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Osafune Yoshimitsu義光

A tachi dated Kōei 2 (1343), eighth month, signed in full Bizen no Kuni Osafune Yoshimitsu, is among the firmest documents of this smith. Yoshimitsu was a swordsmith of the Bizen Osafune school of the late Kamakura into the Nanbokuchō period, by the prevailing tradition a son of Kagemitsu and the younger brother of Kanemitsu, with one account placing the first generation in the Nagamitsu line. His dated works run from Genkō at the close of Kamakura through Jōji, roughly forty years that almost exactly parallel Kanemitsu, and the sword reference books distinguish a first generation, following his father, from a second that more nearly resembles his brother. Like Kanemitsu he commonly used Northern Court era names, although a tantō dated Kōkoku 6, a Southern Court name, also survives. He belongs to the central Osafune workshop at the moment it turned from the classicism of Kagemitsu toward the broad Nanbokuchō manner of Kanemitsu, and his record is read on the seam between the two. His recognition turns on a single axis the judges restate on nearly every blade: his is the manner of the Kanemitsu group, but the irregularity is composed in a smaller pattern. Over an itame jigane that stands a little, often mixed with nagare and mokume, he tempers an angular gunome and kataochi-style gunome, with ko-gunome, ko-chōji and pointed elements intermixed, the whole resolving into a small-scale midare, in places running reversed, with ashi and yō entering, the nioiguchi nioi-dominant with ko-nie, and fine sunagashi and kinsuji through the line. The kataochi and the angular gunome carry over from his father Kagemitsu, while the crowding of many different edge-forms inside the irregularity is named as his own hand. On one signed tachi the published sources put it plainly, that 'compared with his elder brother Kanemitsu the irregularity is of smaller motifs, and the inclusion of pointed elements within the tempered edge is readily perceived as a hallmark of Yoshimitsu' (兄兼光に比して乱れが小模様となり、焼刃に尖り刃を交えるなど義光の見どころが看取される). The jigane is the constant beneath that edge. The itame carries ji-nie, fine chikei enter, and a vivid midare-utsuri stands clearly, the bright Osafune reflection he shares with the school but renders well-defined; on the tightest-forged pieces the steel packs into ko-itame and the utsuri only sharpens, and one signed tachi mixes a jifu-toned texture into the jigane. His earliest dated tachi stand apart from this prime manner. They are slender, high in koshizori with funbari, forged in tight ko-itame with a bō-utsuri or a straight utsuri, and tempered not in gunome at all but in a calm suguha with slight ko-ashi, nioi-dominant with ko-nie, a register the judges read as following Kagemitsu rather than Kanemitsu. The profile thus divides in three. The early dated tachi, in the Kagemitsu suguha, anchor the chronology, and of the Kōei 2 piece the published sources note that it is 'extremely similar to a Kanemitsu tachi dated Kōei 3, sixth month' (康永三年六月の兼光太刀), an Important Art Object, the two hands documented working side by side. The prime, the kataochi and angular gunome in their smaller midare, is the body of the record. A third, smaller register pushes toward strong nie in the soden Bizen feeling the period prized: a naginata-naoshi wakizashi the judges call a deliberate stressing of Sōshū-den, with abundant ji-nie, yubashiri, sunagashi and kinsuji, and a wide ō-kissaki katana that turns blackish in the steel and adds yahazu-ba, of which the published sources write that, weighing the excellence of its nie and the activity along the edge, it 'shows workmanship of upper-rank soden Bizen worthy of Yoshimitsu and his circle' (義光を含む如何にも相伝備前の上作). The first-and-second-generation question is left open across the Genkō-to-Jōji span, and is the central scholarly matter around him. What sets him apart from his neighbours is exactly what the judges name, and it is drawn from his own work rather than from theirs. Against Kanemitsu his midare is the smaller and calmer, the cutting edge quieter; against his father Kagemitsu his prime carries more nie and the Sōshū-touched activity of his late hand. On one ō-suriage mumei katana the published commentary records that, the sugata and jiba at first suggesting the circle around Kanemitsu, it is precisely because 'the irregularity, set against Kanemitsu's broad openness, presents somewhat smaller-scale features that the blade is to be judged Yoshimitsu' (乱れが兼光の大らかさに比べてやや小模様を呈しているところに義光と鑑すべきものがある), and on a Jūyō katana that 'the way many different edge-forms intermix within the irregularity displays the character of Yoshimitsu' (乱れの中に多種の刃が交じるところに義光の特色が表示されており). He stands as the quieter, more closely worked hand of the great mid-Osafune workshop, the brother who held to the small-patterned midare while Kanemitsu opened the line outward. For the collector he is a documented but uncommon Osafune name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through an Important Cultural Property, two Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi and some thirty-two Jūyō blades, and signed work is genuinely scarce, only about a dozen of the surviving pieces bearing a signature against a far larger body of ō-suriage mumei katana. The Important Cultural Property, a signed and dated tachi, is preserved at Kameoka Hachiman-gū in Miyagi. The named provenance of his blades is daimyō: the Kōei 2 tachi passed from Tokugawa Yorinobu of Kishū to the Saijō Matsudaira house in 1667 and stayed there; a Kenmu-era signed tachi was held near Torigoe Shrine in Asakusa and is said to have been a wearing sword of the shogun Ienari. With only a couple of blades in the Tokubetsu Jūyō tier and the rest at Jūyō, a signed and dated Yoshimitsu reaches the market only seldom, and a privately held example, especially an ubu dated tachi, is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Kanemitsu line was carried in a quieter key.

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