刀剣
¥16,500,000
Tracked across 76 dealers worldwide · price history · sold archive
Specifications
69.9 cm
2.5 cm
2.6 cm
1.6 cm
About the maker
Osafune Kagemasa景政
Kagemasa of Osafune, who styled himself Shinshi Saburō, is a mainline Bizen smith of the late Kamakura period whose place in the school is fixed less by his pedigree than by his company. The published sources are candid that his genealogy is not clearly known, telling him variously as Kagemitsu's pupil or his younger brother; what settles the matter is a collaborative *tachi* he made jointly with Kagemitsu bearing dates of the Shōchū and Karyaku eras, one of them an Imperial *gyobutsu* and one designated *kokuhō*. From those joint pieces he is read as a smith who stood in extremely close relation to Kagemitsu, and the surviving dated works run across Bunpō, Shōchū, Karyaku and Kenmu, so that the Jūyō-Bijutsuhin commentary can say plainly that he was "clearly a disciple within the Kagemitsu line" (明らかに景光一門の子弟). His latest date, Ryakuō 3 (1340), carries his hand into the earliest Nanbokuchō generation of Osafune. His characteristic hand is Kagemitsu's manner brought one half-step short of Kagemitsu's order. Over a finely forged *ko-itame* he tempers a midare built on angular *kaku-gunome* and *kataochi*-style *gunome*, mixed with *ko-gunome*, small *togariba* and a little *ko-chōji*, the whole inclining in *saka-gakari*, the reverse-slant of the late Osafune mainline. *Ashi* and *yō* enter the ha, fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through it, and the *nioiguchi* is bright with *ko-nie*. On the Tokubetsu-Jūyō *tachi* signed in *orikaeshi-mei* the published sources gather these features into a single judgment, that "in both *ji* and *ha* the distinctive traits of Kagemasa are well expressed" (地刃に景政の特色がよく現われている). The 68th Jūyō *tachi* sharpens it further, finding his own points of interest precisely where he departs from his model, in that he "mixes an even greater variety of tempering forms than Kagemitsu" (景光以上に種々の刃を交えている) and in "a somewhat stronger degree of variation within the midare, which is where Kagemasa's points of interest emerge" (乱れの変化がやや強い点などに景政の見どころ). The *jigane* is the proper mainline Osafune steel and the firmest part of his identity. The forging is a closely packed *ko-itame*, at times mixed with *mokume* or running a little toward *nagare* and *masame*; very fine *ji-nie* lies on it thickly, fine *chikei* enter, and over this stands a vivid *midare-utsuri*, which the sources call the bright, well-refined steel of a "finely wrought forging in the manner of the mainline Osafune" (長船正系らしい精美な鍛え). The *bōshi* answers the ha: a *midare-komi* or *notare-komi* turning in *ko-maru*, and on the dated and *ubu* *tachi* it takes the *sansaku*-like form the school shares, so that the cap too "calls Kagemitsu to mind." The steel can tend slightly dark, and the *utsuri* is the constant that holds across signed and unsigned alike. The corpus draws two registers and a temporal arc. On *tachi* the kaku and *kataochi-gunome* core prevails; on *tantō* and *ken* he turns instead to a quiet *suguha*. The Jūyō-Bijutsuhin *tantō* of Karyaku 2 (1327) shows an orderly *gunome* in *ko-nie* that, set against Kagemitsu, is "larger, opening at the base, mixed with a *kataochi* tendency" (景光よりは大きく腰開き、肩落ちごころ交じる), and carries a *sankō-tsuka-ken* and *gomabashi* among its Buddhist carvings; his signed *ken* runs a narrow *hoso-suguha* with *kinsuji*, *sunagashi* and a *nijūba*-like *yubashiri*. Across the period the dated *tachi* move from Bunpō through Ryakuō 3, the latest reaching the first Nanbokuchō years, and the published sources read a deliberate restraint into them: on more than one blade the ha "shows a slight *kozumi-gokoro*, a subtly subdued tendency, and this too marks a point of interest in Kagemasa" (刃がやや小づみごころを呈している点にも景政の見所). His standing in the school is defined against Kagemitsu at every turn, and the comparison is the whole of the connoisseurship. The published sources are consistent that in rank he yields a little to Kagemitsu while in style he stands very close, skillful and faithful; the 4th Tokubetsu-Jūyō *tachi*, its signature cut away below the character *Kage*, is judged beyond doubt his because the workmanship "rivals Kagemitsu" (景光に伯仲するほどの出来). It is exactly this small shortfall that does the appraising: a *mumei* blade that reads like Kagemitsu but stops a touch short of his finish is given to Kagemasa, and most of his surviving work is *mumei* attributed on that reasoning, eleven signed pieces against eleven unsigned in the official record. He worked, the sources note, in the *kataochi-gunome* and *suguha* that were Kagemitsu's own specialties, which is why the two are so hard to part and why his bright *midare-utsuri* and the slightly freer play of his midare are made to carry the distinction. Fujishiro grades him *Jō-jō saku*. Twenty designated works stand on the official record, four in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō tier and sixteen Jūyō, with the Jūyō-Bijutsuhin *tantō* above them; signed examples are so few that each is treated as study material, the published sources valuing one *ubu*, single-*mekugi-ana* *tachi* dated Ryakuō 3 as "excellent material for research on this smith" and his rare signed *ken* as a piece prized "for understanding the workmanship of a smith whose signed pieces are scarce" (在銘品の少ない同工の作風を知る上でも), one "filled with archaic grace and refined dignity" (古雅で気品に溢れた). Provenance is recorded against three of his blades, among them the *tantō* once held by Ide Hiroshi of Tokyo and a *tachi* transmitted in the Sakai family of Wakasa; one signed *tachi* is now in the Hakutsuru Museum, the rest held in private hands of recorded whereabouts. A Kagemasa is not beyond a collector's reach as the most exalted Osafune names are, his blades sitting in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō and Jūyō tiers rather than held in perpetuity in the museum and shrine collections that hold the school's highest designations; but with so small a signed corpus and so few coming to market, an example appears only from time to time, and a signed, dated, *ubu* *tachi* is a landmark when it does.
