Solid Gold Menuki by Gotô Eijô

Goto Eijo, the sixth head of the Goto main line, signed a small kozuka of three lions in gold crest work "Goto Eijo" with his kao, and the NBTHK's commentary on it notes that a self-signed Eijo is precious in itself. He was born in Tensho 5 (1577), the eldest son of the fifth head Tokujo; his childhood name was Kameichi, his common name Genshiro and his formal name Masafusa. In Bunroku 3 (1594), at eighteen, he succeeded to the headship and took the name Shirobei Masamitsu, and as a metalworker he signed first Masafusa, then Masamitsu, and after the tonsure Eijo. From his youth he served Toyotomi Hideyoshi with his father and forebears. After the fall of the Toyotomi the house was for a time without a lord, until in Genna 2 (1616) the recommendation of his uncle Chojo, who stood in the favour of Tokugawa Ieyasu, brought him into Tokugawa service. The shogun Hidetada charged him with the offices of the weights, the great gold coin and the carving, and restored the old fief of 250 koku in Yamashiro with an Edo stipend of twenty rations. He was raised to Hogen in his last years and died of illness in the fourth month of Genna 3 (1617), at forty-one, before his father.

The published sources characterise his manner in one recurring sentence: like the third head Joshin, he often worked somewhat large in scale, yet his workmanship is finer than Joshin's[[c:1]]. His kozuka and kogai are mostly of the house's canonical shakudo nanako-ji, carved in takabori with gold and silver iroe and backed in gold, while his menuki are in solid gold or shakudo, modelled in full yobori and often fitted with in'yo-ne. On a gold menuki of a parent lion and its cub the published sources find the age of the work in the modelling of "high peaks and deep valleys"[[c:2]], in the plate worked up from thin gold and in the in'yo-ne. On a set of Kurikara dragons in solid gold, the dragon fills the whole field; the carving is called generous yet powerful in its modelling, the triangular chisel at horns and wrists firm, and the attention carried to the scales and the smallest details of the pose. On a kogai with a sumo bout they locate his individual character in the warabite, the brow shape and the mokko shape[[c:3]].

Lions and crawling dragons are the set subjects of the house, which the published sources say every head carried on from the founder Yujo, each in his own manner; the Kurikara and the tiger in bamboo belong to the same canon. Of the peony and lions they write that the subject already appears with Sojo but becomes frequent from about Eijo's time. Beside them stand figural and narrative subjects, which one commentary calls his speciality[[c:4]]: the Rashomon tale, Ushiwaka and Benkei meeting on the Gojo Bridge, Tadanori bringing his poem to Shunzei, and the battle at Yashima on a tsuba. Of the Ushiwaka and Benkei set they write that the carving fuses precision and breadth into a splendid scene[[c:5]]. Of a menuki of Idaten pursuing a fleeing demon, they observe that both figures are modelled as deep and heavy as carving in the round, with fine chisel work reaching from the folds of the robes to the tips of hands and feet. Rarer subjects include a Koya hijiri, which they say appears elsewhere in Goto work only once, on a menuki, a field sumo bout from before the ring existed, a writing brush and a kalavinka.

One record states that from his generation the Goto heads at last came to put their own signature on their work more often, and that seven or eight such pieces are known today[[c:6]]. The other records still call his self-signed work extremely few and precious. Five of the designated pieces carry it: the three-lion kozuka; a kozuka of three cranes, whose two-to-one composition is thought to look back to Yujo's wet crow; a cloud-dragon kozuka he added to a kogai and menuki that an origami of Renjo gives to Joshin; the Tokubetsu Juyo cloud-dragon set, on which his large signature is cut boldly at the lower centre of the kozuka; and the Tokubetsu Juyo kozuka of a mask box, paired with Yujo's menuki of Okina and Sanbaso. The commentaries also cite a Goto Masafusa kozuka of Idaten and Eijo-signed kozuka of Kasugano and a wet crow, none of them among these works. The rest of his designated work is mumei and stands on the judgment of later heads, who cut kinzogan kiwame-mei such as Mon Eijo or Eijo-saku with their own name and kao, or issued origami: the seventh head Kenjo in Kan'ei 5 (1628), then Teijo, Renjo, Jujo, Enjo, Keijo, Shinjo and Koko. The record itself separates hands where it must. On a set of two puppies it gives the shafts of the kozuka and kogai to the fourteenth head Keijo, and of an unsigned Uji River tsuba transmitted as his it says that whether it is Eijo's is still open to study, though it is beyond doubt a work of the early Edo Goto house.

The Goto were the house of iebori, carving for the shogunal household as distinct from the machibori of the town workshops. The published sources count the first six heads as the upper six generations, a stylistic division of the older Goto that ends with Eijo, and call the parent-and-child lion menuki a fine piece in which the virtues of the old Goto house can be enjoyed to the full[[c:7]]. His scale stands close to Joshin's, and his subjects to his father's: a brush kogai repeats a design found on a kozuka by Tokujo. Of the Koya hijiri kozuka they write that it shows the high dignity of the main line of iebori, and of the Yashima tsuba that its broad otafuku-mokko outline and diagonal composition carry the character of the Momoyama period.

Eijo's record is thirty-five designated works, two of them Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty-three Juyo. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties. Their provenance runs through great houses: a set of scattered crests of three-leaf aoi, two bars and triple comma, and an aoi-crest tsuba with fuchi-kashira, both from the Tokugawa shogunal house; the cloud-dragon set of the Asano of Aki, recorded as fitted to the mounting of a Ko-Bizen Masatsune uchigatana received from the second shogun Hidetada; the gold Kurikara set of the Shimazu; a bamboo-and-sparrow pair from the Uesugi of Yonezawa; and three works of the Osaka merchant house of Konoike. Many came with origami valuing them at one hundred to two hundred and fifty kan. The pieces were in private hands when designated and no museum holding is recorded against them. A mumei Eijo with a later head's appraisal comes to light from time to time at the Juyo level, while a piece with his own signature, of which seven or eight are known, is among the rarest things a collector of Goto work could encounter.