Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatchShinto, Owari. Early Edo period. Sayagaki by Tanzan Sensei included. Shinogi-zukuri, high shinogi, low iori-mune, chu-kissaki. Kitae: ko-itame hada well-tightened, flowing and standing out in places, fine chikei enters, ji-nie well-attached, jitetsu is good. Hamon: primarily gunome choji midare mixed with ko-gunome, habuchi is well-attached with ara-nie, nioiguchi is deep, bright and clear, choji-ashi, ko-ashi, and yo enter thickly within the ha, kinsuji and sunagashi are partially intense. Boshi: sugu-cho with deep yaki, the tip is slightly hakikake and returns in ko-maru style. Nakago is ubu, the tip is a steep ha-agari kurijiri, yasurime is kesho o-sujikai. Copper with silver-clad habaki. Period polishing. In shirasaya. The Nobutaka school of Owari is a prestigious lineage descending from Mikawa no Ya Kanekuni of the Mino Seki Shichiryu, and they are of the same clan as Hida no Kami Ujifusa. The first generation moved to Kiyosu Seki Kaji-machi in Owari Province around the beginning of Tensho, forging swords in service to Oda Nobunaga during his residence in Kiyosu; he received the character "Nobu" from Nobunaga and changed his mei to Nobutaka, after which the Nobutaka name continued for ten generations until the end of the Bakufu. This work is a fine piece made in collaboration between the second and third generation Nobutaka. The second generation was the son of the first generation, born in Keicho 8, named Kawamura Hoki; he received the title of Hoki no Kami in Kan'ei 10 and succeeded the headship of the family, retiring in Kanbun 2 at the age of sixty to take the name Kanyu Nyudo. He died in Genroku 2 at the age of eighty-seven. Regarding the mei style, the "Zen Hakushu Nobutaka Nyudo" mei is more common than "Hoki no Kami Fujiwara Nobutaka," and he also signed "Zen Hakushu Kanyu Nyudo." Furthermore, one sees more gassaku-mei with the third generation than solo mei by the second generation. The third generation was the son of the second generation, born in Kan'ei 9, named Kawamura Sannojo; he first signed as Nobuteru, changed his mei to Nobutaka upon receiving the title of Hoki no Kami in Kanbun 5, and in the same year was appointed as a retained smith by the second generation Owari Daimyo Tokugawa Mitsutomo. His period of activity was from Kanbun until around the end of Genroku; among works from around Kanbun, collaborations with his father are occasionally seen. He died in Hoei 4 at the age of seventy-six. The nagasa is slightly under 2 shaku 3 sun 4 bu, a blade with healthy jiba that feels substantial in the hand; the third generation mei is carved on the omote and the second generation mei on the ura, and while there is no nenkio, as stated in Tanzan Sensei's sayagaki, it is appraised as a work from around Kanbun or Enpo. The jitetsu has ko-itame hada well-tightened overall, and the blade, primarily gunome choji midare, has a bright and clear habuchi, with choji-ashi, ko-ashi, and yo entering thickly, and kinsuji and sunagashi partially intense. The sayagaki also states: "This work has particularly abundant hiraniku and is robust. With a fine kitae, a dynamic gunome choji midare hamon with a wide hababa is tempered, and the habuchi is bright and clear; the dekiguchi is among the best." The sword is solid and very attractive, the ha in particular is good. There are no large flaws, and it is a blade that could be considered a representative work of the second and third generations.
Offered by Samurai Nippon
3 on the market
As written by the shop
Machine translation from the shop's Japanese · may contain errors ·
Mino-den · Owari · around 1673-1681
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 49%
3 pieces on the market now
Mino-den · Mino
8 pieces on the market now
The San'ami line takes its root in Mino Province, where its head smith Kanenori (兼則) worked as one of the so-called Seki Seven Schools. The setsumei place Kanenori from the close of the Nanbokuchō period into the Ōei era of the early Muromachi, alongside Kanemoto and Kanesada among the representative hands of Sue-Seki, and the earliest extant signed tachi of his is appraised as no later than Ōei. A second early smith, Kanekuni (兼国), is recorded as belonging to the San'ami lineage and is judged to predate the Sue-Seki group proper; the remote ancestry given for him runs variously to a disciple of Naoe Kanetomo, to Yamato Kanekuni, or to Kanenori, though the setsumei note that nothing survives to confirm so distant a descent. From this Mino stock came Hōki no Kami Fujiwara Nobutaka (信高), born at Kami-Ōchi in Mino in 1563 and said to descend from San'ami Kanekuni. After receiving the title Hōki no Kami in Tenshō 9 (1581) he moved to Kiyosu in Owari and, serving Tokugawa Yoshinao, later settled at Nagoya, carrying the line into the early Shintō era through a second generation who took the tonsure in Kanbun 2 (1662). Across the corpus the jigane is itame, often closely forged and tending to nagare-hada or flowing grain along the edge, with ji-nie and a frequent standing of the grain (hada-dachi); a faint whitish cast (shirake) marks the older Mino work of Kanenori and Kanekuni. The temper rests on suguha as a base. In the early hands it is a tight, clear (saete) suguha in nioi-deki, sometimes mixed with small gunome, angular elements and pointed ha, carrying ashi, hotsure and scattered tobiyaki.
The Nobutaka works open this out: a broad suguha shifting to shallow notare, ko-notare with a gunome-flavored edge, deep nioi with nie unevenly applied and partly coarse, nie-kuzure at the yakigashira, kuichigai-ba, kinsuji, sunagashi, yubashiri and tobiyaki that climb into the shinogi-ji until the upper half reads as hitatsura. The bōshi runs to sugu with ko-maru, at times midare-komi, pointed, or hakikake, and the early swords keep a slender, high-sori tachi shape while Nobutaka's carry the wide-bodied, ō-kissaki form of the Momoyama transition. The hand is recognized in this pairing of a flowing Mino itame with a suguha core that, in the descendants, breaks toward bold hitatsura. For kantei, the setsumei fix several anchors. In Kanenori's signature the scooped chisel at the fourth stroke of the character kane (兼) is read as a trait of late Nanbokuchō through Ōei work, matched in dated Kaneyoshi mei; the clear suguha of Kanekuni is likened to a Zenjō Kaneyoshi masterpiece. The jizō-flavored bōshi and the nagare-mixed itame in Nobutaka are named as the surviving stamp of the Mino root beneath his Owari manner, and one of his katana is recorded as an Inabae-utsushi. Provenance runs through the corpus: a Kanekuni bears kinzōgan recording it as the sashiryō of Ōkubo Genban-no-jō Tadanari, lord of Odawara in Sagami, worn at the age of ninety-three; Kanenori's tachi descended in the Yamanouchi family. Among the Owari yari makers beginning with Masatsune, Nobutaka's yari of extraordinary length is held in particular regard, and the second-generation Nobutaka is judged no less skilled than his father, with the finest extant Nobutaka works counted to his hand. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Nobutaka信高 | 1581-1615 | 3 |
| Nobutaka信高 | 1624-1644 | 2 |
| Kanekuni兼國 | 1455-1457 | 1 |
| Kanenori兼則 | 1370-1372 | 1 |
| Nobutaka信高 | 1673-1681 | 0 |
The Edo period (1615 to 1868)
Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
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.
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Certificate reading — 銘 伯耆守藤原信高 前伯州信高入道