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About the maker

Shinto Kanesada包貞

The nidai Echigo no Kami Kanesada signed two katana dated Enpō 4 (1676), and both rose to Tokubetsu Jūyō, the pair the most highly placed works of his hand on record. He is the second generation of the Kanesada line of Ōsaka, working through the Enpō and Tenna years among the leading smiths of the Ōsaka Shintō. The published sources tell a single, consistent biography across his blades. He studied under the shodai Echigo no Kami Kanesada, became his successor and adopted son, and at first signed Echigo no Kami Kanesada himself; but when the shodai's natural son Iwamatsu came of age, he yielded the Kanesada name to the boy and thereafter signed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane. A surviving blade inscribed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane, with Echigo no Kami Kanesada retired on the reverse and dated the second month of Enpō 8, fixes that change to about 1680. Of the man behind the two names the NBTHK is direct: "the nidai Kanesada was a master who surpassed the shodai" (二代包貞は初代に優る名工). His hand is read first in the surging *tōran-midare*, the billowing-wave temper the published sources call his greatest forte, learned in emulation of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro of the same Ōsaka generation. The temper opens at the base from a straight *suguha yakidashi* and then rises into a large *ō-gunome-midare*, mixing *ko-notare*, *gunome* and *yahazu*-like teeth, that crests into the wave. Within it the judges single out a hamon they treat as his own: "the *katayama-midare*, a hamon distinctive to this smith" (片山乱れと称する同工独特の刃形), the one-sided, leaning wave he carries often with a run of three linked *gunome* below the *yokote*. Long *ashi* enter well, the *nioi* is deep, the *ko-nie* thick, fine *sunagashi* runs throughout and *kinsuji* appear, the *nioiguchi* bright and clear, the *bōshi sugu* to a small *ko-maru*. Beside this he keeps the aligned *gunome* of his background, and the recurring fine *sunagashi* through the temper the sources read as "a feature of the Monju lineage that forms his background" (彼の出自である文珠系の特色). The *jigane* is the constant beneath every manner. It is a tightly packed *ko-itame*, sometimes mixed with *mokume*, over which very fine *ji-nie* lies thickly and fine *chikei* enter well, the steel bright and clear. On the finest blades a *mizukage* rises at the *machi*. The published sources praise this forging as refined and of excellent quality, bright in steel tone, and it is the brightness of both *ji* and *ha* together that they repeatedly name as the mark of his work. The construction supports the kantei as much as the activity does: the *mune-oroshi* drops steeply, the *hiraniku* is scant, the body broad with a Kanbun-Shintō taper, points of make the judges note as his own. His range divides into three faces the swordbooks list together. The earliest, carried on the two Enpō 4 Tokubetsu Jūyō, is the aligned *ō-gunome* with somewhat *chōji*-like elements, a manner close to the shodai's but already brighter in *nioi* and firmer in *ko-nie*, the talent read as surpassing the teacher. The mature and most personal face is the *tōran* with its *katayama* lean, judged at its best as bolder, more varied and more dynamic than usual. The third is a quiet *suguha*, comparatively uncommon on his signed work, which one Jūyō reads as modeled on a high master of the Sōshū tradition, particularly the manner of Gō Yoshihiro, the intention discernible above all in the state of the hardened edge. Dated pieces are few, so the Enpō 4 katana are valued as documentary material for placing the rest. What sets the nidai apart from the wider Ōsaka school is exactly what the judges name as his own. His bright deep-*nioi tōran*, with its leaning *katayama* form and the three linked *gunome* below the *yokote*, distinguishes him from the symmetrical wave of his contemporaries, while the steep *mune-oroshi* and scant *hiraniku* mark the make. The fine *sunagashi* threading the temper carries the Monju descent forward into the Ōsaka idiom, and the rarer *suguha* shows him reaching back to Sōshū. He stands as the second pillar of the Kanesada house, the smith who took his father's manner and, in the judgment of the published record, carried it past him. For the collector the nidai is a substantial but bounded name. Seventy-six of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, but only the two Enpō 4 katana reach the higher rank, so a top example surfaces seldom and a more typical Jūyō from time to time, with patience. The published sources call one of the dated katana "one of his representative works" (彼の代表作の一口) and another, of recorded whereabouts, "an outstanding piece within the second generation Kanesada's oeuvre" (二代包貞作域中傑出した出来映え). His blades are held in collections grounded in their own provenance: a wakizashi signed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane, carrying his *katayama-midare* and the three linked *gunome*, descends through the Yamauchi family of Tosa, and two of his works are recorded in the Imperial collection. A signed nidai Kanesada, bright in *ji* and *ha* and bearing his leaning wave, is among the more attainable of the first-rank Ōsaka Shintō names, not beyond reach, but a landmark when a fine dated example does appear.

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