NihontoWatchStock number:KA-110725Country(Kuni)・Era(Jidai): Higo (Kumamoto)・Late Edo period 1804Blade length(Cutting edge): anout 77.3cmCurve(SORI): about 2.1cmWidth at the hamachi(Moto-Haba): 3.21cmThickness at the Moto-Kasane: 0.81cmWide at the Kissaki(Saki-Haba): 2.50cmThickness at the Saki-Kasane: 0.60cmHabaki: One parts, Gold foil HabakiSword tang(Nakago): Unaltered,Sujikai Keshoyasuri file patternRivet Holes(Mekugiana): 1Shape(Taihai): Shinogizukuri, Iorimune, Chu-kissakiJigane(Hada): Itame with MokumeTemper patterns(Hamon): Gunome-midareTemper patterns in the point(Bohshi): Notare then Ko-Maru round tipRegistration Card: Hokkaido 1951【Additional Information】肥後国延寿派は、大和来派・弘村の子で、山城の来国行の孫の延寿太郎国村を祖とし、鎌倉末期から南北朝期に菊池一族の招きにより肥後菊池に移り、以後同国菊地郡隈府の地に於いて大いに繁栄しました。同田貫もその末裔であると云われています。本作国秀は本名を田中寿助といい、肥後細川藩の藩工で、延寿派の末裔です。初め薩摩の藩工、伯耆守正幸に学び、後に江戸に出て水心子正秀の門人となります。水心子正秀の高い技量を継承し、直刃においても延寿派の伝統的な作域が見て取れ上手です。「延寿国秀」「東肥國日出」等と銘を切ります。本刀は注文打ちの堂々たる一口です。体配は、刃長が二尺五寸五分弱と長寸で、身幅は尋常、重ね厚く、反り深い、中切っ先が大きく延びた、鋭く豪壮な刀姿です。地鉄は良く練られて、総体に肌がよく表れます。板目肌に杢目交じり、刃寄りは流れ心の柾風となります。刃文は小沸本位の互の目乱れで、焼頭が揃い乱れます。処々、地中の働きが刃中に入り、金線、砂流しとなって盛んに働きます。帽子は、乱れ込み先小丸へ返ります。茎は生ぶで、丁寧な化粧鑢がかかり、刀工銘と年紀、注文銘が刻されます。古刀期より連綿と続いた延寿一派の末尾を飾る同工の上出来の一口です。地鉄は肌がよく表れて、総体見所に富んだ優刀としてご紹介致します。白鞘、金着せ一重はばき。特別保存刀剣鑑定書。
NihontoWatchSuishinshi Masahide Kunihide國秀
Offered by World Seiyudo
Shinshinto · Higo · around 1789-1801
Fujishiro Chu-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 77%
2 pieces on the market now
Shinshinto · Musashi
67 pieces on the market now
At Hamachō in Edo, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nineteenth, Suishinshi Masahide[[c:1]] gathered the school that would turn Japanese swordmaking back toward its medieval models. Born Kawabe Gihachirō at Akayu in Dewa in 1750, signing first as Suzuki Takahide and then Eikoku, he studied under the Shitahara smith Yoshihide of Musashi, took the name Masahide in An'ei 3, and served the Akimoto house of Yamagata before settling in Edo, where he worked for nearly fifty years. He is the founding figure of the shinshintō and the theorist of the fukko-tō (revival-sword) doctrine, the argument that the sword ought to return to its Kamakura forms. Around that teaching he drew a large body of pupils, among them Taikei Naotane, who would give the revival its fullest practical form, the future second Masayoshi (Hosokawa Morihide), and a wider Edo and provincial following that carried the program into the Mito, Yonezawa, Tsuyama, and Tatebayashi domains. The shared vocabulary of the school is the deliberate reach back into the koto traditions, worked over a tightly forged, often muji-toned ko-itame with thick ji-nie. Masahide's own prime hand was the Ōsaka-utsushi, the surging tōran-midare of Tsuda Sukehiro opening from a long yakidashi and the broad suguha after Inoue Shinkai, betrayed on even his closest copies by a blackish, coarse nie that spills from the ha into the ji. Naotane gave the revival its Bizen and Sōshū faces: a reverse-leaning chōji-midare with angular kaku-gunome and saka-ashi, modeled on the late-Kamakura Osafune masters Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu and anchored by a consciously revived midare-utsuri that no ordinary shinshintō steel carries, set beside a Sōshū notare with its whorled uzumaki-hada and coarse, striped nie. The pupils divided this inheritance along their own lines. Jirōtarō Naokatsu, Naotane's adopted son, took a Bizen-den led by a kataochi-gunome from Kanemitsu with a pervasive saka-gakari slant and chōji- or midare-utsuri in the ji.
Suishinshi Masatsugu reproduced Naotane's two traditions, Sōshū and Bizen, down to the cut of his signature. Through Masayoshi the Bizen current passed to his heir Hosokawa Masamori of Tsuyama, whose chōji clusters mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba. The Osaka wave traveled separately into Mito through Naoe Sukemasa, who set a Shinkai-styled suguha and a Sukehiro tōran over a clear ko-itame, while Chōunsai Tsunatoshi of the Uesugi service carried a nioi-deki chōji mixed with gunome, suguha, and tōran-midare, often with carving by his own hand. To kantei the school is to weigh a tradition consciously copied against the period marks the copy cannot shed: the constant of the line is that the hamon is never the pure nioi-deki of old Bizen but carries nie throughout, a difference the NBTHK names outright as the divide between koto and shinshintō. The revived utsuri in Naotane and Naokatsu, the spilling nie in Masahide, the whorled uzumaki-hada shared across the line, and the broad, thick-kasane late-Edo sugata are the surest tells, narrowed further by the school's habit of full, dated signatures that make these smiths among the most exactly knowable of their age. Masahide stands at the head as the teacher and theorist, his finest work in his Ōsaka copies rather than the doctrine he proclaimed; Naotane stands ahead of him in execution, his Bizen-den held the finest among the shinshintō. Their pupils define the late-Edo Osafune and Sōshū revivals as practiced through Edo and the domains, with Naokatsu and Masatsugu read as the next hands after Naotane and Masayoshi. The provenance of the school runs through domain commission and bestowal (Mito blades forged at the Kōrakuen by lordly order, Tsuyama and Yonezawa fief work, Naotane's Sanada daishō and a tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection) rather than ancient daimyō transmission, fitting for a movement that, within a single generation at Edo, redrew the direction of nineteenth-century swordmaking by turning it back toward the old models. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Naotane直胤 | 1801-1837 | 40 |
| Masahide正秀 | 1777-1817 | 28 |
| Sukemasa助政 | 1804-1825 | 8 |
| Jirotaro Naokatsu直勝 | 1805-1858 | 7 |
| Masayoshi正義 | 1791-1860 | 5 |
The Shinshintō revival
Around 1800 Suishinshi Masahide argued in his writings that the craft must return to the old masters’ methods: the fukkotō revival. His greatest successor Naotane worked convincingly in Bizen and Sōshū manners that had been dead for centuries.
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.
NBTHK official siteNo cooling-off period or returns; refund only if the purchased sword is proven fake, capped at purchase price (excludes commission sales, accessories, auction items).