Power sat in Kamakura, but taste was still made in Kyōto. The Awataguchi school’s pear-skin steel became a byword for perfection, and the Rai line supplied dignified tachi to the court, senior warriors, and the great temples alike.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch粟田口国吉は則国の子と伝え、左兵衛尉に任じている。彼の子或いは弟子と伝える刀工に藤四郎吉光があり、また弟に国光がいる。現存する国吉の確実な太刀の違例は数振のみで、比較的に多いのが短刀であり、剣が数口あり、中にただ一口であるが「鳴狐」と異名のある大平造の打刀が存在している。国吉の活躍期は実存するものに弘安3年、「往昔抄」や「光山押形」に建治4年・弘安6年・弘安10年などの紀年銘が見られることにより明らかであり、これが年紀のあるものを全く見ない吉光の年代を推定する手懸りにもなっている。ほとんどの作品に刀身彫刻が見られるが、棟の際にうんと寄って彫られているところも同派の大きな見どころである。 出来は、下から上まで流石は粟田口で他とは段違いであり、映り立ち、小足入り、匂深く、小沸がつき、刃中には金線入りまさにこれが粟田口の見本である出来を示しております。 平地の映りも素晴らしく歴代の権力者が虜になったのは十二分に納得ができます。 古今稀にみる素晴らしい名品ですので是非とも手に取りご堪能ください。 粟田口一派は鎌倉初期から中期にわたり最も栄え開祖は粟田口国家。国家の子が粟田口六兄弟。 国友、久国、国安、国綱らが後鳥羽院御番鍛冶と伝わり全時代、全流派の中で最も澄んで美しいと絶賛され、名声を得ました。特に粟田口国吉は朝廷より左兵衛尉に任じられ天下三作の筆頭藤四郎吉光の父とも師匠とも云われていおります。 なお、本作は粟田口の在銘自体が世に出回らないのですが、特別保存の状態でおさまったいること時点が非常に希少であり、あくまで現状評価で価格を決めているためにこれ以上の安価の銘がしっかり残っている在銘粟田口国吉は先ずはないように思える。
Certificate reading — 無銘（粟田口）
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Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
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The steel is the first thing one learns to read in Awataguchi work: a ko-itame kneaded so tight that the surface takes on the pear-skin sheen the texts name nashiji-hada, the ji-nie dusted over it fine and even, slender chikei threading through, the whole carrying a moist luster (潤い) and a clarity that recurs in notice after notice. This is the steel of the early Yamashiro tradition at its summit. The forge stood at the foot of the Awataguchi slope in Kyoto, on the highway running toward Omi, and a community of smiths already worked there by the early Kamakura period; the tale collection Uji Shui Monogatari attests their presence, so this is a house with a documented place in the literature of its own century. The school is conventionally founded on the six brothers, Kunitomo the eldest, then Hisakuni, Kuniyasu, Kunikiyo, Arikuni and Kunitsuna, sons of the founder Kunika (also given as Kuniie). Kunitomo, Hisakuni and Kuniyasu were summoned as goban-kaji to forge on rotation at the cloistered court of the Retired Emperor Go-Toba, and Hisakuni is even transmitted as a teacher to the sovereign; that imperial patronage is the reason a slender tachi with so quiet a temper carries the authority it does. What binds the house across four generations is restraint married to refinement. Over the nashiji-hada the brothers set a calm suguha leaning into a shallow notare, mixed with ko-midare, ko-gunome and ko-choji, the nioiguchi tight and bright, ko-ashi and yo entering, kinsuji and sunagashi running within the ha; the boshi turns in a refined ko-maru that very often sweeps with hakikake. This is the opposite pole from the clove-flower flamboyance of contemporary Bizen, an edge whose interest lies in the activity within rather than the height of the pattern. Within that shared vocabulary the members are told apart by habit. Kunitomo and Kuniyasu hold to the compressed ko-midare of the founding generation, their nioiguchi clouding into urumi; Kuniyasu's linked ko-gunome picks him out alone within the school.
Kunitsuna is the divergence, a robust o-itame standing prominently over thick ji-nie, with conspicuously strong ha-nie that leans toward the Sagami manner about to be born. The later course runs through Norikuni, the bridge generation, into the tanto age of Kuniyoshi and Yoshimitsu, where the temper settles into bright suguha in fine ko-nie. Kuniyoshi's tell is the nijuba, the doubled (at times trebled) line along the ha; Yoshimitsu's is the linear kuisagari dropping of nie into the ji beneath the boshi, his suguha a narrow hoso-suguha under a bright nioiguchi. For the collector the school divides into work that can be studied and work that can be owned. Its summit, Toshiro Yoshimitsu, crowns the close of the line; paired with Shintogo Kunimitsu of Sagami as a master of the tanto and a virtuoso of suguha, and ranked in the Edo period with Masamune and Go among the Three Great Works under Heaven, he is a smith met in the great collections rather than possessed, his signed tanto the standard against which every attribution is measured. His teacher Kuniyoshi, whose nashiji-hada the texts name outright, is by Awataguchi measure not wholly beyond reach, his o-suriage mumei katana anchored on the doubled line. The house also seeded the eastern tradition: Kunitsuna's transmitted descent runs on to Shintogo Kunimitsu, the de facto founder of Soshu, whose own refined nashiji steel passes for Awataguchi until the chikei and kinsuji betray it, and from whose quiet nie-laden suguha Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige drew the nie-midare of the mature tradition. The refined nie-suguha the brothers fixed was likewise the wellspring the Rai masters drew from, the two hands sitting so close in the eye that gold-inlaid Rai attributions appear on blades grouped with Hisakuni. To kantei an Awataguchi blade is to read the pear-skin steel first, then the quiet nie-laden suguha, then the swept boshi, and to know which brother or pupil the habits name; to acquire one, of any generation, is among the scarcest encounters early Yamashiro affords. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Yoshimitsu吉光 | 1259-1260 | 49 |
| Kuniyoshi國吉 | 1275-1278 | 50 |
| Hisakuni久國 | 1190-1199 | 21 |
| Kunitsuna國綱 | 1240-1264 | 14 |
| Kuniyasu國安 | 1199-1201 | 23 |
Yamashiro in the Kamakura period
Power sat in Kamakura, but taste was still made in Kyōto. The Awataguchi school’s pear-skin steel became a byword for perfection, and the Rai line supplied dignified tachi to the court, senior warriors, and the great temples alike.
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.
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