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About the maker

Soshu Sadamune貞宗

At its twenty-seventh Tokubetsu Juyo session the NBTHK designated the O-Horidashi Sadamune, a katana of the Kyoho Meibutsu-cho whose name records that Tokugawa Ieyasu discovered it at Fushimi; Ieyasu gave it to Maeda Toshitsune in Genna 2 (1616). Its maker, Sadamune, called Hikoshiro (彦四郎), was the pupil of Masamune and by tradition later his adopted son, by some records his son, and succeeded him as the second generation of the Soshu mainline, working from the very end of Kamakura into early Nanbokucho. The published sources repeat that for him "no certain signed work exists at all" (確実な在銘の作は皆無): the entire oeuvre is mumei, settled by Hon'ami kinzogan and shu-mei attribution inscriptions and by origami, and his manner is known by triangulation, for "what bridges Masamune and Nobukuni is Sadamune" (正宗と信国の間をつなぐものが貞宗). The kantei line against the master is qualitative and constant. In nearly half of his designation texts the NBTHK states the standing formula that "compared with Masamune, his appeal lies on the whole in a calm, relaxed notare-based midareba" (正宗に比較すると総じて穏やかでおっとりした湾れ調の乱れ刃に持味があり). One text details the contrast: the forging somewhat calmer than Masamune's, the hada standing less, the ji-nie sparser, the workings of kinsuji and inazuma somewhat scarcer and quieter. His own positive signature is the chisel. He is the carving master of Soshu: bonji, suken, gomabashi, sanko-ken and kurikara recur far beyond anything on Masamune, Yukimitsu or Norishige, and "the twin grooves were a specialty of Sadamune" (二筋樋は貞宗の得意としたところ), cut on katana and tanto alike, a meibutsu katana being named Futasujihi Sadamune for them. The published sources add that the horimono is precisely what was not seen in Masamune: his carving "follows the line of Daishinbo, excelling in kasane-bori, the layered relief carving, which he passed to his pupil Nobukuni" (大進坊の流れを汲んで、重ね彫を得意とし、これを弟子の信国に伝えて). The jigane is an itame mixing mokume, on the finest pieces kneaded close and minutely covered in ji-nie, with chikei entering finely and incessantly, at times with a slightly standing tendency. Over it the hamon runs as a shallow notare mixing gunome, ko-gunome and ko-choji, ashi and yo entering, the nioiguchi deep, the nie thick, bright and clear, kinsuji and sunagashi working through the ha, hotsure and yubashiri at the habuchi; the boshi is midare-komi or sugu with ko-maru and hakikake, often with a pointed tendency. The texts name as the mark of his deki "the beautifully shining nie peculiar to the top rank of Soshu-den work" (相州伝上位作特有の光美しい沸). Around this mainstream two poles stand. "Suguha is rare" (直刃は稀) in him: the few quiet pieces carry a suguha-cho with shallow notare feeling and ko-gunome spaced wide, and a Tokubetsu Juyo tanto in this manner is said to recall the Kokuho meibutsu Fushimi Sadamune. At the livelier pole the gunome grows prominent, rough nie mixes in places, tobiyaki and yubashiri scatter and the boshi sweeps up in flame-like hakikake; a few works show a hitatsura-like feeling, yet the texts measure the limit exactly, "never going so far as Hiromitsu and Akihiro" (広光・秋広までには至らない). His sugata divides into two types for tachi and tanto alike, and the NBTHK dates each blade by which build it shows. The earlier keeps the Kamakura-end style the texts call old-fashioned (古調): blades of ordinary width with chu-kissaki, and small tanto with little or no sori, the smallest of them likened to the meibutsu Taikogane Sadamune. The later is the grand Nanbokucho build that carries most of the surviving work: o-suriage mumei katana of wide mihaba with little taper and an extended point, and wide sunnobi hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi of thin kasane, very often ubu. On the ubu pieces the nakago itself is a tell, funagata with a ken-form tip and katte-sagari yasurime, called "exactly the rule of Sadamune" (貞宗の掟通り). Kata-kiriha-zukuri was a construction he favored, the celebrated example being the Kiriha Sadamune handed down in the Kishu Tokugawa family as the sword of its first lord Yorinobu. Old Edo-period papers are sometimes corrected at designation: blades papered to Takagi Sadamune or to Yukimitsu have been re-judged as Soshu Sadamune. Among Masamune's students the published sources call him the one who carries the master's manner most faithfully, his skill next to the master's; at the top of his range the boundary runs against Masamune himself. Of a Juyo Bijutsuhin katana formerly of Ikeda Nakahiro, Honma Junji remarked that the hamon shows more variation than the usual work, a flame-like boshi and brilliant nie, and that he "would rather see it as Masamune" (むしろ、正宗と見たいものである). Downstream the same triangulation holds: his gentler notare and his horimono are exactly what reappear in Nobukuni, and it is through Sadamune that the Soshu carving tradition passes to that pupil and his line. Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku, and eighty-seven designated works stand on record: four National Treasures, twelve Important Cultural Properties, two prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, twenty-three Tokubetsu Juyo and forty-six Juyo, sixty-nine blades in the two upper NBTHK tiers together. The meibutsu carried by his attributions are many. Beside the O-Horidashi stand the Kiriha, the Zentokuin given by the shogun Hidetada to Maeda Toshinaga, the Ujiie of the Kyoho Meibutsu-cho, the Taikogane, the Futasujihi, and the Shishi Sadamune, a treasured sword of Toyotomi Hideyoshi burned in the fall of Osaka and retempered by the first-generation Yasutsugu. Forty-one blades carry recorded provenance: one katana is recorded as presented by the shogun Ienobu and worn by Ietsugu, another was given by Tsunayoshi to Yanagisawa Yoshisato in Genroku 10 (1697), and transmissions run through the Owari and Kishu Tokugawa, Maeda, Date, Mori, Ikeda, Satake, Hachisuka and Takatsukasa houses. For the collector very little of this can ever trade. The National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties are patrimony outside the market, and recorded examples rest in the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Mitsui Memorial Museum and the Sano Art Museum. What can realistically be met is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, sixty-nine blades, nearly all o-suriage mumei katana or sunnobi wakizashi resting on Hon'ami attributions; such a blade comes to market only rarely, and a piece carrying the twin grooves or the layered relief carving, the chisel his master never showed, is an event when it does.

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