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About the maker

Fukuoka Ichimonji Yoshihira吉平

The published sources count Yoshihira (吉平) among the smiths who represent the Fukuoka Ichimonji school of Bizen at its height in the mid-Kamakura period, and most genealogies record him as a grandson of Muneyoshi (宗吉) and a son of Yoshiie (吉家), which places him in the same brilliant generation as Yoshifusa, Sukezane and Norifusa. The swordsmith registers date his activity to around the Kangen era (1243 to 1247), while one designation text gives around Bun'o (1260). His standing within that company was fixed by Honma's judgment, preserved in the record of one of his Juyo Bijutsuhin *tachi*: among mid-Kamakura Bizen work, "the most flamboyant *choji* are tempered by Yoshifusa and this Yoshihira" (最も華やかな丁子を焼くのは吉房とこの吉平である). Several signed *tachi* survive, and the same sources note that one of them holds the rank of Kokuho. For his characteristic hand the published sources repeat a single formula: beside Yoshifusa or Sukezane his work shows less of the grand *o-choji-midare*, yet it abounds in change, and "one often sees examples in which the interior of the *ha* becomes laden with *nie*" (刃中沸づくものをよく見る). That variation has a precise vocabulary. Into his *choji-midare* enter *kawazuko-choji* and *fukuro-choji*, *gunome* and occasional slightly pointed forms mix in, and the *yakiba* rises and falls conspicuously. *Ashi* and *yo* enter well, the *nioi* runs deep with fine *ko-nie*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* work through the *ha*. His grandest pieces are described as "a style rich in variation, mixing *fukuro*, *juka* and *kawazuko choji*" (袋・重花・蛙子丁子などを交えて変化に富む作風), and on the Tokubetsu Juyo *tachi* of the twenty-first session the temper even turns *saka-gakari* over the lower half, a feature of which the NBTHK writes that there are "no comparable examples among Yoshihira's works" (吉平の作例としては類例がなく). The *jigane* is an *itame*, in places mixed with *mokume* and flowing *hada*, and its inclination to stand is stated outright: compared with his contemporaries of the school, the published record observes, "the *jigane* also tends somewhat to stand" (地がねもやや肌立つ). *Ji-nie* adheres, on the finest blades thickly and with *chikei* entering, and a *midare-utsuri* rises distinctly on nearly every recorded work. The *boshi* runs *midare-komi* and returns in *ko-maru*, at times taking a pointed tendency with *hakikake*; on some blades it is *sugu* with a *yakitsume* feeling. Within this one manner the judges distinguish two registers. The quiet, small-patterned pieces lean from *ko-choji* toward *suguha*, with a tighter *nioiguchi* and an unusually even *yakihaba*; of one such Juyo Bijutsuhin *tachi* from the Hachisuka family, Honma remarks that it is "unusual for this smith in that the *yakiba* shows little difference in height, yet it is genuine" (同作としては珍らしく刃文の焼幅に高低差の少ない出来であるが、正真である). The grand register stands at the opposite pole, "as bustling as Yoshifusa" (吉房にならぶほどに賑やかで), and the *mumei* katana of the first Tokubetsu Juyo session was judged "even more flamboyant than the signed works" (有銘の作にくらべて一層華やか). His *mei* is normally the two characters Yoshihira, cut with a thick chisel toward the *mune* of the *nakago*; the *tachi* handed down in the Ii family is signed instead with a fine, small chisel and is singled out as "prime material for the study of Yoshihira" (吉平の研究上好資料である). Among his works at the Kokuho rank there is one tempered with *koshiba*, though the published record adds that "this is not his usual practice" (これを常とはしない). What separates him inside the school is carried by his own documented traits: a *jigane* that stands where his fellows' runs tighter, the *kawazuko-choji* that recurs through his grand register at a frequency he shares only with Sukezane, and a *yakiba* whose rises and falls are the form his variation takes. The published record also notes the general scale, observing that compared with contemporaries of the school "works of comparatively small scale are numerous" (比較的に小出来のものが多く). No pupils are recorded under his name; with Yoshifusa, his grandest works define the flamboyant peak of Fukuoka Ichimonji *choji* against which the later branches of the school and the Osafune *choji* smiths came to be measured. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku, and seventeen designated works stand on record: three Tokubetsu Juyo, seven Juyo, four Juyo Bijutsuhin and three Important Cultural Properties. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony in shrine and public keeping, among them blades preserved at Futarasan Jinja and Tanzan Jinja. Nine blades carry recorded provenance. The roll runs through the Ii family of Hikone, whose almost *ubu* *tachi*, published in the *Kozan Oshigata* and the *Umetada Meikan*, keeps on its *mune* a *kirikomi* that speaks of service in battle, and onward through the Shimazu, Hachisuka, Maeda, Ikeda and Kishu Tokugawa families; the *sayagaki* of one *mumei* katana records it "presented by an old lord of Yamashiro" (古山城主様ヨリ被進). For a collector the realistic field is the ten blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, and even there most pieces of recorded whereabouts rest in long-held private collections; a signed master of the Fukuoka Ichimonji at this rank reaches the open market only rarely, and a Yoshihira coming into open hands is a rare event.

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