¥550,000

Tracked across 76 dealers worldwide · price history · sold archive

Specifications

About the maker

Heianjo Nagayoshi長吉

Heianjō Nagayoshi is the Kyoto smith whom the published sources name, again and again, in a single breath with Sanjō Yoshinori as a representative maker of Kyō-mono in the Muromachi period. He is said to descend from Mitsunaga of Heianjō, a smith of the late Kamakura, and the swordbooks carry his name back to the Nanbokuchō; but the surviving record does not reach that far. No work looks so early, none is dated before the Muromachi, and the body of his blades falls between the Bunmei and Tenbun eras, the earliest dates clustering around Bunmei and Meiō. One signed katana carries a Meiō date that the published sources value as documentary material for the name itself. The name is understood as one borne by several smiths across several generations, so that Heianjō Nagayoshi is less a single man than a Kyoto workshop hand carried forward through the late Muromachi. What makes that hand recognizable is not one temper but a manner, and its clearest mark is in the *hamon*. The published sources single out the close correspondence of the *hamon* on the *omote* and the *ura*, the temper of one face answering the other, and on this point above all they bind his work to Muramasa of Ise. Of one *tantō* the commentary says plainly that in workmanship and in the cut of the tang it resembles Muramasa, 「すべて勢州の村正によく似ている」, and infers a deep relationship between the two; of another it finds the matching faces a distinctive feature, 「表裏の刃文が揃うところに特色」, shared with the Sengo line of Muramasa. Over a finely worked Kyoto *jigane* he sets a small *notare* mixed with *gunome*, *ashi* entering, the *nioiguchi* tending tight with *ko-nie*, the *bōshi* a *ko-maru*. His *tantō* are often broad for their length and stocky, scarcely curved, a stance the commentary calls one frequently met in his work. The *jigane* is the constant beneath the changing temper. It is a *ko-itame* or *itame*, tightly packed and mixed with flowing *masame*, with *ji-nie* adhering and at times fine *chikei*, and over it lies a faint whitish cast, the *shirake* that places him after the great Kamakura schools of the capital rather than among them. On his finest *katana* the forging tightens into a dense Kyoto *ko-itame* and a *mizukage* rises from below the *hamachi* to become a *shirake-utsuri*. It is a refined steel, the *Kyō-mono* surface the published sources expect of him, quiet and clean rather than brilliant, the late-Yamashiro *jigane* against which his more decorative tempers read. His range across that *jigane* is unusually broad for one hand, and the published sources lay it out as such. On his *katana* and *yari* the temper is most often a broad or medium *suguha*, set over a *notare*-toned lower half where small linked *gunome* form a *koshiba*-like base, with small *ashi* and a tight, bright *nioiguchi*; one Jūyō *katana* shows the canonical division, a *ko-notare* with pointed *togariba* at the base running up into a wide *suguha*. At the other pole stands his most flamboyant register, an all-over *hitatsura* of *gunome-midare* with pointed and angular elements and a *yahazu*-like form, into which *tobiyaki*, *yubashiri* and *muneyaki* enter until the temper covers the whole blade, the *bōshi* turning back long into the *muneyaki* with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* throughout. The published sources call this temper comparatively uncommon in his work and read it as a private emulation of the Nanbokuchō Kyoto master Hasebe, 「京の先達長谷部の皆焼に私淑」, noting that, unlike the older Sōshū *hitatsura*, his *nioiguchi* stays tight, and that the thin *kasane* and the long *kaeri* together point to the Hasebe model. What separates Nagayoshi from the company he keeps is exactly what the judges name. From Sanjō Yoshinori and the ordinary Sue-Yamashiro smiths he is set apart by the matching of his two faces and by the sheer breadth of his hand, the same maker passing from a Muramasa-akin *notare* to a quiet *suguha* to a Hasebe *hitatsura*; from the older Sōshū *hitatsura* he is held apart by the restraint of his *nioiguchi*. Above all he is known as a carver. The published sources call him an outstanding master of *horimono*, 「彫物の名手としてもその名が高い」, and his grass-style *kurikara* runs through the great majority of his blades, the dragon's tail cut where it crosses the sword so that the sword appears raised in relief, a manner they hold scarcely confusable with any hand other than his own. The carving is part of the kantei, not an ornament on it. For the collector he is a Kyoto name of the late Muromachi, graded Jō-jō saku by Fujishiro. His designated record runs entirely through the Jūyō rank, with fifteen blades on record and no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them; the value of his name rests instead on the signed, often dated works and on the diversity of his oeuvre, *katana*, *tantō*, *wakizashi* and *yari* together with the carvings he excelled in. The published commentary calls one of his *katana* 「同工屈指の優品」, foremost among the smith's own works, and several of his *tantō* typical superior examples. Provenance is sparsely recorded for his blades, so the safest thing to say is that signed Heianjō Nagayoshi works are held quietly across private collections rather than concentrated in famous houses. Only a small number fall in the tradeable tiers, so a signed example comes to light from time to time rather than often, and a sound, signed, carved blade by him is a satisfying thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Kyoto forges worked on at the close of the koto age.

Samurai Shokai

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