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About the maker

Sukesada祐定

Genbei-no-jō Sukesada is one of the foremost personal-name hands of the late-Muromachi Osafune house collectively called Sue-Bizen, the branch of the great Sukesada family identified not by the name alone but by a pair of qualities the published sources name again and again. Sukesada was the most prosperous of the late Osafune forges, signed by dozens of smiths, and the published commentary repeatedly draws the same short list out of that crowd: among the many who took the name, those who added the titles Yosozaemon-no-jō, Hikobei-no-jō and this Genbei-no-jō are the most accomplished. Within that three, Genbei-no-jō is the calm and exacting hand. His earliest dated work falls in the Tenbun years and his production continues to the closing years of Tenshō, and the swordbooks separate the name into two generations a generation apart, the first placed in the Eishō era and the second carrying the signature through Eiroku, Genki and Tenshō. He is the master of the ordered, single, carefully made blade in an age otherwise given over to mass production. The published sources fix him by two marks, and both are worth taking in his own words. The first is his forging: of him they write that he 「鍛錬の優れている事で定評があり」, "he has a long-established reputation for the excellence of his forging," and elsewhere that he is robust and that 「一般に豪壮で地がねがよく、直刃調の出来を得意としている」, "in general his blades are powerful, his jigane is good, and he excels at suguha-toned workmanship." The second mark is that hamon. His characteristic temper is a bright, broad *hiro-suguha*, suguha-toned and shallowly undulating, into which he mixes *ko-gunome*, with *ashi* and *yō* entering richly and *ko-nie* adhering, the *nioiguchi* tightening or running bright and clear, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* trailing through it and at times *yubashiri*. It is the quiet face of Sue-Bizen, the foil to the open-waisted gunome flamboyance of his senior Yosozaemon, and the published sources call the *suguha* he was 「直刃調の刃文を得意とする」, the temper he made his specialty. The *jigane* is the constant beneath that temper, and it is the second half of his reputation made visible. He forges a well-packed *ko-itame*, often within a broader *itame*, with fine *ji-nie* settling in *mijin* like dust, *chikei* woven through, and frequently a faint *midare-utsuri* standing near the *shinogi*; on some blades a *mizukage* rises below the *machi* and the steel runs bright and clear. This is the forging the published sources call beautiful as his reputation would have it, the refinement that separates a custom-ordered Genbei-no-jō blade from the coarse run of the late Osafune forges. His blades are robust late-Muromachi *uchigatana* of the Eiroku and Tenshō type: lengthened well beyond the mid-Muromachi norm, wide in body with little taper from base to point, thick in *kasane*, deep in *sori* with *sakizori* and an extended *chū-kissaki*, the tang made long for two-handed use. The *bōshi* runs straight or *midare-komi* into a *ko-maru*, deeply tempered, often with *hakikake* and a long turnback. Against that calm prime stands a livelier register the published sources are careful to flag as exceptional. On a handful of his blades, and most often on the *moroha-zukuri* double-edged *tantō* that the sources say are frequent in Sue-Bizen, he raises a high, varied temper built on a *koshi-biraki* and double-structured *gunome*, mixing *togariba* and angular elements, *ashi* and *yō* entering, with frequent *tobiyaki* and some *muneyaki* that break the upper body into a partial *hitatsura*, the *nioiguchi* bright. The judges note that *suguha* is his usual manner, yet they hold that even when he tempers such a *hitatsura*-flavored *midare* he does so with skill, the *ji* and *ha* alike bright and clear. The Tokubetsu Jūyō *katana* of Eiroku 1 shows the two faces at once: a broad *suguha* base whose lower half breaks into *saka-gakari midare*, *saka-ashi* and a *nijūba*-like impression, an archaic flavor the published sources suggest he drew from older Aoe and Unrui work, so that it conveys depth even among his own pieces. Of this blade the commentary says 「源兵衛尉祐定の見どころが総体によく表出している」, "the points of interest of Genbei-no-jō Sukesada are well manifested throughout." What sets him apart within the house is exactly this division of labour. Yosozaemon-no-jō leads the name in renown and breadth and is read by the open-waisted, double-structured gunome that defines Sue-Bizen; Genbei-no-jō stands just below, ranked beside Hikobei-no-jō, and is read instead by his bright *hiro-suguha* and the refinement of his *ji*, which the published sources hold equal to the best of the name. He is also a smith of the documented, ordered blade. A notable share of his work bears an owner inscription beside the date, the *tameuchi* or *chūmon-uchi* custom orders the published sources distinguish sharply from ordinary *kazu-uchi-mono*: such blades, they write, are executed with a care not comparable to the mass run, so that the workmanship of both *ji* and *ha* is superior, and the commentary is plain that 「かかる作刀があるからこそ、世上末備前の名声が高い」, that it is precisely because works of this kind exist that the Sue-Bizen name has earned its high esteem. For the collector, Genbei-no-jō is a name one can actually study and, with patience, acquire. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the Jūyō tier, where he is well represented, with a single Tokubetsu Jūyō *katana* and a prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin at the top of it, some seventeen blades in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers on this record. His blades carry their own provenance in their inscriptions rather than through famous houses: the Tenbun 23 *katana* bears the ownership name Koremune Tadayori, others the patrons Hara Yohei-no-jō and Miki Yoichibei, and the Jūyō Bijutsuhin *katana* was certified to Okano Tarōmatsu of Okayama in 1949. Because his dated, signed *uchigatana* survive in fair number, a privately held example comes to market from time to time rather than once in a generation, and the commentary marks the finest of them in its own words, calling one the 「数ある源兵衛尉祐定中の屈指の優品」, "a peerless fine work among the many by Genbei-no-jō Sukesada." He is the rare late-Bizen name a serious collector can pursue with real hope of holding a signed, dated blade by a documented master hand.

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