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About the maker

Ryokai Hisanobu久信

On a long-signed tachi dated Kagen 2 (1304) the smith cut his full name and personal title, Kuro-zaemon-no-jo Hisanobu, and that single inscription fixes much of what is known of him. Ryo Hisanobu, signing Ryo-Hisanobu, was the son of the founder of the Ryokai school of Yamashiro and the second generation of that line, working at the very end of the Kamakura period on the dated evidence of his surviving blades, the year-signatures Kagen, Tokuji and Engyo placing him almost level with his father at the turn of the fourteenth century. The Ryokai school stood among the recognized offshoots of the great Rai workshop of Kyoto, and the published sources describe Hisanobu as carrying his father's hand on with little change. He is rated Jo-jo saku in the reference texts, a high standing for so little-recorded a smith, and his work survives in a handful of designated blades, signed and attributed, by which his manner can be read. His is the quiet Yamashiro suguha of the Ryokai line. Over a forging of itame or ko-itame that flows toward masame and stands a little open, the ji carries dust-fine ji-nie and the school's whitish shirake-utsuri, which on the slenderer blades rises in a straight band from the machi before spreading up the jigane. The temper is a calm chu- or hoso-suguha, or a suguha-cho mixing small ko-gunome with a few ko-choji and ko-midare, the nioiguchi tightening and clouding into urumi in places, with ko-ashi and yo entering, a faint fraying of hotsure along the habuchi and fine sunagashi, the boshi closing straight into a small ko-maru. The first Juyo tachi the published sources call an offering that well displays the characteristics of the Ryokai school, the phrase 「了戒一派の特色がよく表示された出来口」 standing as a fair summary of his hand. The jigane is the foundation of the recognition. Across every one of his blades the whitish shirake-utsuri stands in the ji, the inherited Ryokai tell that separates the line from the Rai parent, in whose work it is essentially absent. The itame leans toward masame, the Yamato-ward drift of this Rai offshoot, so that the surface stands and flows where the packed Rai ji stays smooth, ji-nie clinging dust-fine and an occasional chikei running. In the ha the calm suguha shows minute work, ko-ashi and yo entering thickly on the best pieces, the nioiguchi clouding softly, an occasional tobiyaki or yubashiri drifting across, a little nijuba showing low on one kodachi. On his finest attributed tachi the published sources praise the abundant ashi and yo, the good nioiguchi and the finely worked ji together, judging it a particularly fine example among his attributed work with the words 「同工極め中にあって特に優品といえる」. The small body of his designated work divides into two registers. The first is his rare signed survivals, ubu tachi and kodachi carrying a three-character Ryo-Hisanobu toward the mune above the mekugi-ana, and the one long-signed dated tachi giving the full personal name; one tachi is carved with bonji and suken on the omote and bonji and gomabashi on the ura, the late-Kamakura Kyoto manner. The published sources call the signed kodachi precious as one of the few in-mei works of this smith, ubu and well preserved, its hand recalling the father, 「作風は父了戒を想わせるような出来口」. The second register is mumei blades attributed to him on the same reading, one an ubu mumei tachi of well-made ko-itame, one an osuriage mumei katana slightly high in the shinogi. Signed work is described again and again as extremely few, which is why his year-signed and dated pieces carry such documentary weight, one of them called of very high reference value as one of the scarce in-mei works of this smith, 「数少ない同工の有銘の作として資料価値は頗る高い」. The kantei is drawn against two near neighbours. The first is Rai Kunitoshi, the parent of the line, against whom the published sources resolve one of his mumei katana directly: the ko-gunome, hotsure and other changes at the ha-border of his fine suguha read a degree quieter and lonelier than Kunitoshi, the calm narrow line still showing minute activity, the verdict 「来国俊に比してやや蕭然たるもの」, with the boshi running straight into a settled ko-maru, so that the Hisanobu attribution is correctly affirmed. The masame and shirake more marked, the nioiguchi tighter and the whole calmer, these are the points that part him from Rai. The second neighbour is the father himself, from whom Hisanobu is separated less by any feature than by the signature, since signed work of the son is rarer still; a plain Hisanobu suguha is at a glance easily taken for the father's, and a soft Rai Kunitoshi for either of them. His single most consequential blade is the dated tachi that, by giving his personal name, established his zokumyo as Kuro-zaemon and through it showed that an earlier nationally designated tachi, once read as the father's sole work, is in fact a joint work of father Ryokai and son Hisanobu. Hisanobu has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties of his own, and none of his recorded blades is locked permanently out of private hands; his standing is that of a scarce but genuinely collectable name. Five of his blades are on the official designation record, all at the Juyo tier, and the published sources lean on his year-dated work and on outside documents to fix his place, the Tokuji 3 naginata in the Tokugawa Art Museum carrying the inscription 「了戒子息久信作」 that confirms him as Ryokai's son. No provenance owners are recorded for his designated blades, whose whereabouts of record run to private collections across several prefectures. A signed Hisanobu, ubu and with its mei intact, is among the scarcer things a collector of late-Kamakura Yamashiro work could hope to encounter, coming to light only from time to time and prized as documentary evidence as much as for itself; a mumei tachi or katana attributed to him appears a little more readily, and it is on these, with their shirake-utsuri and clouding suguha read against the quieter Rai line, that his hand is most often met. The published sources close on one such mumei blade as a calm fine suguha that yet shows minute work, 「静閑な細直刃ながらも微細な働きをみせる」, a deep and savoured offering, which is as fair a verdict on the smith as on the blade.

Samurai Museum

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