After the Ōnin War broke the Ashikaga order, a century of Sengoku warfare armed nearly every province in Japan. The era rewards a discriminating eye: routine work exists in quantity, and beside it stand custom blades of the first rank.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch平造の刀は、革の甲冑を截断するべく鎬を設けないため、刃の抜けの良さが際立つ構造。友重など加賀藤島の作と極められたこの刀は、南北朝時代の大平造を手本に戦国期に製作されたもの。重ねを控え、元幅広く物打辺りも強く張り、先反りが付いて弦月の如く総反り深く、緊張感に満ちた姿格好。小杢を交えた板目鍛えの地鉄は淡い地景を伴い大きく流れて激しく揺れ、地沸が叢付いて映りと感応し合い、地の色合いにも濃淡がある。
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As written by the shop
Yamashiro-den · Kaga
17 pieces on the market now
Among the provincial lineages of the Hokurikudo, the Fujishima school took its name and its base from the village of Fujishima in Kaga province, where Tomoshige stands as founder and the name he set down passed through several generations from the close of the Nanbokucho period across the Muromachi and on into the early-modern Shinto era. The members place the chronological anchor with care: the earliest firmly dated work is a tanto of Oei 2 (1395), and the NBTHK finds nothing among the surviving blades that goes back earlier than Nanbokucho. Old documentary tradition reads the first generation as a pupil of Rai Kunitoshi of Yamashiro, alternatively of Kashu Sanekage or Rai Toshimune, but the published sources doubt each reading in turn, finding no stylistic tie to Rai Kunitoshi and a chronological impossibility with Sanekage; judging from the make and the nakago finish, they settle by elimination toward the Yamato tradition, close to the Yamato Shikkake hand. A tachi held at Atsuta Shrine and a two-character ken read as the oldest surviving piece bracket the early end of the line. The recognition of the school lives in its jigane. The members agree on a board-grained itame that mixes in mokume and runs to nagare, standing somewhat open (hada-dachi), the surface gathering ji-nie and chikei, the steel carrying a distinct blackish cast named kan'a-iro and tied directly to the northern provinces as hokkoku-hada; a faint whitish shirake-utsuri rises quietly against this dark ground rather than a bright Bizen reflection. Over that ji the school tempers a gunome-midare into which box-shaped (hako-ba), pointed and angular (togariba) teeth enter together with notare and ko-notare, the ashi running rather long, the ha nie-laden with sunagashi sweeping it and kinsuji entering, small tobiyaki and muneyaki scattered here and there.
The NBTHK reads the feel of it as a make in which Bizen temperament and Mino flavor coexist, the boshi running straight or midare-komi into a ko-maru, often swept with hakikake or running to yakizume. The members also mark the short blades apart: on the tanto the hand can quiet to a ko-itame and a narrow hoso-suguha or low ko-gunome with ko-nie, the nioiguchi sometimes clouding to urumi, the boshi turning jizo-like or returning deep, this the simplest face of the Yamato base while the dark steel keeps its northern mark. To kantei a Fujishima blade the eye works the conjunction rather than any single trait: the standing dark ji read together with the box-and-pointed midare and the constant sunagashi names the school where a clean Bizen choji or a true Yamashiro ko-itame would not. The members note works read variously toward an Aoe air, toward Naoe Shizu and Sekishu Naotsuna, the Mino and northern lines the school sits between, kin in feel to the Etchu and Echizen smiths of the same region. Among the membership Tomoshige carries the name and the standing; Fujishiro rates the founder Chu-jo saku and places others among the middle ranks of the koto smiths, and the most highly regarded work falls in the Oei generation while the Muromachi work survives most often. The single finest piece is a great spear (o-mi-yari) signed Fujishima Tomoshige and carved with a sanko-ken and the deity-name Myoken Daibosatsu, which the published sources judge not merely the best spear of the school but one of the representative famous spears of its age; surviving naginata by the line are noted as rare, their ubu-nakago valued as dating evidence. Provenance gathers around named houses recorded in the blades themselves, an Oei katana descended in the Inaba daimyo house and a tanto recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, heritage pieces in long-standing hands; yet the line is not among the unattainable names, and a Juyo Tomoshige remains a realistic if uncommon encounter for the patient collector, valued for the way a single dark-steeled blade carries the whole northern school in its ji. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomoshige友重 | 1394-1428 | 15 |
| Tomoshige友重 | 1346-1370 | 5 |
| Tomoshige友重 | 1324-1326 | 5 |
| Fujishima藤島 | 1394-1428 | 4 |
| Yukimitsu行光 | 1340-1346 | 0 |
The Muromachi period (1392 to 1573)
After the Ōnin War broke the Ashikaga order, a century of Sengoku warfare armed nearly every province in Japan. The era rewards a discriminating eye: routine work exists in quantity, and beside it stand custom blades of the first rank.
If, due to our fault, the item differs significantly from its proper condition, the item may be returned. Cooling-off is within one week of the item's arrival.