NihontoWatchStock number:KA-060120Paper(Certificate):[N.B.T.H.K] Tokubetsu Hozon TokenCountry・Era:Musahi(Tokyo)・Late Edo period 1837Blade length(Cutting edge): 69.9cmCurve(SORI): 2.3cmWidth at the hamachi(Moto-Haba): 3.33cmThickness at the Moto-Kasane: 0.72cmWide at the Kissaki(Saki-Haba): 2.80cmThickness at the Saki-Kasane: 0.55cmHabaki: One parts, gold foil HabakiSword tang(Nakago): Unaltered,Sujikaiyasuri with Keshoyasuri file patternRivet Holes(Mekugiana): 1Shape(Taihai): Chu-kissaki,Shinogizukuri,IorimuneEngraving: Bohi on each sideJigane(Hada): Itame with JinieTemper patterns(Hamon): Choji-midareTemper patterns in the point(Bohshi): Midare,KomaruRegistration Card: Tokyo【Additional Information】本名は加藤八郎、寛政10年(1798年)~ 文久3年(1863年)加藤和泉守国秀の三男で山形藩工で濤瀾刃の名手であった加藤綱秀の弟です。長運斎と号し、兄と共に幕末の江戸で備前伝を得意とする一大流派加藤一門を築き上げました。彼 ははじめ水心子正秀の門人となって江戸に移住し、後に大阪に上がり西国を遊歴して熊本に駐槌、安政3年に長運斎を息子の是俊、二代綱俊に譲り銘を長寿斎と 改めました。文久3年(1863年)江戸麻布の上杉家中家敷でその生涯を終えました。初代長運斎綱俊は殊に備前伝では水心子一門を凌ぐ勢いであった云われ 当時の第一人者と称えられた名工です。加藤一門は、甥の石堂是一ほか、固山宗次、高橋長信、青竜軒盛俊など数多くの優れた門人を輩出しました。本 作は、身巾広く反りが利き踏ん張りがあるスタイルが誠に整った一振りで、鎬地に刻された二本の樋が刀身を更に引き締めています。地鉄は良く詰んだ小板目肌 で潤いが有ります。刃紋は匂勝ちで飛び焼きを交じえる互の目乱れ刃紋で、柔らかい小沸が刃縁から刃にむかって微塵にこぼれるようについて所々荒沸がついて 輝きます。刃中には小足入り刃縁には金線が絡み働きも盛んです。帽子はそのま乱れ込んで小丸へと返ります。茎は生ぶで、化粧鑢がはっきりとして保存状態が 良く、銘ぶりも鏨が確りと力強く、なにしろ立派なものです。白鞘には寒山先生の鞘書があります。特別保存刀剣鑑定書、金着一重はばき。
NihontoWatchSuishinshi Masahide Tsunatoshi綱俊
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Shinshinto · Musashi · around 1830-1844
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 37%
7 pieces on the market now
Tsunatoshi was originally from Yonezawa in Dewa Province; his personal name was Kato Hachiro, and he used the art name Chounsai. He served as a domain smith for the Uesugi clan, later going to Edo and taking up residence in Azabu. He died in Bunkyu 3 (1863) at the age of sixty-six. His active career is documented through dated works spanning the Tenpo era, with productions from Tenpo 9 (1838) through Tenpo 12 (1841) among those that have received Juyo designation.
Tsunatoshi's workmanship primarily followed the Bizen tradition. His specialty was a choji temper mixed with gunome in nioi-deki, with long ashi entering and the nioiguchi tending toward tightness; in addition, he produced suguha and toran-midare. The toran-flavored mode achieves a large o-gunome midare with tama-yaki, nie adhering somewhat unevenly, and hakikake at the boshi. Across all styles, his forging is characteristically a tightly compacted ko-itame that tends toward a muji-like appearance -- the plain, featureless-looking steel common in shinshinto work, though in Tsunatoshi's case worked with particular density and carrying ji-nie. His horimono are noteworthy: bo-hi with accompanying soe-bi, bonji, shinkurikara, gomabashi, and claws, at times executed by the smith's own hand as documented by tang inscriptions stating the carvings were by the maker himself.
Tsunatoshi's extant designated works include katana, wakizashi, and a matched daisho pair -- the survival of which as a set makes it "especially useful reference material" in the NBTHK's assessment. His productions range from imposing katana of 75.5 cm with extremely deep sori to hira-zukuri wakizashi with elaborate carving, and one piece retains its original payment receipt addressed to the commissioning patron, providing documentary evidence of the domain smith's working practice.
Where Tsunatoshi stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
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Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Shinshinto · Musashi
70 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).