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About the maker

Kozori Morisuke守助

Morisuke signs his blades Bishu Osafune Morisuke in six characters, often adding a date, and one of his tachi carries on its reverse a Joji 2 (1363) inscription that fixes him squarely in the late Nanbokucho period. He was an Osafune smith, but his line within that great Bizen workshop cannot be clearly drawn. The published sources count him among the Kozori, the slightly-curved-sword smiths, and place him probably in the lineage of Moriie and the Hatakeda group, with the further note that his work can also be appraised alongside the Yoshii-mono of the same province. The reference books list a Morisuke succession of several generations, the first in Ryakuo, the second in Enbun, the third in Eitoku, then a fourth in Oei and a fifth in Bun'an, and the surviving signed pieces are judged to fall in the late Nanbokucho around Eitoku. Signed work by his hand is exceedingly rare, so each of the blades on record is valued less for fame than as material for knowing a smith of whom little else survives. The hand that recurs across his blades is a small-patterned temper, and it is this that the published sources name as the clearly expressed mark of Kozori workmanship. Over a ko-notare base he mixes gunome, ko-gunome, ko-choji, pointed teeth and angular squared-off elements, the whole never resolving into the large round gunome of the Kanemitsu-derived mainline but staying compact and busy, a ko-moyo. Into it run ashi and yo; nie gathers well along the edge; in places the habuchi loosens into hotsure, and kinsuji and sunagashi play conspicuously through the tempered area. On his finest tachi, the Eitoku-era piece in particular, the published record calls the result a blade rich in hataraki and 「覇気に充ちており」, filled with vigor, while remaining sound in both ji and ha. The boshi is not fixed to one shape: on the hira-zukuri and naginata work it enters in midare and points at the turn, while on the tachi it runs straight to a small round return, so that the temper of the tip tracks the form of the blade rather than carrying a single signature. The jigane is read through the standing of the grain. He forges an itame that tends to stand open, mokume and nagare-hada mixing into it, with fine ji-nie attaching, passages of jifu-like texture, and dark chikei-toned steel entering on the best pieces. Over this rises the reflection that places him a Bizen, not a Soshu, hand of the period: a midare-utsuri on the broad tachi, broad and straight low on the blade and breaking into irregularity higher up, and on the wide hira-zukuri sun-nobi tanto a bo-utsuri standing along the edge side. The reflection is named on most of his recorded blades, and on the long tachi it rises clearly enough to be one of the surer tells of his work. It is the jigane and its utsuri, more than any one shape in the yakiba, that anchor the appraisal of so sparsely documented a smith. His range divides into two registers without changing its essential manner. The first is the Nanbokucho tachi, of which the most arresting is a long o-dachi of wide mihaba, high koshizori and evident funbari running to a chu-kissaki, a piece the published sources call 「南北朝時代の大太刀の典例」, an exemplary model of the great tachi of the age, and prize the more because it survives ubu, signed and dated; on it the temper opens into a gunome-midare with kataochi-style gunome. The second register is the wide hira-zukuri sun-nobi tanto and ko-wakizashi, where the gunome compacts into close-set ko-gunome with togariba and a saka tendency, the nioiguchi tightening or sinking, the boshi entering in midare and pointing. Of one such wakizashi the published record says he was 「互の目を得意としている」, especially proficient in gunome, and on these smaller pieces a bo-hi is carved on both faces close to the mune. The dating of his work carries a historical interest beyond the smithing: his blades bear both the Southern Court Enbun years and the Northern Court Joji and Teiji years, and because many are dated Joji the judges reason that he was at that time a smith aligned with the Northern Court. The published sources draw from this the larger picture that 「当時の備前が、南北両朝の間に右往左往していた」, that Bizen of the day was pulled back and forth between the two courts. What the Kozori name means has been explained in many ways since old times and resists a clean definition, but the published sources treat it as 「兼光と師弟関係の無い刀工の一括した呼称」, a collective designation for the late-Nanbokucho Osafune smiths who, while not in a master-disciple line with Kanemitsu, worked in a manner descended from his. Morisuke belongs squarely to that body, and the NBTHK observes of his shortened signed tachi that 「この作は此の工のみならず小反りの典型的作風を示している」, that it shows not only this smith's own characteristics but the typical style of the Kozori group as a whole. A Morisuke blade thus reads as a standard of its kind: his bright Bizen utsuri over a standing itame and his small-patterned, busy gunome set him within the Kozori manner rather than the round-gunome line of Kanemitsu proper, and distinguish him in turn from the Soshu-leaning hands of the same decades. His lineage to Moriie and Hatakeda is offered by the published sources only as a probability, and they are candid that his place within Osafune is not securely established. Morisuke is not a smith of National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties; his record stands at seven blades that have reached the Juyo Token rank, with no Tokubetsu Juyo and no higher designation, and no provenance to a daimyo house is preserved among them. His standing rests instead on the scarcity of his signed work and on the quality of the few pieces that carry it: the dated o-dachi held an exemplary Nanbokucho tachi, the Eitoku tachi a blade of conspicuous vigor, and the small dated wakizashi and tanto valued as documentary evidence of a hand whose signed output is, in the words of the published record, exceedingly few. These are designated cultural property held in private and institutional hands rather than objects of the market, and an authenticated, signed Morisuke comes before a collector only rarely, the more so for being both signed and dated. For the student of Bizen its interest is precise: not a famous name but a clear, datable window onto the Kozori workshops of the late Nanbokucho, and onto a province caught between the Northern and Southern courts.

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