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About the maker

Katsumitsu勝光

On a katana of Eisho 9 (1512), beneath the long signature of Jirozaemon-no-jo Fujiwara Katsumitsu, the smith added a phrase of his own: "as far as my heart can reach, nothing could surpass this" (心の及ぶところ此の上の者あるべからざる也), declaring the blade a work that fully satisfied him. The maker of that boast is the most accomplished bearer of a crowded name. The published sources record that several generations and more than a dozen smiths used the name Katsumitsu among the late-Muromachi Osafune forges collectively called Sue-Bizen, and that within that crowd the branch titled Jirozaemon-no-jo, the son of Ukyo-no-suke Katsumitsu, is especially accomplished, counted with Yosozaemon-no-jo Sukesada and Gorozaemon-no-jo Kiyomitsu as a representative smith of the late Bizen tradition. What the published sources name as his individuality is a matter of degree within a shared idiom. Every Sue-Bizen smith tempers the open-waisted, double-structured gunome, the *fukushiki-gunome* that is the diagnostic late-Bizen line; Katsumitsu builds his prime on the same base, well-packed *ko-itame* carrying *ji-nie* and fine *chikei*, over which the temper rides high and bright with *ashi* and *yo* entering richly, the *nioiguchi* clear and tightening, small *tobiyaki* interspersed. The distinction the judges draw is that he mixes *choji* into that *gunome* more freely than his fellows, for a more flamboyant effect. "Compared with Sukesada," the sources write, "Katsumitsu shows more conspicuous *choji* in the temper, and the so-called crab-claw (*kani-no-tsume*) irregularities appear relatively less often" (勝光は祐定に比して丁子の刃文が目立ち). On his finest dated wakizashi the same point is put positively: he is "particularly adept at a more splendid workmanship in which abundant *choji* are intermingled within the *midare*" (乱れの中に丁子を多く交えた一段と華やかな出来を得意としている). The *jigane* is the constant beneath that flamboyance. It is the well-packed *ko-itame* of late Osafune, *ji-nie* attaching, *chikei* finely woven, in places a little standing or flowing; on the best pieces the *ji-nie* lies fine as dust (*ji-nie michin*). The classical *midare-utsuri* of old Bizen has largely gone from this late steel and appears only faintly on a few blades; one Eisho-2 katana is read as showing little *utsuri* precisely because the *ji-nie* is so strong, so that the *jigane* itself looks powerful. The *boshi* answers the *hamon*, running *midare-komi* to a *ko-maru* or a pointed tendency, *hakikake* at the tip and a turnback. Across both faces lie the devotional carvings of Sue-Bizen, a *kurikara*, *bonji* with *suken*, and shrine names such as Hachiman Daibosatsu and Amaterasu Kotaijin, which the sources are careful to call the work of collaborating *horimonoshi* rather than the smith's own hand. Katsumitsu is, above all, the great collaborator of the house, and his record is largely one of joint work. With his brother Sakyo-no-shin Munemitsu he cut the blades long prized as *Munekatsu gassaku*, the two names signed together on katate-uchi uchigatana and wakizashi; on one Eisho-7 wakizashi the inscription explicitly reads "younger brother, Sakyo-no-shin Munemitsu" (弟左京進宗光), a line the sources call extremely important material urging a reexamination of the Osafune genealogy. The single most celebrated work is the joint naginata with Yosozaemon-no-jo Sukesada, dated Eisho 18, a bold and magnificent *naginata-zukuri* with the incised inscriptions Hagun-no-ken and Sanshin-soku-ittai, commissioned by Ukita Yoshie and called "a masterpiece among Sue-Bizen naginata" (末備前の薙刀中の傑作である). A katana of Daiei 3 is a joint work with his son Jirobei-no-jo Harumitsu. Beside the flamboyant *gunome* he tempers a calm, broad *suguha* and *hiro-suguha* with equal command, the sources observing that the master famed for flamboyant *midare* through the Juyo-Bijutsuhin Asa-arashi shows, with his uncle's help, an advanced skill even in a straight temper. What sets Katsumitsu apart within his own school is therefore the reach of his hand rather than a single tell. His bright, *choji*-mixed *gunome* distinguishes his prime from the plainer Sukesada manner, while his command of a clear *suguha* and his ambition outside the standard idiom mark the upper edge of late-Bizen workmanship. The clearest sign of that ambition is a signed Bunki-2 tachi, slender with *sakizori*, that abandons the contemporary uchigatana for a *suguha*-based *ko-midare* with *ko-choji* over a *ko-itame* in which a *midare-utsuri* rises; it is read as "a piece conceived with the late-Kamakura Osafune of Kagemitsu and his fellows as its aim" (鎌倉末期の長船景光などをねらいとしたものであろう), an unusually forceful work, though the sources add that its technique does not reach its model. At the far edge a Daiei-6 tanto carries the temper up the *mune* into a *hitatsura*-like *muneyaki* with *tobiyaki*, more varied than usual. These outliers map the breadth across which the Sue-Bizen Katsumitsu hand can be known. Katsumitsu was a productive smith and signed and dated work survives in fair number, yet little of it can ever change hands. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, the joint katana with his son Harumitsu held at Nogi Shrine in Tokyo and inscribed Ichigo-ikkoshi, and through the Imperial collection, where katana signed Bishu Osafune Katsumitsu are kept as Gyobutsu. The patrimony continues in the daimyo houses and old collections grounded in their own provenance, the joint naginata for Ukita Yoshie a treasured heirloom of the Sendai Date family, other blades recording owners such as Uyama Hida-no-kami and Kitamura Yukinao, the Jubi katana Asa-arashi once held by Matsushita Masatoshi. Beyond these, of the roughly twenty designated works on record, only a small number sit in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, so a signed Jirozaemon-no-jo Katsumitsu comes to market only from time to time, and a dated, devotionally carved example, the kind on which the smith once wrote that nothing could surpass it, is a rewarding thing for a collector of late Bizen to encounter.

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