Dewa Daijō Fujiwara Kunimichi worked in Kyoto in the Keichō-shintō years, the foremost pupil of Horikawa Kunihiro and, the published sources say, the most versatile hand of that whole circle, calling him "the most dexterous of the Horikawa school"[[c:1]]. His career is unusually long. Dated blades run from Keichō 13 (1608) to Kanbun 2 (1662), and one piece carries an added inscription giving his age as seventy-seven in Keian 5, so that some accounts even propose a second-generation Kunimichi for the works after the Jōō era. He is said to have lived in the Ebisugawa quarter near Horikawa, and the sword books record that he first studied under Iga-no-kami Kinmichi of the Mishina house before entering Kunihiro's gate; after his teacher's death he received the title Dewa Daijō, around Keichō 19 to Genna 1, in an arrangement sponsored by Kinmichi.
His characteristic work is a copy of the Sōshū tradition, and within it the Naoe-Shizu manner above all. The published sources are consistent on where his strength lay: he handled every tradition but Bizen with skill, "and of these the Sōshū tradition was his greatest specialty, looking devotedly to Shizu and Samonji"[[c:2]]. Over a board-grain jigane that stands up he tempers a notare and ko-notare base into which gunome and large gunome gather, building to a lively large midare with tobiyaki; the nioi is deep, the nie thick and at times coarse, with broad sunagashi and long kinsuji. The published sources name exactly these as the points by which he is known, his strong, lively nie, his large flamboyant midare, and the rich work of sunagashi and kinsuji. His most personal feature lies in the bōshi: a shallow notare-komi that thrusts up and turns pointed with hakikake, "the so-called Sanpin bōshi, entering in notare and becoming pointed at the tip"[[c:3]].
The jigane is where he is most himself. His itame stands up and is often dry and coarse, a distinctive zanguri texture mixed with mokume and flowing grain, inclining toward masame near the edge, with ji-nie adhering and chikei entering. It is not the unhurried, expansive steel of his teacher; it is a tauter, more worked jigane, and the published sources, while granting that in breadth of range he even surpasses Kunihiro, are clear that in leisurely grandeur of scale he does not match him. Across the temper run the activities he is read by, ashi entering well, the nioiguchi deep and at times brightly clear, muneyaki along the back of some blades, and on the more boisterous pieces a tendency toward coarse nie and basake.
Two registers divide his work. The first and most frequent is the flamboyant Shizu copy, the large midare fully tempered, the bōshi pointed in the Mishina manner, devotional carvings of suken, bonji and gomabashi on the omote and ura, and on his wide hira-zukuri wakizashi a Fudō or a Kurikara. The second is a subdued, low-temper register encountered from time to time, the hamon quiet, the nioiguchi tighter, the line dignified and sometimes carrying an archaic colour like old Shizu; one Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana of this kind lacks all flamboyance and is so richly covered in nie in both ji and ha that the published sources say it could "be mistaken for a work by his teacher Kunihiro"[[c:4]], proof of how completely he had absorbed the Horikawa hand. His signatures track his life across both registers, the early Kunidō written with the character 道, the prime full signature Dewa Daijō Fujiwara Kunimichi after he took the title, and the late pieces prefixed Rai, the changing name read together with the pointed bōshi as evidence of his connection to the Mishina house.
What sets Kunimichi apart within the Horikawa school is not a single feature but a balance. Among Kunihiro's pupils he and Izumi-no-kami Kunisada are reckoned the two most prolific, and his collaborator Kunitsugu, transmitted as either his son or his disciple, served as his capable daisaku and signed a joint katana before taking his own title. Against the school's other great hands his own features set him off: the standing, dry zanguri jigane, the pointed Sanpin bōshi that the Horikawa norm does not show, the thick coarse nie and long kinsuji of a thorough Shizu copy. The published sources call his finest work in this manner "the flower of his Shizu copies"[[c:5]], and praise his strongest pieces as overflowing with power, close to the highest rank of his oeuvre; his Samonji copy, too, is held to stand without disadvantage beside his teacher's.
For the collector Kunimichi is an attainable major name among the Keichō-shintō smiths, where so much of the school's best is held rather than traded. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through two Important Cultural Properties, two Tokubetsu-Jūyō and many Jūyō, sixty-seven blades in all in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, with seventy-four designated works on record, alongside prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin that include the great long tachi dedicated to the Goryō Shrine in Kyoto. The provenance recorded for his blades reaches into the Imperial Family and old collections, with examples now held at the Goryō Shrine and the Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto and others long in private hands. Of the seven tiers above only a small number can ever change hands, and most designated blades, even in private collections, are kept rather than sold; but a signed Dewa Daijō Kunimichi in the tradeable tier does come to a patient collector from time to time, a Kyoto Shizu copy of the first rank by the most versatile of Kunihiro's pupils.
