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About the school

Satsuma School薩摩派

The Satsuma school gathered the smiths of southern Kyushu under the patronage of the Shimazu, the daimyo house of Satsuma and Osumi, and the published sources read its history in two distinct flowerings rather than one continuous line. Its *shinto* fountainhead is Izu no Kami Masafusa, a son of the Mino smith Ujifusa who moved to Kagoshima and carried a strongly *nie*-laden hand into the province; the NBTHK names him the origin of Satsuma forging. From that root the early school rose to its summit in the pair the judges return to whenever they place it, Mondo-no-Sho Masakiyo and Ippei Yasuyo, the twin pillars of Satsuma *shinto*. Both were summoned in Kyoho 6 (1721) by the eighth shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune to forge in Edo and were granted the single-leaf hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa for their tangs, and the Ippei line continued through Yasuyo's adopted heir Yasuari. A century later a second summit formed in the *shinshinto* twin pillars, Oku Yamato no Kami Motohira of the Oku house and Hoki no Kami Masayuki of the Ijichi house, raised to their court titles in the same year of Kansei 1 (1789); Masayuki's name had begun as Masayoshi, and his pupil Masakage carried the manner into the Bunka and Bunsei years. The training the members record runs back through the Naminohira and Yamato roots of the early Ippei smiths, but the working idiom the school is known by is its own. That idiom is a *Soshu-den* read in coarse *nie* rather than in clove-flower, and the members describe it in a shared vocabulary. The body is broad in *mihaba*, thick in *kasane*, full in *hiraniku* and stoutly built, the imposing Satsuma *sugata*. Over a well-forged *itame*, often a tight *ko-itame* turning toward *nagare* or *masame* and carrying thick *ji-nie* and dark *chikei*, the smiths temper a *notare*-toned *gunome-midare* into which they set pointed *togariba*, deep in *nioi* with thick *nie* and coarse *ara-nie* mixed through. The feature the commentary names most often is what streams within that temper, the long *kinsuji*, *nie-suji* and *sunagashi* the sources call *imozuru*, the yam-vine of the province, vine-like *nie*-lines running unbroken through the *ha*. The *jigane* takes a markedly blackish cast against which the bright *nioiguchi* and coarse *nie* stand out, and the *boshi* runs in *midare-komi* or straight, swept with *hakikake* and on the most vigorous work flaring to a flame-like *kaen*. Within this one settled manner the members divide. Masakiyo handled the varied Shizu-style *midare*, his *yubashiri* gathering at the crests of the temper into a *nijuba*-like, antique appearance, where Yasuyo tempered a calmer *notare*-toned *suguha* whose strength lay in the depth of its *nioi* and the length of its *imozuru*; Motohira and Masayuki carried the flamboyant *gunome* with its *kaen boshi* into the later period, while a small number of blades lean toward *masame* and recall the Yamato Hosho grain that the early training laid down. To *kantei* Satsuma work, the judges read three grounded marks together: the pointed *togariba* riding a *notare* base, the deep coarse *nie* with its running *imozuru*, and the dark, *chikei*-laden standing *jigane*, completed by the swept *hakikake* or *kaen boshi* and the broad heavy body. The tang offers further constants, almost always *ubu* with a bold thick-chiseled signature that frequently carries the smith's age, Motohira's *funagata*-narrowed *kengyo* point and Masayuki's *bo-hi* among them. Among the members the standing is high: Masakiyo and Yasuyo hold the early summit, while Motohira and Masayuki lead the *shinshinto* generation, the latter's pupil Masakage judged to have inherited the master's hand with notable refinement. The cutting reputation of the province, tied to its Jigen-ryu martial tradition, runs through the bold robust construction the sources call decisive in the hand. The provenance is grand for a domain school: blades presented by the Shimazu house upward to the shogun Yoshimune and to Konoe Iehisa, Minister of the Left, who returned silver and poems to the smiths, with pieces descending through the Tokugawa, the Imperial family and Shimazu branch houses such as the Kabayama. Such blades are held in long-established collections rather than traded, and a signed Satsuma work in its full vigorous *Soshu-den* comes to a collector only with patience.

Kusanagi

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