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About the maker

Satsuma Masayoshi正良

The blades on record under the name Masayoshi of Satsuma carry a family succession rather than a single hand. The published sources read the name as the Ijichi house of Satsuma domain smiths, and the record is led by the third generation, born in Kyoho 18, who succeeded to the name Masayoshi, received the title Hoki no Kami in Kansei 1 at the same time as Oku Motohira, and on that occasion ceded the Masayoshi name to his heir and signed Masayuki thereafter, dying at eighty-six in Bunsei 1. The earliest hand the record reaches is the first generation, named in one text as Uehara Juzaemon, a warrior of the Izumi district at the northern edge of the province where it meets Higo, a strategic post manned by the domain's hardiest samurai, recorded there as the grandfather of the later Hoki no Kami. Across the generations the published commentary holds a single judgment in view: among Satsuma shinshinto smiths he stands, with Oku Yamato no Kami Motohira, as one of the two foremost masters, and he was held to have surpassed his teacher Masachika and his own forebears, a smith the sources call simply a master who outstripped his teacher. His is a robust Soshu-den hand, and its most constant tell lies in the activity of the ji and the ha. Over every blade in the corpus the temper carries sunagashi, and over most of it kinsuji and short nie-suji as well, the long streaming lines running together within a deep nioi and an abundant, thick nie. The nie itself is the second mark: it adheres heavily and conspicuously mixes coarse ara-nie across most of the record, the bright, agitated steel that sets the Satsuma manner apart from the calmer nie of the contemporary Bizen revival or of Osaka work. The temper on which this activity rides is a notare base into which gunome, small gunome and a pointed togari tendency are mixed, the ashi entering well, the published sources naming this notare carrying gunome and pointed teeth as his habitual hand. It is not a regular gunome and not a Bizen choji; the pointed elements riding on a notare base are what the commentary repeatedly calls typical of him. The jigane is the third discriminator, and it must be read from this smith's own work rather than from any school formula. His is an itame that stands and opens, mixed with mokume and flowing nagare-hada, often with a tendency toward raised grain, over which the ji-nie forms thickly and chikei enter frequently; in the finest pieces the published sources note an unusual chikei-like vari-gane, a dark figure in the steel that lends a distinctive texture, the phrase 「地景風の変り金」 recurring in the commentary. This is a stout, active jigane, not the fine clear ko-itame of the Yamashiro or Osaka traditions, and it is the jihada the commentary describes as belonging to Satsuma. The boshi answers the ha. The defining formula the published sources cut is 「乱れ込み、先尖りごころに掃きかける」, the point running in as a midare-komi, gathering a pointed togari and finishing in hakikake; on the most vigorous blades the sweep gathers into a flame-like kaen form, and a few examples close instead in a quieter ko-maru or an ichimai-leaning return. The sugata under all of this is the one the sources call habitually his, broad in width, thick in kasane, long and stoutly built, the point extended into a chu-kissaki or, on his greatest work, an o-kissaki. Within this one manner the corpus draws two periods and a signature change that date the blades closely. The first generation's single well-represented blade, from the Kyowa years, already shows the line's idiom formed, a ko-notare carrying gunome and a pointed togari tendency, vigorous nie with ara-nie, and prominent sunagashi, kinsuji and nie-suji, the boshi running in as a midare-komi with a rounded tip and a long hakikake return, called a representative example of a maker whose work is scarce. The third generation's prime fills the rest of the record, and the sources read it as Soshu-den after the manner of Shizu, one Tenmei 5 blade called outright a work in the 「志津風の作域」 and judged a success, another, from his earlier Meiwa and An'ei years, said to take its models from the older Go and from Inoue Shinkai of Osaka. The inscriptions track this chronology: he signed both katana-mei and tachi-mei, the surname Taira entering the signature from the Tenmei years so that a Sasshu-ju Taira Masayoshi blade falls after that line, and as a rule he did not cut the character for day into his dates, one An'ei 6 katana abbreviating so far as to give only the year, a thing the commentary marks as extremely rare. What sets him apart is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast. The deep, coarse nie, the streaming kinsuji and sunagashi within a notare-gunome, and the standing Satsuma jigane with its chikei are the features that identify his hand, and the boshi of midare-komi, pointed and swept in hakikake, at times flame-like, completes the picture. The sources place him at the head of his school's late and fullest flowering, the renown of the pupil outshining the master attached to his name, written 「出藍の誉が高く」; he learned in the school of Masachika and stood at the close beside Oku Yamato no Kami Motohira, the two smiths the commentary names together whenever it weighs the masters of Satsuma shinshinto, the formula 「薩摩新々刀鍛冶の中では奥大和守元平と共に双璧である」 recurring almost word for word across the record. The Jigen-ryu temper of the province, the bold construction and the weight in the hand, the sources say he carried further than most, so that his most imposing blades are exceptional even among Satsuma work. Fujishiro grades him Jo-saku, and the blades on record are all Juyo; there are no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties among them, and the published record preserves no daimyo provenance or institutional holder for them. They are the steady mark of a domain master whose work is uncommon rather than unobtainable, held in private hands and surfacing from time to time rather than locked away as patrimony. The longest and most powerful of them, an o-kissaki katana of Tenmei 5 measuring over eighty-six centimeters, the sources call a life's major work and a 「畢生の大作にして白眉」, a preeminent piece without near parallel for its length, vigor and weight in the hand, the chikei stronger than usual and the grandeur of the coarse-nie hamon exceptional. A blade by Hoki no Kami Masayuki comes to the serious collector only from time to time and at the upper end of the Satsuma field, a landmark of the late tradition when one appears, the deep-nie streaming midare on its standing Satsuma jigane unmistakable for the hand that made it.

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