This Katana is signed by Bishu Osafune Sukesada and dated 1506, placing it in the mid-Muromachi period. It features a slightly narrow blade with a short Kissaki, packed Jigane with faint Utsuri, and a Nioi-based Gunome and Choji midare Hamon. The sword comes with a Tachi Koshirae, including a Tachi-style tsuba, jumonji-yari menuki, and paulownia crest decorations.
Certificate reading — 銘 備州長船祐定 永正三年八月日
NihontoWatchmei · Osafune · Muromachi · nagasa 63.2cm · sori 1.8cm
Bizen-den · Bizen
87 pieces on the market now
Sukesada (祐定) is the great name of late-Muromachi Osafune, the most prosperous of the Bizen forges that scholars group together as Sue-Bizen. The signature was carried by a body of smiths so large that the early-modern reference Hayami-dashi lists as many as twenty-one who appended a zokumyo (common name) to distinguish themselves, and the published commentary is blunt that of all the late-Osafune families the Sukesada line was the largest and most productive. Two registers of work issue from this single name. At the top stand the masters identified by their common-name titles, Yosozaemon-no-jo, Hikobei-no-jo, Genbei-no-jo, and Hikozaemon-no-jo, whose custom commissions (chumon-uchi) the sources distinguish sharply from the mass run; beneath them lies the great body of kazu-uchi-mono, the bulk production signed plainly Sukesada with no personal name, dated and placed to the house by era and quality. Hikobei-no-jo is recorded as the father of Yosozaemon-no-jo, who in turn heads the most distinguished branch, born in Onin 1 by back-count from a tanto inscribed at age seventy-one in Tenbun 6; the name then runs in same-signature generations down through the Eiroku and Tensho years. The shared vocabulary of the school is the temper the late Bizen workshops made their own. Over a jigane of tightly packed ko-itame, fine ji-nie settling like dust, chikei woven through, and a faint midare-utsuri rising near the shinogi (the thinned last trace of the bright reflection that filled the Osafune prime), the smiths build an open-waisted koshi-biraki gunome that develops into the doubled, compound fukushiki structure marking a Sue-Bizen blade above all else. Mixed into it run choji, ko-gunome, and pointed togariba, in places gathering into the double-flower juka and the crab's-claw formation called kani-no-tsume; the hamon is nioi-based with ko-nie adhering, ashi and yo entering richly, kinsuji and sunagashi trailing, the nioiguchi bright and clear. A second pole answers this flamboyance, the quiet hiro-suguha, broad and shallowly undulating with ko-gunome folded in, of which Genbei-no-jo in particular was the master, while a livelier hitatsura climbs the body with frequent tobiyaki and muneyaki on certain tanto, often in moroha-zukuri.
The blades take the robust late-Muromachi uchigatana form, wide in body with little taper, thick in kasane, deep in sori with sakizori and an extended chu-kissaki. The divergence between the masters and the general production is one of care rather than kind: Yosozaemon's bright, well-packed ko-itame and his command of all three registers, gunome, suguha, and hitatsura, set his typical work apart from the coarser bulk, and the commentary states plainly that it is precisely because such chumon-uchi exist that the Sue-Bizen name carries its high standing. To kantei a Sukesada blade is first to read the signature register, then the manner. A named master signs a long mei on the omote with the date on the ura, often over two columns and frequently with carving (bo-hi, a Kurikara dragon, a bonji, or the invocation Namu Hachiman Daibosatsu); the bulk kazu-uchi-mono sign Sukesada alone and are judged to the house by era and the Bizen-den keynote of koshi-biraki gunome on bright ko-itame. Yosozaemon-no-jo leads the name in renown and breadth, ranked beside the late-Osafune Kiyomitsu among the two great hands of the workshop's closing age, his blades transmitted in daimyo houses grounded in their own provenance, the Hachisuka, the Mori, and the Ii, with a wakizashi recorded to the warrior Yamanaka Shikanosuke and others in the Imperial collection. Genbei-no-jo and Hikobei-no-jo follow, their custom blades often carrying an owner inscription beside the date, and Hikozaemon-no-jo offers the approachable end of a famous name. The Sukesada cutting reputation runs through the whole body, the heavy sakizori uchigatana made to be worn and used two-handed as the tachi fell from use. For the collector this is the most attainable of the great Bizen names, never common at its summit yet, in a signed and dated example with the open-waisted gunome reading clearly down its edge, the surest single document of how Osafune worked in its last great generation. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Sukesada祐定 | 1504-1551 | 72 |
| Sukesada祐定 | 1532-1583 | 18 |
| Sukesada祐定 | 1547-1592 | 8 |
| Sukesada祐定 | 1487-1521 | 5 |
| Sukesada祐定 | 1532-1573 | 3 |
Bizen in the Muromachi period
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.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
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.
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