The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
He is hailed as one of the "Three Masters." He is a master swordsmith who was also selected as a wazamono for the sharpness of his blades. His disciples include Mutsu no Kami Yoshiyuki, famous for being the smith of the sword possessed by the Bakumatsu patriot, Sakamoto Ryoma. 0 Yen (Tax included)
NihontoWatchShinto · nagasa 70.8cm · sori 0.5cm
Mishina (Sanpin) school, Kyo-Tanba line, Kyoto Shinto · Yamashiro · around 1596-1615
Tōken Taikan top 14%
3 pieces on the market now
The shodai Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi devised sudareba, the basket-weave temper that became the signature of the Mishina school and one of the most immediately recognizable hamon in all of Shinto. The published sources are explicit that the pattern was his own invention[[c:1]]. He was the third son of Kanemichi of Mino-Seki, and together with his father and his brothers Iga no Kami Kinmichi, Rai Kinmichi and Etchu no Kami Masatoshi he came up from Mino to Kyoto, settling there in the closing decades of the sixteenth century and raising the Mishina name to its height. The commentary places him among the leading hands of his moment, counting him on one Juyo blade "among the foremost master smiths even of early Shinto[[c:2]]." His blades carry a robust early-Edo bearing, wide in body and thick in the kasane, the sori shallow, the kissaki extended and on the broadest pieces reaching an o-kissaki.
His recognized hand is read off a single tell. Over an itame that flows into masame toward the mune, the grain standing, the published sources set thick and often coarse ji-nie with chikei, then open the temper with a long suguha yakidashi before widening it into a notare-based midare of large and small gunome. Into that line yubashiri, tobiyaki and shimaba run in two and three rows, and frequent striped sunagashi gathers until the whole takes on the bamboo-blind look of sudareba, the nie strong and somewhat coarse and uneven, long kinsuji entering, the nioiguchi tending to sink. The boshi rises in a pointed tsukiage sweep and turns back deeply with vigorous hakikake, the form the sources name the Mishina boshi.
The jigane is the constant beneath all of this. A standing itame flowing to masame, with rough ji-nie and chikei, carries the Mino-Seki inheritance into his Kyoto work and underpins the sudareba above it. His sunagashi, far heavier than on a Bizen blade and worked together with the yubashiri and tobiyaki, is the very material out of which the temper is built. On his finest signed katana the published commentary reads the abundant sunagashi as suggesting "the wellspring of the sudareba seen in later generations[[c:3]]," the activity that would harden into the school's hallmark.
The heart of his connoisseurship lies in the incompleteness of that sudareba. Where his successors regularized it into a technical, almost mannered pattern, the first generation's is still a free, semi-cursive disorder. The judges return to the point again and again, holding on one Juyo blade that "the place where it has not yet settled into a fully established sudareba[[c:4]] is the point of interest in the first generation, and therein lie its strength and savor[[c:5]]." They cite the Shinto Bengi that in his work "within the patterned arrangement of the hamon there is the intent of sudareba[[c:6]]" rather than the fixed lattice of his heirs. Relatively many of his blades survive, but dated examples are rare; no Keicho-dated piece has been encountered, and only a single dated wakizashi, of Genna 7, has been examined firsthand. The signature whose tan character is shaped like a sail is the celebrated Hokake Tanba.
What separates him from the rest of the Mishina house is exactly this manner. Against his brothers Kinmichi and Masatoshi, who worked across a wider range of styles, Yoshimichi is the individualist, the one hand bound to the sudareba and the bright striped sunagashi that builds it. Apart from that manner he made suguha only very rarely, a register the sources call "an extremely rare case within the Kanemichi house[[c:7]], the so-called Sanpin family," and one in which they discern the Yamato tradition that lies as a fountainhead beneath the Mino style, the ha somewhat frayed with hotsure and laid with well-adhering ko-nie. He stands at the head of his own line, the Kyo-Tanba Yoshimichi name continuing through several generations in Kyoto and Osaka, none of whom the published sources rank with the first.
For the collector he is a signed, knowable name, all of his recorded blades carrying a mei. Two of his works on record reach the Tokubetsu Juyo rank and a further thirty-three the Juyo, with examples also among the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin; one such Juyo Bijutsuhin katana is called by Honma "the finest workmanship among the first-generation Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi I have examined[[c:8]]." The recorded provenance runs through samurai and collector hands rather than great museums: the katana made for Naito Kuroemon, inscribed to be handed down through his descendants generation after generation, the blade certified to Kashiwara Jinbe of Osaka, and a piece from the Satake family, with one katana now held by the Kyoto National Museum. He has no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties on record, so his work is, unusually for a name of his standing, one a private collector may realistically hope to encounter. A signed shodai Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi comes to market only from time to time and at the upper end of it, but it does come, the rare chance to hold the blade in which the most famous temper of the Shinto era was first being worked out.
Where Yoshimichi 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.
Shinto · Yamashiro
71 pieces on the market now
The Mishina school (三品), one of the two dominant smithing groups of early Edo Kyoto beside the Horikawa, grew from the late-Mino workshop of Kanemichi of Seki, whose dated blades run through the Tenbun, Eiroku, and Tenshō eras. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century Kanemichi came up to the capital with his four sons and settled at Nishinotōin Ebisugawa, where the eldest, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, is recorded as having greatly raised the name of the line. The brothers, Kinmichi together with Izumi no Kami Rai Kinmichi, Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi, and Etchū no Kami Masatoshi, became known collectively as the Sanpin (三品) makers, and the published sources count Kinmichi head of the Kyō go-kaji, the five Kyoto smiths. From the second generation the house held a hereditary right to recommend smiths to the court for their titles and added that by-line to its signatures. The name continued under the same appellation to the end of the Tokugawa period, throwing off branches that included the Tango no Kami line working at Ōsaka into the Genroku years, though the published record consistently holds the founding generation the most outstanding of the line. Beneath every branch lies a shared vocabulary carried up from Mino-Seki. The jigane is the constant: an itame mixed with mokume that flows into nagare-hada and tends toward masame near the mune, the grain standing, with thick fine ji-nie and frequent chikei. Over it the Mino-derived gunome and togariba are refined toward a Kyoto manner, the nie strong and at times coarse, gathering unevenly, kinsuji and vigorous striped sunagashi running throughout. Two tells bind the house. The first is the Mishina bōshi, a notare or midare run-in pointed at the tip and swept with vigorous hakikake, the form Masatoshi shows at its clearest, described as if drawn from a picture. The second is sudareba, the bamboo-blind temper in which layered sunagashi and yubashiri stripe into parallel bands; Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi devised it, and the first-generation hand keeps it a free, semi-cursive disorder where his heirs would regularize it into a fixed lattice.
The lines diverge from that common ground. Kinmichi and his younger brother Masatoshi both excelled in a Shizu manner, the large midare of Mino grafted onto Sōshū nie, with Masatoshi the most versatile, ranging across Shizu, Mino sanbon-sugi, Yamato suguha, and Sōshū hitatsura. The later Ōsaka Tanba branch held to the sudareba alone, opening from a straight yakidashi, while the second Tango no Kami Kanemichi cast off the family chōji for a flamboyant tōran-style large gunome in alternating two-joined and three-joined groups, and a deep-nioi suguha read in the manner of Inoue Shinkai. To kantei Mishina is to read these two house marks first. The pointed, hakikake-swept bōshi and the striped sudareba, set over a standing itame that flows to masame, place a blade within the line before any signature is weighed; the sunagashi, far heavier than on a Bizen ji, is the very material from which the temper is built. Within the house the founding generation sets the standard. Fujishiro grades Kinmichi and Masatoshi Jō-jō saku, the Ōsaka Tanba shodai Jō-saku, and the second Tango no Kami Chū-jō saku, the sources judging the later Kyoto and Ōsaka generations markedly inferior to the founders as the manner thinned toward a single uniform pattern. Provenance on record runs through samurai and collector hands rather than great museums: a Kinmichi katana among the cherished swords of Tani Tateki, a Yoshimichi katana made for Naitō Kuroemon and another now in the Kyoto National Museum, Masatoshi blades passing through Oda Urakusai and the Imperial household, and a second Tango no Kami katana descending from the Aoyama wardens of Ōsaka castle. The brothers' blades are signed and knowable, dated examples rare, so the manner of the mei joins the workmanship in placing them; for the Ōsaka and Kyoto branches the cut of the character 守 separates one hand from the next. Most designated work is held rather than traded, so a signed founding-generation Mishina blade comes to light only from time to time, and with it the temper in which one of the most recognizable hamon of the Shintō era was first being worked out. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kinmichi金道 | 1596-1615 | 23 |
| Yoshimichi吉道 | 1596-1615 | 36 |
| Masatoshi正俊 | 1596-1615 | 31 |
| Kanemichi兼道 | 1681-1704 | 5 |
| Yoshimichi吉道 | 1661-1673 | 6 |
The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
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 sitePlease notify us of your intention to return, by email or fax, no later than the day after the item's arrival. Return shipping, insurance, and refund transfer fees are the customer's responsibility.
He is hailed as one of the "Three Masters." He is a master swordsmith who was also selected as a wazamono for the sharpness of his blades. His disciples include Mutsu no Kami Yoshiyuki, famous for being the smith of the sword possessed by the Bakumatsu patriot, Sakamoto Ryoma. 0 Yen (Tax included)
NihontoWatchShinto · nagasa 70.8cm · sori 0.5cm
Mishina (Sanpin) school, Kyo-Tanba line, Kyoto Shinto · Yamashiro · around 1596-1615
Tōken Taikan top 14%
3 pieces on the market now
The shodai Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi devised sudareba, the basket-weave temper that became the signature of the Mishina school and one of the most immediately recognizable hamon in all of Shinto. The published sources are explicit that the pattern was his own invention[[c:1]]. He was the third son of Kanemichi of Mino-Seki, and together with his father and his brothers Iga no Kami Kinmichi, Rai Kinmichi and Etchu no Kami Masatoshi he came up from Mino to Kyoto, settling there in the closing decades of the sixteenth century and raising the Mishina name to its height. The commentary places him among the leading hands of his moment, counting him on one Juyo blade "among the foremost master smiths even of early Shinto[[c:2]]." His blades carry a robust early-Edo bearing, wide in body and thick in the kasane, the sori shallow, the kissaki extended and on the broadest pieces reaching an o-kissaki.
His recognized hand is read off a single tell. Over an itame that flows into masame toward the mune, the grain standing, the published sources set thick and often coarse ji-nie with chikei, then open the temper with a long suguha yakidashi before widening it into a notare-based midare of large and small gunome. Into that line yubashiri, tobiyaki and shimaba run in two and three rows, and frequent striped sunagashi gathers until the whole takes on the bamboo-blind look of sudareba, the nie strong and somewhat coarse and uneven, long kinsuji entering, the nioiguchi tending to sink. The boshi rises in a pointed tsukiage sweep and turns back deeply with vigorous hakikake, the form the sources name the Mishina boshi.
The jigane is the constant beneath all of this. A standing itame flowing to masame, with rough ji-nie and chikei, carries the Mino-Seki inheritance into his Kyoto work and underpins the sudareba above it. His sunagashi, far heavier than on a Bizen blade and worked together with the yubashiri and tobiyaki, is the very material out of which the temper is built. On his finest signed katana the published commentary reads the abundant sunagashi as suggesting "the wellspring of the sudareba seen in later generations[[c:3]]," the activity that would harden into the school's hallmark.
The heart of his connoisseurship lies in the incompleteness of that sudareba. Where his successors regularized it into a technical, almost mannered pattern, the first generation's is still a free, semi-cursive disorder. The judges return to the point again and again, holding on one Juyo blade that "the place where it has not yet settled into a fully established sudareba[[c:4]] is the point of interest in the first generation, and therein lie its strength and savor[[c:5]]." They cite the Shinto Bengi that in his work "within the patterned arrangement of the hamon there is the intent of sudareba[[c:6]]" rather than the fixed lattice of his heirs. Relatively many of his blades survive, but dated examples are rare; no Keicho-dated piece has been encountered, and only a single dated wakizashi, of Genna 7, has been examined firsthand. The signature whose tan character is shaped like a sail is the celebrated Hokake Tanba.
What separates him from the rest of the Mishina house is exactly this manner. Against his brothers Kinmichi and Masatoshi, who worked across a wider range of styles, Yoshimichi is the individualist, the one hand bound to the sudareba and the bright striped sunagashi that builds it. Apart from that manner he made suguha only very rarely, a register the sources call "an extremely rare case within the Kanemichi house[[c:7]], the so-called Sanpin family," and one in which they discern the Yamato tradition that lies as a fountainhead beneath the Mino style, the ha somewhat frayed with hotsure and laid with well-adhering ko-nie. He stands at the head of his own line, the Kyo-Tanba Yoshimichi name continuing through several generations in Kyoto and Osaka, none of whom the published sources rank with the first.
For the collector he is a signed, knowable name, all of his recorded blades carrying a mei. Two of his works on record reach the Tokubetsu Juyo rank and a further thirty-three the Juyo, with examples also among the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin; one such Juyo Bijutsuhin katana is called by Honma "the finest workmanship among the first-generation Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi I have examined[[c:8]]." The recorded provenance runs through samurai and collector hands rather than great museums: the katana made for Naito Kuroemon, inscribed to be handed down through his descendants generation after generation, the blade certified to Kashiwara Jinbe of Osaka, and a piece from the Satake family, with one katana now held by the Kyoto National Museum. He has no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties on record, so his work is, unusually for a name of his standing, one a private collector may realistically hope to encounter. A signed shodai Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi comes to market only from time to time and at the upper end of it, but it does come, the rare chance to hold the blade in which the most famous temper of the Shinto era was first being worked out.
Where Yoshimichi 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.
Shinto · Yamashiro
71 pieces on the market now
The Mishina school (三品), one of the two dominant smithing groups of early Edo Kyoto beside the Horikawa, grew from the late-Mino workshop of Kanemichi of Seki, whose dated blades run through the Tenbun, Eiroku, and Tenshō eras. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century Kanemichi came up to the capital with his four sons and settled at Nishinotōin Ebisugawa, where the eldest, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, is recorded as having greatly raised the name of the line. The brothers, Kinmichi together with Izumi no Kami Rai Kinmichi, Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi, and Etchū no Kami Masatoshi, became known collectively as the Sanpin (三品) makers, and the published sources count Kinmichi head of the Kyō go-kaji, the five Kyoto smiths. From the second generation the house held a hereditary right to recommend smiths to the court for their titles and added that by-line to its signatures. The name continued under the same appellation to the end of the Tokugawa period, throwing off branches that included the Tango no Kami line working at Ōsaka into the Genroku years, though the published record consistently holds the founding generation the most outstanding of the line. Beneath every branch lies a shared vocabulary carried up from Mino-Seki. The jigane is the constant: an itame mixed with mokume that flows into nagare-hada and tends toward masame near the mune, the grain standing, with thick fine ji-nie and frequent chikei. Over it the Mino-derived gunome and togariba are refined toward a Kyoto manner, the nie strong and at times coarse, gathering unevenly, kinsuji and vigorous striped sunagashi running throughout. Two tells bind the house. The first is the Mishina bōshi, a notare or midare run-in pointed at the tip and swept with vigorous hakikake, the form Masatoshi shows at its clearest, described as if drawn from a picture. The second is sudareba, the bamboo-blind temper in which layered sunagashi and yubashiri stripe into parallel bands; Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi devised it, and the first-generation hand keeps it a free, semi-cursive disorder where his heirs would regularize it into a fixed lattice.
The lines diverge from that common ground. Kinmichi and his younger brother Masatoshi both excelled in a Shizu manner, the large midare of Mino grafted onto Sōshū nie, with Masatoshi the most versatile, ranging across Shizu, Mino sanbon-sugi, Yamato suguha, and Sōshū hitatsura. The later Ōsaka Tanba branch held to the sudareba alone, opening from a straight yakidashi, while the second Tango no Kami Kanemichi cast off the family chōji for a flamboyant tōran-style large gunome in alternating two-joined and three-joined groups, and a deep-nioi suguha read in the manner of Inoue Shinkai. To kantei Mishina is to read these two house marks first. The pointed, hakikake-swept bōshi and the striped sudareba, set over a standing itame that flows to masame, place a blade within the line before any signature is weighed; the sunagashi, far heavier than on a Bizen ji, is the very material from which the temper is built. Within the house the founding generation sets the standard. Fujishiro grades Kinmichi and Masatoshi Jō-jō saku, the Ōsaka Tanba shodai Jō-saku, and the second Tango no Kami Chū-jō saku, the sources judging the later Kyoto and Ōsaka generations markedly inferior to the founders as the manner thinned toward a single uniform pattern. Provenance on record runs through samurai and collector hands rather than great museums: a Kinmichi katana among the cherished swords of Tani Tateki, a Yoshimichi katana made for Naitō Kuroemon and another now in the Kyoto National Museum, Masatoshi blades passing through Oda Urakusai and the Imperial household, and a second Tango no Kami katana descending from the Aoyama wardens of Ōsaka castle. The brothers' blades are signed and knowable, dated examples rare, so the manner of the mei joins the workmanship in placing them; for the Ōsaka and Kyoto branches the cut of the character 守 separates one hand from the next. Most designated work is held rather than traded, so a signed founding-generation Mishina blade comes to light only from time to time, and with it the temper in which one of the most recognizable hamon of the Shintō era was first being worked out. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kinmichi金道 | 1596-1615 | 23 |
| Yoshimichi吉道 | 1596-1615 | 36 |
| Masatoshi正俊 | 1596-1615 | 31 |
| Kanemichi兼道 | 1681-1704 | 5 |
| Yoshimichi吉道 | 1661-1673 | 6 |
The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
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 sitePlease notify us of your intention to return, by email or fax, no later than the day after the item's arrival. Return shipping, insurance, and refund transfer fees are the customer's responsibility.
