi formerly carried a vermilion attribution to Nagamitsu, but on repolishing the jigane and the ha proved distinctly older than Nagamitsu, and the blade was re-designated with the attribution changed to Yoshikane.
Inside Ko-Bizen the published sources separate him by exactly the traits above: the hada that stands more than in his fellow smiths, the nioiguchi that sinks, the quieter utsuri, the occasional yakiotoshi. Against the Ichimonji namesake the line is drawn from his own side as well. The Ko-Bizen Yoshikane signs with a small two-character mei cut with a fine chisel, the character 包 differing in particular from the Ichimonji form, and the habit of adding saku is met with more often in the Ko-Bizen works; his temper keeps ko-midare as its keynote with a restrained utsuri, where the namesake favors flamboyant choji under a standing midare-utsuri. The published sources add the matter of supply: "in general more works of the Ichimonji survive, and Ko-Bizen Yoshikane is scarce"[[c:8]].
The designated record now runs deep for so early a name: seven blades at the Tokubetsu Juyo level and twenty-eight at Juyo, with a further group of Important Cultural Property and prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi, and two blades that descend in the Imperial Household. There is no National Treasure among them, and the early Imperial and Important Cultural Property blades are patrimony held in court and museum hands rather than pieces that trade. The provenance recorded behind the rest reaches court and daimyo houses alike: the Imperial Family through the Katsura-no-miya line, the Tokugawa and Kuroda houses, the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira and Matsudaira Yasuharu, the Yamauchi, and the Kikkawa family of Iwakuni, whose mumei tachi the commentary judged the piece "that can most fittingly be likened to Yoshikane among the many smiths of Ko-Bizen"[[c:9]]; a signed Juyo tachi descends from the Walter A. Compton collection. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the thirty-five blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, of which only some have a recorded whereabouts, and the published record itself remarks on how seldom the name comes to hand. A Ko-Bizen Yoshikane, above all a signed one, comes to market rarely and is among the rarer encounters that old Bizen affords.
Where Yoshikane 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Bizen in the Heian period
The Bizen tradition begins where iron sand, charcoal forests, and the Inland Sea shipping lanes met. By the late Heian period the Ko-Bizen smiths were forging tachi for court nobles and the rising warrior houses, and both sides of the Genpei War carried Bizen steel.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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.
NBTHK official siteReturns/exchanges/cancellations not accepted after shipment except for significant defects; if defective, return/exchange possible within 3 days of arrival (return shipping paid by customer).
This is a masterpiece katana by Yoshikane of the Ko-Bizen school, dating to the Late Heian period. It features a slender form with deep sori and a small kissaki, characteristic of classical tachi. The blade exhibits a fine mokumehada mixed with itamehada, a bright nioikuchi, and frequent ashi and you, exuding an ancient elegance and high dignity. It is accompanied by a Tokubetsu Hozon Token certificate.
NihontoWatchsuriage-mumei · Ko-Bizen · Heian · nagasa 70.2cm · sori 2.4cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 1150-1220
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 5%
When a signed tachi of Yoshikane was designated at the seventh Tokubetsu Juyo session in 1980, the commentary called it "a typical work of Ko-Bizen Yoshikane in the quality of the ji and ha and in the manner of the signature alike"[[c:1]]. Yoshikane (吉包) was a smith, or more probably several smiths, of the Ko-Bizen school of Bizen province, active from the end of the Heian period into the early Kamakura period. For so early a hand his works survive in comparative number and in a nearly uniform style. From the mei and the workmanship the published sources read several smiths of the name across slightly different dates, all of them judged Ko-Bizen, and they leave the question of generations open. The same name recurs a little later in the early Fukuoka Ichimonji school of the same province, so that the appraisal of any Yoshikane begins by deciding between the two. Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku.
His tachi are slender, with high koshizori and marked funbari, closing in a small kissaki that often inclines gently forward; the published sources call the figure classical and graceful, and one entry adds that pieces in which blade and nakago alike seem to carry rather little hiraniku "are frequent in Yoshikane"[[c:2]]. The forging is the first of his marks: an itame that stands out, mixing o-hada in places and patches of jifu, with ji-nie attaching well. The NBTHK states the point outright, writing that "within Ko-Bizen it is the comparatively standing hada that is the characteristic of this smith"[[c:3]]. The second lies in the temper, whose nioiguchi sinks rather than brightens; describing a Tokubetsu Juyo tachi, the published sources name the pair together, finding that "Yoshikane's character appears in points such as the sinking tendency of the nioiguchi and the standing hada of the jigane"[[c:4]].
The yakiba itself is a suguha-toned line that undulates shallowly into ko-midare, mixing ko-choji and traces of gunome. Ashi and yo enter busily, ko-nie attaches, and sunagashi and kinsuji run through the ha. At times the temper is dropped above the machi, and here the published record is careful with its own evidence, noting that yakiotoshi "is not confined to this smith but is met with from time to time in Ko-Bizen work"[[c:5]]. A midare-utsuri does appear, but it is held in check rather than bright: on the refined ko-itame blades the published sources find only a faint jifu-utsuri, while a wider o-suriage katana shows a more conspicuous midare-utsuri, so that the reflection runs from quiet to plain but never reaches the standing brilliance of the Ichimonji namesake. The boshi runs sugu to ko-maru, frequently with hakikake at the point.
The published record divides his work and his mei into two manners, a small signature on a slender blade with a suguha-toned ha against a somewhat larger signature on a wider blade quenched in ko-midare, and it states that "the former is regarded as the earlier in date"[[c:6]]. The earlier register is known above all through an o-suriage katana bearing a gold-inlay attribution by Hon'ami Kochu, designated Tokubetsu Juyo at the twenty-fifth session with an itomaki-tachi koshirae of gold nashiji bearing chrysanthemum and paulownia crests. There the standing itame gives way to a tight ko-itame with ji-nie and a faint jifu-utsuri, the ha widening into a broad suguha tone with ko-choji and ko-midare; of its jigane the commentary writes that "the excellent forging built mainly on ko-itame is praised"[[c:7]], and it finds the broad, softly inflected nioiguchi deeply appealing. The scholarship has also moved within the record itself: a Juyo tachi formerly carried a vermilion attribution to Nagamitsu, but on repolishing the jigane and the ha proved distinctly older than Nagamitsu, and the blade was re-designated with the attribution changed to Yoshikane.
Inside Ko-Bizen the published sources separate him by exactly the traits above: the hada that stands more than in his fellow smiths, the nioiguchi that sinks, the quieter utsuri, the occasional yakiotoshi. Against the Ichimonji namesake the line is drawn from his own side as well. The Ko-Bizen Yoshikane signs with a small two-character mei cut with a fine chisel, the character 包 differing in particular from the Ichimonji form, and the habit of adding saku is met with more often in the Ko-Bizen works; his temper keeps ko-midare as its keynote with a restrained utsuri, where the namesake favors flamboyant choji under a standing midare-utsuri. The published sources add the matter of supply: "in general more works of the Ichimonji survive, and Ko-Bizen Yoshikane is scarce"[[c:8]].
The designated record now runs deep for so early a name: seven blades at the Tokubetsu Juyo level and twenty-eight at Juyo, with a further group of Important Cultural Property and prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi, and two blades that descend in the Imperial Household. There is no National Treasure among them, and the early Imperial and Important Cultural Property blades are patrimony held in court and museum hands rather than pieces that trade. The provenance recorded behind the rest reaches court and daimyo houses alike: the Imperial Family through the Katsura-no-miya line, the Tokugawa and Kuroda houses, the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira and Matsudaira Yasuharu, the Yamauchi, and the Kikkawa family of Iwakuni, whose mumei tachi the commentary judged the piece "that can most fittingly be likened to Yoshikane among the many smiths of Ko-Bizen"[[c:9]]; a signed Juyo tachi descends from the Walter A. Compton collection. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the thirty-five blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, of which only some have a recorded whereabouts, and the published record itself remarks on how seldom the name comes to hand. A Ko-Bizen Yoshikane, above all a signed one, comes to market rarely and is among the rarer encounters that old Bizen affords.
Where Yoshikane 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Bizen in the Heian period
The Bizen tradition begins where iron sand, charcoal forests, and the Inland Sea shipping lanes met. By the late Heian period the Ko-Bizen smiths were forging tachi for court nobles and the rising warrior houses, and both sides of the Genpei War carried Bizen steel.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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.
NBTHK official siteReturns/exchanges/cancellations not accepted after shipment except for significant defects; if defective, return/exchange possible within 3 days of arrival (return shipping paid by customer).
