NihontoWatchThis dagger is in excellent preservation condition, both the blade and the fitting, and there are no flaws or rust on the blade. The handle is wrapped with leather and the menuki is exposed. The inscription is engraved "Umetada Myoji residing Nishijin region of Yamashiro country" on the front and "Made in February, 1608" on the back. The scabbard is lacquered with the classic Japanese design of Nami Chidor(plover on the wave). Blade length: 21.0 cm Curvature: 0 cm Number of Mekugi hole: 2 Signature: Yamashiro no Kuni Nishijin no ju Umetada Myoju(front), Keicho Jusannen Nigatsubi Era: Shishinto Structure: Katakiriha-zukuri, Iori-mune Jitetsu: Itame Hamon: Hoso-suguha Boshi: Komaru Weight(blade only): 130 g Nakago: Ubu Koshirae: Aikuchi Please contact us if the katana you are looking for is not listed here.
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Shinto · around 1590-1631
Umetada Myoju (埋忠明寿) lived at Nishijin in Kyoto. The published sources give his common name as Hikojiro and an earlier name as Sokichi, and record that he later took the tonsure as Kakuho Myoju. A wakizashi signed with his age, sixty-one, and dated Genna 4 (1618), and a ken signed at seventy-four in Kan'ei 8 (1631), let them reckon his birth to Eiroku 1 (1558); he is said to have died in Kan'ei 8 at seventy-four. The Umetada were a house of metalworkers who served the Ashikaga shoguns from generation to generation, and Myoju styled himself the twenty-fifth-generation descendant of Sanjo Munechika[[c:1]]. As a swordsmith he is honoured as the founder of shinto smithing[[c:2]] and the teacher of Hizen Tadayoshi and Higo no Kami Teruhiro. As a tsuba maker he is ranked with Kaneie and Nobuie among the three masters of the Momoyama period[[c:3]]. One entry adds that the house worked closely with the Hon'ami appraisers, shortening blades, inlaying attribution signatures and making mountings, and another that the Umetada were a family of metalworkers who had served the Ashikaga shoguns for generations (「代々足利将軍家に仕えた金工の家柄」).
The published sources divide his tsuba by the metal of the plate. On iron he renders geometric patterns such as thunder-pattern and sayagata in gold nunome inlay. On brass, shakudo or suaka he lays colour-metals, gold, silver, shakudo and suaka, in a flat inlay of his own that keeps a slight relief. That flat inlay is the art the record makes his. One Juyo entry states that pictorial design, hira-zogan and the use of metals other than iron for the plate all begin with him[[c:4]], and another calls it the flat inlay he originated[[c:5]]. Brass is his usual plate; a suaka tsuba is noted as comparatively rare[[c:6]]. Rims are turned back, or twisted into the nejikaeshi-mimi that one entry calls the true essence of Myoju[[c:7]], and file-textured surfaces are used to heighten the picture.
His subjects are auspicious trees and plants: grapevine, the yuzu-like kunenbo citrus, oak, and pine with bamboo, boldly stylised into pattern with a taste the sources call extremely fresh and courtly[[c:8]]. The kunenbo, with the grapevine, is named the subject he liked to use[[c:9]]. The published sources read these designs through the Rinpa painters. Of an oak tsuba they write that its line makes one feel one is looking at Rinpa painting itself[[c:10]], and that a strong bond with Koetsu and Sotatsu can be felt[[c:11]]. Of a grapevine tsuba laid in shakudo alone they praise the flat inlay that keeps the very momentum of the brush[[c:12]]. On another oak tsuba the shakudo shows gradations like a famous ink painting[[c:13]]. On the pine-and-bamboo tsuba the straight line of the bamboo is set against the curve of the pine, and the full turned-back rim is likened to the lips of Shino and Oribe tea bowls.
His iron tsuba are a second, quieter body of work. They are thin and light in the hand, the iron well chosen[[c:14]], cut in openwork of two tomoe, a cart-wheel, a four-sided paper pattern, a well-curb or incense-game emblems, and tightened by fine gold inlay of thunder-pattern on the rim. The nunome inlay is traced to the manner of the Shoami house[[c:15]], which he probably took up at first. One iron tsuba with twin dragons and water-spots is read as showing the influence of Western culture[[c:16]] then arriving through Nagasaki. Of an openwork tsuba on hammered iron the sources write that grace can be felt even in the iron[[c:17]].
His blades are few. The only katana is the tachi dated Keicho 3 (1598), the oldest dated work under the Myoju name; beside it stand a shinogi-zukuri wakizashi and a katakiriha wakizashi, a ken, and otherwise tanto. Most tanto are katakiriha-zukuri, wide for their length in a hocho-like shape[[c:18]]. The temper is a ko-notare mixed with gunome in ko-nie, the nioiguchi tending to tightness, set as if he took Shizu and Sadamune for his ideal[[c:19]]. Carving is always on both faces, and the ascending and descending dragons chasing a jewel are what Myoju excelled at most[[c:20]], the dragon's lower jaw squared and jutting. Earlier carved signatures reading Joshu Umetada saku, dated from Tensho 16 to Bunroku 2, are debated as his early work or his father Myokin's. Some tanto were made as heirlooms for the head of the house, inscribed as such (所持埋忠彦次郎重代), and on later pieces the character Ume was erased or recut once mid-Edo readers took the name to mean burying loyalty.
Forty-five designated works stand on record: six Important Cultural Properties, seven Tokubetsu Juyo, twenty-three Juyo and nine Juyo Bijutsuhin. The Important Cultural Properties are the Keicho 3 tachi in the Kyoto National Museum, the wakizashi signed at sixty-one, two tanto of Keicho 13 (1608), and two tsuba, one of grapevine and butterflies on polished shakudo, one of oak on brass. Prewar owners include Ito Miyoji, Hosokawa Moritatsu, Furukawa Toranosuke and Kuroda Nagamichi, and a pine-and-bamboo tsuba came back from France in 1962. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony. Of the thirty works in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers the greater part are tsuba, and one appears on the market only from time to time; a signed Myoju blade is rarer still.
Where Myoju 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.
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Shinto · Kyoto
44 pieces on the market now
The Umetada school is one of the most distinguished metalworking lineages of the Momoyama period, rooted in Nishijin, Kyoto, and claiming descent from the legendary Sanjo Munechika. The house served the Ashikaga shogunal family over successive generations, establishing deep foundations in the full range of sword-related arts -- swordmaking, blade carving (toshin-bori), the production of steel and fittings, the shortening of blades, the insertion of inlaid signature attributions (zogan-mei), and the making of mountings. " Myoju taught both Hizen Tadayoshi and Higo no Kami Teruhiro, and accepted commissions from the Toyotomi and Tokugawa houses as well as many daimyo families. An earlier stratum of production, appraised as Ko-Umetada, dates from the close of the Muromachi period and demonstrates that the group's technical foundations were firmly established before Myoju's maturity. The near-contemporary Mitsutada, though absent from formal genealogies, is conjectured to have been of senior standing within the circle; his works, executed on brass with an archaic dekoboko-ji ground, display "an even more classically archaic elegance" than Myoju's. Shigeyoshi, active from the Kan'ei through Genroku eras, carried the tradition forward into the mid-Edo period. The Umetada school's collective technical identity divides into two principal modes: iron works and soft-metal (irogane) works. In the iron mode, Myoju expressed geometric patterns -- sayagata, raimon, kasumi-kaminari-mon, and rinzu-mon -- by means of gold nunome-zogan, complemented by celebrated openwork including wheel and double-tomoe sukashi tsuba.
The nejikaeshi-mimi (twisted turned-back rim) and gold rim inlay are techniques "at which he particularly excelled," while the iron itself is invariably "carefully selected" and displays excellent quality. In the irogane mode -- employing shakudo, suaka, brass, and other alloys as ground material -- the school developed a distinctive form of hira-zogan (flat inlay) that retains only slight relief, deploying colored metals in novel combinations. " Ground textures including hammered tsuchime-ji, polished migaki-ji, and file-finished surfaces are deployed with meticulous care to heighten the pictorial effect. Mitsutada's work on brass with its uneven, raised-and-recessed ground and enrichment through gold and silver nunome-zogan represents a more archaic variant of this aesthetic. Shigeyoshi synthesized the inherited hira-zogan tradition with textile-derived designs of linked shippo, karakusa arabesque, and sayagata patterns -- reflecting his Nishijin milieu, the heart of Kyoto's silk-weaving district -- while deploying suemon-zogan, sukidashi-bori, and kin-iroe across shakudo grounds in both polished and stone-textured finishes. The Umetada school's historical significance is singular: the pictorial manner of design, the hira-zogan technique, and the use of non-iron metals as the ground material "all find their earliest beginning with Myoju" -- he stands as the originator of an entire aesthetic vocabulary in kinko. The NBTHK consistently describes Myoju's work as possessing "the vitality that preserves the very momentum of brushwork," with a "strong connection with Hon'ami Koetsu and Tawaraya Sotatsu" that places him among the foremost artistic figures of the Momoyama age. " Solid-gold tsuba, frequently melted down during periods of upheaval, are recognized as extremely rare survivals of exceptional documentary and artistic value. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Myoju明寿 | 1590-1631 | 45 |
| Muneyoshi宗吉 | 1596-1615 | 4 |
| Naritsugu就次 | — | 0 |
| Umetada Mitsushige光重 | 1700-1750 | 0 |
| Kaji’emon加治右衛門 | — | 0 |
The Shinshintō revival
Around 1800 Suishinshi Masahide argued in his writings that the craft must return to the old masters’ methods: the fukkotō revival. His greatest successor Naotane worked convincingly in Bizen and Sōshū manners that had been dead for centuries.
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