¥8,500,000

Tracked across 76 dealers worldwide · price history · sold archive

Specifications

About the maker

Osafune Motomitsu基光

Motomitsu was a swordsmith of the Bizen Osafune school in the Nanbokuchō period, transmitted as either a son of Kanemitsu or a smith trained in his circle, and recorded as having held the title Saemon-no-jō. His dated works run from the Kōei era through Eiwa, so the span of his activity is securely fixed, and the published sources open the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi held by the Tokugawa house plainly: "a signed tachi by Motomitsu, a pupil of the master" (光の門人基光在銘の太刀である). He carries the Kanemitsu manner forward into the second half of the fourteenth century, and the same commentary that places him in that lineage also draws the careful line that defines his standing within it. His hand is read first in the temper. Over an *itame* he sets a *gunome*-dominant *midare* whose spine is *kataochi-gunome*, the saw-tooth pattern of the Kanemitsu workshop, and into it he crowds angular teeth, *togariba*, and shallow *ko-notare* whose crests turn angular. The published sources name this intermixture as his own: of the Tokugawa tachi they write that "the workmanship is broadly Kanemitsu-den, yet, as in this blade, the *gunome* are conspicuous, and his distinctive character is seen in the way *gunome* of many shapes mingle together" (本作のように互の目がめだち、しかも様々な形の互の目が入り交じる). The figure recurs across his Jūyō entries, set against the more orderly, linked *gunome* the school also produced. *Ashi* and *yō* enter, the *nioiguchi* tightens and runs bright with *ko-nie*, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* play through the *ha*. The *jigane* is the constant beneath that temper. His *itame* is mixed with *mokume* and frequently tends to stand into *hada-dachi*, with *ji-nie*, fine *chikei*, and patches of *jifu*-toned steel, over which a *midare-utsuri* rises; near the edge it often reads instead as a straight, *sugu*-toned *utsuri*, the Osafune *jigane* he shares with his master. The *bōshi* enters in *midare-komi* and turns with a pointed tendency to a small round, finishing with fine *hakikake*. On his dirks he carves *bō-hi*, or a *koshi-hi* with accompanying *soe-hi*, and one tantō carries a devotional *gomabashi*, the quiet decorative vocabulary of late Osafune. His record divides cleanly by form. On one side stand the signed, dated blades in his own hand: tachi cut Bishū Osafune Motomitsu, and the *hira-zukuri* wakizashi and tantō, several of them *ubu* and crisply dated to Bunna, Jōji and Ōan, of which the published sources say "the quality of the workmanship gives the sense of approaching Kanemitsu" (出来のよさは兼光に迫る感があり) and which they prize as research material for the smith. On the other stand the *ō-suriage* *mumei* katana, wide in body with little taper and an extended *chū-kissaki*, the grand Nanbokuchō shape, judged to him from era and the Kanemitsu manner. The commentary notes that signed tachi by him are comparatively few. What separates him from the rest of the group is exactly what the judges name when they affirm an unsigned blade. They find in the standing grain and the varied teeth within the *kataochi-gunome* the features that mark a work as his, writing of one katana that "within the Kanemitsu group there is that which should be most closely likened to Motomitsu, and the attribution is correctly affirmed" (兼光一門にあって基光に最も擬すべきところがあり、極めは正しく首肯される). Yet they are equally candid about his rank: in overall standing "there are points where he yields slightly to Kanemitsu" (少しく兼光に譲るところがある). His is the able second hand of the workshop, holding its temper while pressing his own crowded, varied *gunome* upon it, and the unsigned attributions rest on school and period rather than on a single decisive personal tell. For the collector he is a documented but uncommon late-Osafune name. The Tōkō Taikan values him at the upper-middle level, and his connoisseurship record is built less on volume than on the precision of his dated, signed work. He has no National Treasures; his standing rests instead on one Important Cultural Property, a signed tachi preserved in the Mitsui Bunko in Tokyo, together with one Tokubetsu Jūyō and a body of Jūyō blades, some thirty-eight in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers in all. The provenance that survives is good: the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi descends through the Tokugawa house, called by the published sources "a superior work by Motomitsu transmitted in the Great Tokugawa family" (大徳川家に伝来した基光の優品である); a katana bearing a gold-inlaid attribution thought to be the work of Hon'ami Mitsutada is held by the Sano Art Museum, formerly in the Homma collection. Most designated Motomitsu blades are held rather than traded, so a signed example comes to light only from time to time, and when one does it is a precise, datable record of how the Kanemitsu workshop carried Osafune through the Nanbokuchō age.

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