This is a rare double-edged tanto by Gorouzaemon jyo Kiyomitsu, a master smith of the late Muromachi period's Sue-Bizen school. It features a thick kasane and rich hirniku, with an excellent jigane of itame-hada mixed with mokume. The hamon is a wide suguha with various activities, showcasing Kiyomitsu's renowned skill in straight temper lines.
Certificate reading — 銘 備前国住長船五郎左衛門尉清光作 天文十一年二月日
NihontoWatchmei · Osafune · Muromachi · nagasa 19.2cm
Osafune (Sue-Bizen), Bizen · Bizen · around 1532-1572
Tōken Taikan top 21%
7 pieces on the market now
The single piece that anchors Kiyomitsu on record is the katana dated Tenmon twenty-three (1554) and signed at full length "Bizen no Kuni ju Osafune Kiyomitsu,"[[c:1]] raised to Tokubetsu Jūyō in 2014, a broad, deep-curved uchigatana that carries no byname yet which the published sources read, from the breadth of its signature, as the work of Gorōzaemon-no-jō (「銘振りよりして, 五郎左衛門尉と鑑せられる」)[[c:2]]. He is one of the leading names of Sue-Bizen, the term used for the late-Muromachi Osafune workshops and their output collectively, and within that crowded field he is almost wholly knowable: every blade here carries an ubu tang with a long signature and a date, most of them clustered in the Tenmon years between 1532 and 1555. The published record lists as many as ten smiths who signed Kiyomitsu in this period, bearing the bynames Gorōzaemon-no-jō, Magouemon-no-jō, Yosozaemon-no-jō, Hikobei and Magobei, and singles out Gorōzaemon-no-jō and Magouemon-no-jō as the two superior hands. It is the first, the Tenmon-dated Gorōzaemon, whose work fills this record, and whom the published sources place at the head of a line that runs on into a second generation of the same byname in the Eiroku and Tenshō years.
His reputation rests first on suguha. The published sources name him, with Tadamitsu, as the master of the straight temper among the Sue-Bizen smiths (「忠光と並んで直刃の名手」)[[c:3]], and call the wide suguha the very signboard of the Kiyomitsu house (「清光家の看板であるところの広直刃」)[[c:4]]. His characteristic blade is a thick, sturdy uchigatana, broad in the body with the kasane heavy and the shinogi high, saki-zori standing toward a chū-kissaki that extends a little, over which he lays a wide suguha mixed with small gunome and small chōji. Within it the ashi and yō enter freely, and the abundant yō the sources record as his typical tell, with fine kinsuji and sunagashi running and the nioiguchi bright and clear. A robust shape tempered in this manner, with the edge well worked and the nioiguchi shining, is what the published sources call the true heart of the smith who excelled at the straight temper (「直刃を得意とする清光の真骨頂」)[[c:5]].
The jigane beneath that temper is as much a part of his recognition. He forges a packed itame and ko-itame with mokume mixed in, ji-nie applied in fine grain, chikei entering, and a faint utsuri standing pale over the surface. The published sources distinguish his jigane from that of Tadamitsu and of Yosozaemon Sukesada by its tendency to stand a little more, an itame in which the mokume shows, so that on the run of his blades the hada is the slightly more open one of the three. The exception is telling: on his finest pieces, including the Tokubetsu Jūyō katana, the same sources remark that the jigane is unusually well packed and refined by contrast with his common work, its quality lifting those blades above the rest. The bōshi returns in a small round with a sweep of hakikake, and on the straight-tempered blades runs straight to that small round, in places pointing or doubling toward the back.
Against that calm register he forges two showier manners, and the published sources treat them as fully typical of him rather than as departures. The first is a gunome-midare whose mark is the koshi-no-hiraita gunome, the gunome opened at the base, mixed with ko-chōji and small gunome over a chū-suguha base, ashi and yō well in and sunagashi running, which the sources read as bringing him near Yosozaemon-no-jō Sukesada (「与三左衛門尉祐定に近い」)[[c:6]], the other great Sue-Bizen midare hand. The second is hitatsura: the temper taken high, chōji-midare with gunome and small chōji, tobiyaki entering and muneyaki running strongly until the whole edge takes a hitatsura form, the nie laid strongly and sunagashi running. Here the published sources name a structural tell: Sue-Bizen is generally thick in the kasane, but a blade tempered in hitatsura is necessarily made thinner (「皆焼を焼いた場合は必ず重ねが薄くなる」)[[c:7]], so the thinned construction itself is the feature to watch, sometimes joined by a maru-mune the school occasionally shows. The same flamboyance appears on a shōbu-zukuri blade and on a wide tantō, the form varying while the hand stays constant.
What sets Gorōzaemon-no-jō apart within Sue-Bizen is read through his own work rather than by contrast. His bright wide suguha with its abundant yō is the manner the sources tie to his name, the calmest of his three registers, while the koshi-no-hiraita gunome and the tobiyaki-and-muneyaki hitatsura extend his range toward Sukesada and toward the showy late-Bizen taste; Tadamitsu shares the suguha but not the hitatsura, Sukesada the midare but not the straight temper held at full breadth. Several of his blades carry order-inscriptions that fix him in time and place, among them one forged below Tatsuno castle in Harima, which the published sources value as documentary evidence of the smith's movements, and one whose patron Masahide was a commander of the Urakami faction. The broad, deeply curved shapes, made for the wars of the period, are themselves part of the reading; the sources note of a wide moroha-zukuri tantō that the temper of the warring age shows plainly even in its bearing (「戦国時代の気風が姿にもよくあらわれて」)[[c:8]].
The weight of designation behind his name is steady rather than vast. One of his blades holds the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and eighteen more are Jūyō, with nothing on record in the highest designated tiers, so his is a record built in the upper-middle reaches of designation rather than at its summit. The Tōkō Taikan values him in the middle range of the Osafune masters, and his provenance, where it is recorded, runs through houses of consequence: one katana descends from the Matsudaira house of Shinobu (「忍の松平家伝来」), and another from the swordsmith-scholar Masahide. Genuine signed, dated Gorōzaemon-no-jō blades survive in fair number for a Sue-Bizen name, and an ubu, signed example in its original form, of the kind the published sources hold up as an outstanding piece of his hand, is among the more attainable of the great late-Bizen smiths for a collector who waits, the Jūyō tier appearing from time to time, the single Tokubetsu Jūyō a landmark when it does.
Where Kiyomitsu 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Bizen-den · Bizen
Phase: Sue-Bizen末備前· 1441–1596
26 pieces on the market now
The last great chapter of Osafune unfolds in the Eisho and Tenbun years of the late Muromachi, when the riverside workshop turned its accumulated craft toward an age of constant war. Where Oei-Bizen had looked backward, reviving the tachi shape and the choji temper of the Kamakura masters under Yasumitsu and Morimitsu, Sue-Bizen faces forward into Sengoku demand. The leading hands carry the same family characters one generation further: the Sukesada group, headed by Yosazaemon-no-jo Sukesada and the Hikobee-jo Sukesada said to be his father, alongside Katsumitsu (often Jirozaemon-no-jo), Munemitsu, Tadamitsu of the Heiroemon-jo line, and the Kiyomitsu smiths Magoemon-no-jo and Gorozaemon-no-jo. The setsumei draw a sharp line through their output. Commissioned blades, chumon-uchi, were signed with full zokumyo, dated, and frequently inscribed with the name of the ordering party, as on the Katsumitsu and Sadamitsu naginata of Meio 8 made for the Miyake of Kojima, a house that fed into the Ukita. Below them ran the bulk trade of kazu-uchimono, the arms that supplied the warring provinces, and it is the chumon-uchi masters that the designations preserve. What the steel does in this window is distinct from every earlier Osafune register. The shape is the uchigatana: wide mihaba with thick kasane, pronounced sakizori, an extended chu-kissaki or o-kissaki, and a short nakago suited to the katate-uchi one-handed draw, a body unlike the koshizori tachi of Ko-Osafune or the broad Nanbokucho profile of Soden-Bizen. The forging tightens into ko-itame over which a midare-utsuri stands faintly rather than vividly, weaker than the bright reflection of the founding generation.
The signature temper is the open-waisted koshi-no-hiraita gunome, splitting at the heads into fukushiki compound midare and mixed with togariba and choji; it is nioi-based with ko-nie and a bright nioiguchi, with ashi, yo, kinsuji and small tobiyaki worked through. Against this, Soden-Bizen had pushed Soshu nie and notare, while the founders had tempered flamboyant choji over a vivid utsuri. Two specialties branch off the gunome base: the Kiyomitsu and Tadamitsu suguha, calm and tightly forged, and the hitatsura of high-tempered pieces with long muneyaki and yubashiri, seen in the warlord-smiths Akamatsu Masanori and Ishikawa Yukihisa. To kantei a Sue-Bizen blade is to read the body first and the temper second. The compact uchigatana sugata with thick kasane and a short tang fixes the late-Muromachi date; the faint utsuri over dense ko-itame keeps it in Bizen; the open-waisted compound gunome names the group. The masters then separate by hand: Katsumitsu is set apart by the abundant choji he folds into the gunome, yielding a more florid, brilliant dekiguchi than his peers; Tadamitsu and the Kiyomitsu smiths are read out by their suguha, with Magoemon-no-jo's itame standing in mokume to distinguish his ground. The cutting reputation is documented directly, as on the Hikobee-jo Sukesada katana of Keicho 5 carrying a tameshi inscription naming the tester Ichihara Hachibee. Provenance threads through the supplementary signatures: Masanori's reward blades cut for his retainers, the Miyake names tying the workshop to the Ukita, and the Shinjuro Sukesada whose few large works may have ended in the Tensho flood. The horimono carried from the mainline, bonji with rendai, Fudo Myoo, and shrine dedications, persist on these blades as a final mark of the line. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kiyomitsu清光 | 1532-1572 | 19 |
| Kiyomitsu清光 | 1558-1571 | 11 |
Muromachi Osafune was an export industry: the Ming tally trade carried some 128,000 Japanese blades abroad, and Sengoku armies bought at home. Custom orders, often inscribed with the patron’s own name, were forged beside the bundle swords of the ranks.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteCustomer-initiated returns accepted within two days of arrival; return shipping paid by customer and fees non-refundable. Returns/refunds unavailable for overseas deliveries.
This is a rare double-edged tanto by Gorouzaemon jyo Kiyomitsu, a master smith of the late Muromachi period's Sue-Bizen school. It features a thick kasane and rich hirniku, with an excellent jigane of itame-hada mixed with mokume. The hamon is a wide suguha with various activities, showcasing Kiyomitsu's renowned skill in straight temper lines.
Certificate reading — 銘 備前国住長船五郎左衛門尉清光作 天文十一年二月日
NihontoWatchmei · Osafune · Muromachi · nagasa 19.2cm
Osafune (Sue-Bizen), Bizen · Bizen · around 1532-1572
Tōken Taikan top 21%
7 pieces on the market now
The single piece that anchors Kiyomitsu on record is the katana dated Tenmon twenty-three (1554) and signed at full length "Bizen no Kuni ju Osafune Kiyomitsu,"[[c:1]] raised to Tokubetsu Jūyō in 2014, a broad, deep-curved uchigatana that carries no byname yet which the published sources read, from the breadth of its signature, as the work of Gorōzaemon-no-jō (「銘振りよりして, 五郎左衛門尉と鑑せられる」)[[c:2]]. He is one of the leading names of Sue-Bizen, the term used for the late-Muromachi Osafune workshops and their output collectively, and within that crowded field he is almost wholly knowable: every blade here carries an ubu tang with a long signature and a date, most of them clustered in the Tenmon years between 1532 and 1555. The published record lists as many as ten smiths who signed Kiyomitsu in this period, bearing the bynames Gorōzaemon-no-jō, Magouemon-no-jō, Yosozaemon-no-jō, Hikobei and Magobei, and singles out Gorōzaemon-no-jō and Magouemon-no-jō as the two superior hands. It is the first, the Tenmon-dated Gorōzaemon, whose work fills this record, and whom the published sources place at the head of a line that runs on into a second generation of the same byname in the Eiroku and Tenshō years.
His reputation rests first on suguha. The published sources name him, with Tadamitsu, as the master of the straight temper among the Sue-Bizen smiths (「忠光と並んで直刃の名手」)[[c:3]], and call the wide suguha the very signboard of the Kiyomitsu house (「清光家の看板であるところの広直刃」)[[c:4]]. His characteristic blade is a thick, sturdy uchigatana, broad in the body with the kasane heavy and the shinogi high, saki-zori standing toward a chū-kissaki that extends a little, over which he lays a wide suguha mixed with small gunome and small chōji. Within it the ashi and yō enter freely, and the abundant yō the sources record as his typical tell, with fine kinsuji and sunagashi running and the nioiguchi bright and clear. A robust shape tempered in this manner, with the edge well worked and the nioiguchi shining, is what the published sources call the true heart of the smith who excelled at the straight temper (「直刃を得意とする清光の真骨頂」)[[c:5]].
The jigane beneath that temper is as much a part of his recognition. He forges a packed itame and ko-itame with mokume mixed in, ji-nie applied in fine grain, chikei entering, and a faint utsuri standing pale over the surface. The published sources distinguish his jigane from that of Tadamitsu and of Yosozaemon Sukesada by its tendency to stand a little more, an itame in which the mokume shows, so that on the run of his blades the hada is the slightly more open one of the three. The exception is telling: on his finest pieces, including the Tokubetsu Jūyō katana, the same sources remark that the jigane is unusually well packed and refined by contrast with his common work, its quality lifting those blades above the rest. The bōshi returns in a small round with a sweep of hakikake, and on the straight-tempered blades runs straight to that small round, in places pointing or doubling toward the back.
Against that calm register he forges two showier manners, and the published sources treat them as fully typical of him rather than as departures. The first is a gunome-midare whose mark is the koshi-no-hiraita gunome, the gunome opened at the base, mixed with ko-chōji and small gunome over a chū-suguha base, ashi and yō well in and sunagashi running, which the sources read as bringing him near Yosozaemon-no-jō Sukesada (「与三左衛門尉祐定に近い」)[[c:6]], the other great Sue-Bizen midare hand. The second is hitatsura: the temper taken high, chōji-midare with gunome and small chōji, tobiyaki entering and muneyaki running strongly until the whole edge takes a hitatsura form, the nie laid strongly and sunagashi running. Here the published sources name a structural tell: Sue-Bizen is generally thick in the kasane, but a blade tempered in hitatsura is necessarily made thinner (「皆焼を焼いた場合は必ず重ねが薄くなる」)[[c:7]], so the thinned construction itself is the feature to watch, sometimes joined by a maru-mune the school occasionally shows. The same flamboyance appears on a shōbu-zukuri blade and on a wide tantō, the form varying while the hand stays constant.
What sets Gorōzaemon-no-jō apart within Sue-Bizen is read through his own work rather than by contrast. His bright wide suguha with its abundant yō is the manner the sources tie to his name, the calmest of his three registers, while the koshi-no-hiraita gunome and the tobiyaki-and-muneyaki hitatsura extend his range toward Sukesada and toward the showy late-Bizen taste; Tadamitsu shares the suguha but not the hitatsura, Sukesada the midare but not the straight temper held at full breadth. Several of his blades carry order-inscriptions that fix him in time and place, among them one forged below Tatsuno castle in Harima, which the published sources value as documentary evidence of the smith's movements, and one whose patron Masahide was a commander of the Urakami faction. The broad, deeply curved shapes, made for the wars of the period, are themselves part of the reading; the sources note of a wide moroha-zukuri tantō that the temper of the warring age shows plainly even in its bearing (「戦国時代の気風が姿にもよくあらわれて」)[[c:8]].
The weight of designation behind his name is steady rather than vast. One of his blades holds the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and eighteen more are Jūyō, with nothing on record in the highest designated tiers, so his is a record built in the upper-middle reaches of designation rather than at its summit. The Tōkō Taikan values him in the middle range of the Osafune masters, and his provenance, where it is recorded, runs through houses of consequence: one katana descends from the Matsudaira house of Shinobu (「忍の松平家伝来」), and another from the swordsmith-scholar Masahide. Genuine signed, dated Gorōzaemon-no-jō blades survive in fair number for a Sue-Bizen name, and an ubu, signed example in its original form, of the kind the published sources hold up as an outstanding piece of his hand, is among the more attainable of the great late-Bizen smiths for a collector who waits, the Jūyō tier appearing from time to time, the single Tokubetsu Jūyō a landmark when it does.
Where Kiyomitsu 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Bizen-den · Bizen
Phase: Sue-Bizen末備前· 1441–1596
26 pieces on the market now
The last great chapter of Osafune unfolds in the Eisho and Tenbun years of the late Muromachi, when the riverside workshop turned its accumulated craft toward an age of constant war. Where Oei-Bizen had looked backward, reviving the tachi shape and the choji temper of the Kamakura masters under Yasumitsu and Morimitsu, Sue-Bizen faces forward into Sengoku demand. The leading hands carry the same family characters one generation further: the Sukesada group, headed by Yosazaemon-no-jo Sukesada and the Hikobee-jo Sukesada said to be his father, alongside Katsumitsu (often Jirozaemon-no-jo), Munemitsu, Tadamitsu of the Heiroemon-jo line, and the Kiyomitsu smiths Magoemon-no-jo and Gorozaemon-no-jo. The setsumei draw a sharp line through their output. Commissioned blades, chumon-uchi, were signed with full zokumyo, dated, and frequently inscribed with the name of the ordering party, as on the Katsumitsu and Sadamitsu naginata of Meio 8 made for the Miyake of Kojima, a house that fed into the Ukita. Below them ran the bulk trade of kazu-uchimono, the arms that supplied the warring provinces, and it is the chumon-uchi masters that the designations preserve. What the steel does in this window is distinct from every earlier Osafune register. The shape is the uchigatana: wide mihaba with thick kasane, pronounced sakizori, an extended chu-kissaki or o-kissaki, and a short nakago suited to the katate-uchi one-handed draw, a body unlike the koshizori tachi of Ko-Osafune or the broad Nanbokucho profile of Soden-Bizen. The forging tightens into ko-itame over which a midare-utsuri stands faintly rather than vividly, weaker than the bright reflection of the founding generation.
The signature temper is the open-waisted koshi-no-hiraita gunome, splitting at the heads into fukushiki compound midare and mixed with togariba and choji; it is nioi-based with ko-nie and a bright nioiguchi, with ashi, yo, kinsuji and small tobiyaki worked through. Against this, Soden-Bizen had pushed Soshu nie and notare, while the founders had tempered flamboyant choji over a vivid utsuri. Two specialties branch off the gunome base: the Kiyomitsu and Tadamitsu suguha, calm and tightly forged, and the hitatsura of high-tempered pieces with long muneyaki and yubashiri, seen in the warlord-smiths Akamatsu Masanori and Ishikawa Yukihisa. To kantei a Sue-Bizen blade is to read the body first and the temper second. The compact uchigatana sugata with thick kasane and a short tang fixes the late-Muromachi date; the faint utsuri over dense ko-itame keeps it in Bizen; the open-waisted compound gunome names the group. The masters then separate by hand: Katsumitsu is set apart by the abundant choji he folds into the gunome, yielding a more florid, brilliant dekiguchi than his peers; Tadamitsu and the Kiyomitsu smiths are read out by their suguha, with Magoemon-no-jo's itame standing in mokume to distinguish his ground. The cutting reputation is documented directly, as on the Hikobee-jo Sukesada katana of Keicho 5 carrying a tameshi inscription naming the tester Ichihara Hachibee. Provenance threads through the supplementary signatures: Masanori's reward blades cut for his retainers, the Miyake names tying the workshop to the Ukita, and the Shinjuro Sukesada whose few large works may have ended in the Tensho flood. The horimono carried from the mainline, bonji with rendai, Fudo Myoo, and shrine dedications, persist on these blades as a final mark of the line. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kiyomitsu清光 | 1532-1572 | 19 |
| Kiyomitsu清光 | 1558-1571 | 11 |
Muromachi Osafune was an export industry: the Ming tally trade carried some 128,000 Japanese blades abroad, and Sengoku armies bought at home. Custom orders, often inscribed with the patron’s own name, were forged beside the bundle swords of the ranks.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteCustomer-initiated returns accepted within two days of arrival; return shipping paid by customer and fees non-refundable. Returns/refunds unavailable for overseas deliveries.
