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About the maker

Aki Teruhiro輝廣

A naginata dated to the strengths of his hand, designated at the fortieth Jūyō session, is read by the published sources as the example in which the true strengths of the second-generation Teruhiro are fully manifested. The smith who made it, Harima no Kami Teruhiro, is the second generation of the Aki Teruhiro line, the Hiroshima house of Mino origin that worked under the patronage of the Fukushima and then the Asano daimyō in early Shintō times. He was a native of Owari of the Kanie family, commonly called Jinpachi, and signed at first as Kanehisa before he studied under the first-generation Higo no Kami Teruhiro, was favorably regarded by his teacher, and became his son-in-law. He served the Fukushima house, moved with it to Hiroshima in Geishū, and after that family was dispossessed entered the service of the Asano. His earliest dated work bears a Keichō 15 date of 1610, so that his active years stand close to the first generation's, and he is documented as a *Jō-jō saku* smith of the early Hiroshima school. His characteristic hand is a *ko-notare* carried in a deep *nioiguchi*, mixed with *gunome* and blades of a pointed *togari-gokoro* tendency. The published sources name this his forte and, on his finest naginata, call the deep *nioi*, the evenly and thickly adhering *ko-nie*, and the *ji* and *ha* alike bright and clear the very essence of his work, 「正に同工の真骨頂である」. Within the temper *ashi* and *yō* enter, *kinsuji* run in the lower half, *sunagashi* streams through, and small *tobiyaki* appear here and there, the whole hardened in a *nioiguchi* that runs bright on his best work and settles toward a subdued *shizumi* on a quieter piece. It is the opposite pole from the showy Bizen clove temper, a controlled undulating line in which the activity is read rather than displayed. The *jigane* beneath it is an *itame* that takes in a *masame*-leaning, flowing texture and stands somewhat in *hada-dachi*, an open grain rather than a tight one. On the best naginata the *ji-nie* gathers at the finest into dust-fine *ji-nie mijin* laid thickly, with fine *chikei* entering well and the steel clear, while on the wakizashi the same flowing *jigane* stands more plainly with *ji-nie* and *chikei*. The *bōshi* most often turns in a *ko-maru*; on the largest naginata it runs a shallow *notare* to a somewhat *ō-maru* tip on the *omote* and becomes *notare-komi* with a thrusting-up, pointed finish on the *ura*, and on the wakizashi it goes straight to a small round turn on one face and into *midare-komi* on the other. Two manners recur across his small body of recorded work. The first is the deep-*nioi* naginata just described, the area in which his forte shows fullest. The second is a slightly elongated *sun-nobi* *hira-zukuri* *ko-wakizashi*, somewhat wide in the *mihaba* with a thick *kasane*, presenting the *sugata* of Keichō-era Shintō and deliberately aiming at the flavor of Shizu work, which the published sources call a success, 「志津の風をねらって成功している」, and indeed a typical work of this smith, 「勿論彼の典型作でもある」. On these the temper is a shallow, gently undulating line with small *gunome*, the *nioiguchi* tight, with a *hotsure*-like fraying and a slight *sunagashi*; they carry carvings more often than the naginata, a *bō-hi* or *katana-hi*, *bonji* and a lotus pedestal, *gomabashi* or a plain *suken*. The published sources read both manners as a close inheritance of his teacher's style and infer, as with the first generation, an association with the Kyoto master Umetada Myōju, drawn from the deep-*nioi* *notare* the two hands share and from the small difference in their working years. Within the school he is set apart from his teacher by his title and by his descent showing through the steel. Where the first generation signs Higo no Kami, the second signs Harima no Kami, and the published sources read three marks as betraying his Mino lineage even where the temper looks to Shizu: the flowing *nagare-hada* in the forging, the pointed *togari-gokoro* blades within the *hamon*, and especially a *bōshi* reminiscent of the Mino Sanpin manner. On the finest naginata they name these explicitly and conclude that they allow one to perceive that he was a swordsmith of Mino lineage, 「彼が美濃系出身の刀工であることを察知させる」. His work is thus legible as Hiroshima Shintō with a Mino root rather than as pure Sōshū, the deep-*nioi* *notare* and the flowing, standing *ji* placing him beside his father and apart from the smiths he admired. Six of his works are on record, all of them designated Jūyō, spanning *tantō*, *wakizashi* and *naginata*, and all signed; there is no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them, and his line is one whose pieces survive in small numbers rather than in quantity. The published sources note that while *tantō* signed Harima no Kami Teruhiro are by no means scarce, dated examples are exceedingly few, so that a *tantō* bearing a date carries high documentary value, and the pieces dated Kan'ei 5 of 1628 and Kan'ei 9 of 1632 are valued for exactly that reason. Recorded ownership is private rather than institutional, and no famous provenance attaches to the recorded blades. A designated Teruhiro of the second generation is not among the unattainable names, but it is a blade that comes to a collector only from time to time and with patience, the deep-*nioi* naginata most of all the one in which, as the published sources have it, the true strengths of the second-generation Teruhiro are fully manifested, 「二代輝広の本領が遺憾無く発揮された同作中の優品である」.

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