NihontoWatchThis blade was signed by Saku Yo Bakkashi Hosokawa Masamori (作陽幕下士細川正守) in February, the second year of the Genji era (1865: The end of the Edo period). The signature has Kokuin (刻印: stamped signature). Saku Yo Bakkashi signifies that he was also a Samurai, and we assume he engraved these letters to show his dignity for being a Samurai. Hosokawa Masamori was active during the Koka-early Meiji era (1844-early 1870s). He was the son of Hosokawa Masayoshi, one of the most renowned swordsmiths during the late Edo period. Hosokawa Masanori＆Masayoshi His father, Hosokawa Masayoshi, had learned sword-forging techniques under the master, Suishinshi Masahide(水心子正秀), one of the most famous swordsmiths in Samurai history. Masamori learned sword-forging techniques in Edo city under master Taikei Naotane, an apprentice of Suishinshi Masahide. Masayoshi was an extremely skilled swordsmith, and he was excellent at forging blades with Choji Midare Hamon, which is the characteristic of the Bizen sword-forging style (BIZEN DEN). Masamori also mastered this excellent sword-forging technique from his father. Choji Midare Hamon is an Irregular wavy tempering line. Most of Masamori’s work reflects on Bizen Den (One of the Five Japanese sword-forging traditions). Hosokawa Masamori was famous for having a gorgeous groove (Hi: 樋) on his creations. Background This sword was forged in the second month of Genji 2 (元治二年, 1865), during the Bakumatsu (幕末)—the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate. Japan was undergoing intense political change as the shogunate struggled to maintain its authority amid domestic opposition and growing pressure from Western powers. During 1865, the Chōshū domain became a renewed focus of resistance to the shogunate. Following the domain’s submission to the first punitive expedition in 1864, forces led by Takasugi Shinsaku helped bring an anti-shogunate faction to power. Later in 1865, a second expedition against Chōshū received imperial approval, setting the stage for the fighting that would break out the following year. These developments helped pave the way for the Satsuma–Chōshū Alliance of 1866 and the eventual collapse of Tokugawa rule. Foreign relations also reached a turning point. In 1865, Emperor Kōmei granted formal approval to the commercial treaties with Western powers, which had been a major source of political conflict. Made just three years before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, this blade belongs to a period when the samurai’s political and military world was approaching a profound transformation. Appraisal This Katana blade was appraised as a Tokubetsu Hozon Token (特別保存刀剣). It was issued by NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Touken Hozon Kyokai:日本美術刀剣保存協会). This authentication papers were only given to authentic Japanese swords, well preserved and high quality with artistic value. *Please keep in mind that there is Kitae Kizu and chip on the blade. Nakago The tang also features sujikai-yasuri (筋違鑢), a pattern of diagonal file marks. These marks help provide grip within the handle and serve a decorative purpose, reflecting the swordsmith’s craftsmanship. Fuchi-Kashira This fuchi-kashira is also decorated with fuji-karakusa (藤唐草) motif, creating a sense of visual unity. Tsuka and Menuki One menuki features a silver-colored motif resembling a spiral shell alongside an elongated design that appears to be tied with a cord. The other displays a rounded, gold-colored motif reminiscent of a fruit, accompanied by feather-like decoration. The motifs are rendered in relief, with fine lines defining their textures and details. Gold- and silver-colored accents contrast with the dark background, highlighting the designs. Tsuba and Habaki This iron tsuba features a namako (sea cucumber) design, with two large, curved openings on either side of the central blade opening. These stylized forms evoke the shape of sea cucumbers rather than depicting them realistically. Created using sukashi-bori (透かし彫り, openwork carving), the design gives the tsuba a simple yet distinctive appearance. Saya *Please keep in mind that there are a couple of damage on this Saya due to its age. This Saya is covered with black lacquer. Due to its high waterproof effect, lacquer has been used since ancient times in Asia. The blade of a Japanese sword is made of iron, and moisture is the greatest enemy of iron. For the purpose of carrying the blade without degrading it, people devised a method of coating the scabbard with lacquer. To prevent not only moisture but also rain and snow from penetrating the inside of the scabbard, it was necessary to apply multiple layers of lacquer. The Nushi (塗師, lacquerers) was born precisely because advanced techniques were required to handle the complicated processes. Authentication Paper NBTHK,, also known as Nihon Bijutsu Touken Hozon Kyokai (the Society for the Preservation of the Japan Art Sword), is one of the oldest Japanese sword appraising organizations in modern-day Japan. They authenticated the Katana blade on May 7th in the 22nd year of the Heisei (2010) . It means the blade worth preserving for Japanese society. Registration Number The Board of Education in Tochigi prefecture issued a registration paper for the Katana blade.
Offered by Samurai Museum
2 on the market
Shinshinto · Mimasaka · around 1854-1867
Fujishiro Chu-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 76%
2 pieces on the market now
Hosokawa Masamori (細川正守) was a domain smith (hankō) of the Tsuyama fief in Mimasaka Province, active in the late Edo period and producing dated works through the Ansei, Genji, and Keiō years. He was the legitimate heir and eldest son of Hosokawa Masayoshi, who had originally come from Kanuma in Shimotsuke Province before going to Edo to study under Suishinshi Masahide. Through this paternal line Masamori inherited the Suishinshi current at one remove, and the NBTHK records that he "wholly inherited his teacher-father's manner," with a technical level standing "next to that of his teacher-father."
Masayoshi excelled in both Bizen-den and Sōshū-den, and his Bizen-den in particular is held to merit special attention; Masamori in turn favored the Bizen manner. The characteristic jigane is a tightly forged ko-itame-hada densely worked, with thick ji-nie adhering and chikei appearing. The hamon is fundamentally chōji mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba; ashi enter overall in long legs, ko-nie adheres well, and the nioiguchi is bright. In places coarser nie of "notably strong brilliance" emerges, while fine kinsuji and sunagashi run throughout. The bōshi tends to midare-komi with hakikake, turning back in ko-maru with a slightly pointed tendency. Signatures are characteristically cut in a long inscription toward the mune side of the nakago, with a stamped seal and a date on the ura.
Masamori is "famed within Masayoshi's circle as the craftsman whose skill is second only to that of the master." At his finest, where the chōji clusters grow larger than usual and the temper shows pronounced height variation, the result is "a particularly splendid and flamboyant midare" combined with a "grand, weighty, and heroic overall taihai"—work that approaches the level of his father Masayoshi and stands among Masamori's foremost masterworks.
Where Masamori 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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Shinshinto · Musashi
71 pieces on the market now
At Hamachō in Edo, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nineteenth, Suishinshi Masahide[[c:1]] gathered the school that would turn Japanese swordmaking back toward its medieval models. Born Kawabe Gihachirō at Akayu in Dewa in 1750, signing first as Suzuki Takahide and then Eikoku, he studied under the Shitahara smith Yoshihide of Musashi, took the name Masahide in An'ei 3, and served the Akimoto house of Yamagata before settling in Edo, where he worked for nearly fifty years. He is the founding figure of the shinshintō and the theorist of the fukko-tō (revival-sword) doctrine, the argument that the sword ought to return to its Kamakura forms. Around that teaching he drew a large body of pupils, among them Taikei Naotane, who would give the revival its fullest practical form, the future second Masayoshi (Hosokawa Morihide), and a wider Edo and provincial following that carried the program into the Mito, Yonezawa, Tsuyama, and Tatebayashi domains. The shared vocabulary of the school is the deliberate reach back into the koto traditions, worked over a tightly forged, often muji-toned ko-itame with thick ji-nie. Masahide's own prime hand was the Ōsaka-utsushi, the surging tōran-midare of Tsuda Sukehiro opening from a long yakidashi and the broad suguha after Inoue Shinkai, betrayed on even his closest copies by a blackish, coarse nie that spills from the ha into the ji. Naotane gave the revival its Bizen and Sōshū faces: a reverse-leaning chōji-midare with angular kaku-gunome and saka-ashi, modeled on the late-Kamakura Osafune masters Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu and anchored by a consciously revived midare-utsuri that no ordinary shinshintō steel carries, set beside a Sōshū notare with its whorled uzumaki-hada and coarse, striped nie. The pupils divided this inheritance along their own lines. Jirōtarō Naokatsu, Naotane's adopted son, took a Bizen-den led by a kataochi-gunome from Kanemitsu with a pervasive saka-gakari slant and chōji- or midare-utsuri in the ji.
Suishinshi Masatsugu reproduced Naotane's two traditions, Sōshū and Bizen, down to the cut of his signature. Through Masayoshi the Bizen current passed to his heir Hosokawa Masamori of Tsuyama, whose chōji clusters mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba. The Osaka wave traveled separately into Mito through Naoe Sukemasa, who set a Shinkai-styled suguha and a Sukehiro tōran over a clear ko-itame, while Chōunsai Tsunatoshi of the Uesugi service carried a nioi-deki chōji mixed with gunome, suguha, and tōran-midare, often with carving by his own hand. To kantei the school is to weigh a tradition consciously copied against the period marks the copy cannot shed: the constant of the line is that the hamon is never the pure nioi-deki of old Bizen but carries nie throughout, a difference the NBTHK names outright as the divide between koto and shinshintō. The revived utsuri in Naotane and Naokatsu, the spilling nie in Masahide, the whorled uzumaki-hada shared across the line, and the broad, thick-kasane late-Edo sugata are the surest tells, narrowed further by the school's habit of full, dated signatures that make these smiths among the most exactly knowable of their age. Masahide stands at the head as the teacher and theorist, his finest work in his Ōsaka copies rather than the doctrine he proclaimed; Naotane stands ahead of him in execution, his Bizen-den held the finest among the shinshintō. Their pupils define the late-Edo Osafune and Sōshū revivals as practiced through Edo and the domains, with Naokatsu and Masatsugu read as the next hands after Naotane and Masayoshi. The provenance of the school runs through domain commission and bestowal (Mito blades forged at the Kōrakuen by lordly order, Tsuyama and Yonezawa fief work, Naotane's Sanada daishō and a tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection) rather than ancient daimyō transmission, fitting for a movement that, within a single generation at Edo, redrew the direction of nineteenth-century swordmaking by turning it back toward the old models. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Naotane直胤 | 1801-1837 | 40 |
| Masahide正秀 | 1777-1817 | 28 |
| Sukemasa助政 | 1804-1825 | 8 |
| Jirotaro Naokatsu直勝 | 1805-1858 | 7 |
| Masayoshi正義 | 1791-1860 | 5 |
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.
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 siteReturns/exchanges limited to defects caused by shipping (except willful misconduct or gross negligence by the company); customers must contact within 72 hours of receiving the product.
¥1,520,000