Power sat in Kamakura, but taste was still made in Kyōto. The Awataguchi school’s pear-skin steel became a byword for perfection, and the Rai line supplied dignified tachi to the court, senior warriors, and the great temples alike.
This is a katana attributed to Awataguchi Kuniyoshi, a Yamashiro smith active around the mid-Kamakura period (Koan era). Kuniyoshi was known as Saheiei-no-jo and crafted masterpieces, including the famous Nakigitsune Hirazukuri sword. The blade is o-suriage mumei (greatly shortened and unsigned).
NihontoWatchsuriage-mumei · Awadaguchi · Kamakura
Awataguchi (Yamashiro) · Yamashiro · around 1275-1278
Fujishiro Sai-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 2%
1 piece on the market now
Nearly every published designation text on Awataguchi Kuniyoshi cites the meibutsu Narukitsune, the Crying Fox, a large hira-zukuri wakizashi bearing his long signature Sahyoe-no-jo Fujiwara Kuniyoshi[[c:1]], and newly judged blades are still read against its manner. Kuniyoshi is recorded as the son of Norikuni, by some accounts his pupil, and a grandson of Kunitomo, eldest of the six Awataguchi brothers of Yamashiro; his younger brother was Kunimitsu. Transmitted as either his son or his student is Toshiro Yoshimitsu, the celebrated master of the tanto. A tanto dated Koan 3 (1280) survives, and the sword drawings of the old books preserve dates of Kenji 4 (1278), Koan 6 (1283) and Koan 10 (1287); by these the published sources confirm the traditional sequence of the Awataguchi generations and fix him in the middle Kamakura period.
The published record describes his manner in a settled formula: a finely kneaded ko-itame rich in ji-nie, beautiful in effect, and a suguha in well-attached ko-nie mixing ko-midare and ko-gunome, the ji and ha together judged "a degree stronger than the Rai works"[[c:2]]. Above everything stands the nijuba, the doubled line that runs conspicuously along the ha and is cited again and again as his greatest point. The Kaifunki already names it his habit: "as a habitual mannerism there is often nijuba, and silver often floats in the ji as in a cast object"[[c:3]]. At times the line trebles into sanjuba, often formed of yubashiri strung along the edge, and on more than one blade it carries into the boshi. Ashi and yo enter frequently, kinsuji and fine sunagashi work through the ha, and the nioiguchi is repeatedly described as bright and clear. The boshi is typically straight with a refined ko-maru turnback.
The jigane carries the school's name. He forges a ko-itame mixed with ko-mokume, kneaded extremely tight, over which ji-nie sits dust-fine and thick with delicate chikei, until the steel takes on the so-called nashiji-hada, the pear-skin steel of the Awataguchi idiom. Nie-utsuri stands over it, at times with a faint jifu-like tone mixed in. The Kokon Meizukushi praises the taste of his steel as a gleam deep in the color of the ji, "like the silver of a tenmoku bowl dusted with ash"[[c:4]].
His certain signed tachi number only two. One has long been an Important Cultural Property; the second surfaced only at its Juyo designation in 1997, a slender, elegant blade of high koshi-zori with funbari. A third, shortened, with a two-character mei low on the tang, was admitted at its Tokubetsu Juyo designation as extremely close to those two. The tanto are comparatively many and carry most of his signatures, the ken number several, and the Narukitsune stands apart as the single great wakizashi. The tanto shapes, stubby and wide like a kitchen knife, ordinary, slender and elongated, or wide and elongated, in uchizori or without curve, are called "remarkably diverse"[[c:5]] and opposed to the uniformity of the Rai school; like Yoshimitsu he often works the temper down over the machi, and gomabashi or bonji are carved on many. The unsigned blades are the more numerous, o-suriage katana of wide mihaba and shallow wa-zori with the chu-kissaki pulled in ikubi fashion, where the suguha grows busier with ko-choji and gunome, ashi and yo thick. On these the nijuba is the point on which the judges anchor the attribution, and one ayame-zukuri katana is judged to give the very impression of a Narukitsune enlarged[[c:6]]. The ken are elegant, the point not flaring, often in hoso-suguha with the boshi yakizume, and "the ken of this maker often show strong nie"[[c:7]]. The signature is normally the two characters Kuniyoshi, the chisel running from fine to ordinary to thick, a variety ascribed to difference of period.
On his relation to Yoshimitsu the published sources reason from the dates. Kuniyoshi has the Koan 3 tanto and the dated drawings of the old books; Yoshimitsu has no dated work at all, extant or recorded. Both made few tachi and excelled in tanto of unusually varied shape, and from this the judges find it reasonable to see the two not as father and son but as master and pupil of comparatively small age difference[[c:8]]. One text states plainly that together with Yoshimitsu of his school he produced many tanto, both displaying superior technique. The nijuba appears on nearly half of his records, only occasionally in Yoshimitsu's, and never in those of his father Norikuni; the sanjuba is met in his work alone among them; and it is on his records that the texts name the nashiji-hada outright.
Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku, and fifty-one designated works stand on record. There are no National Treasures among them, but seven blades are Important Cultural Properties, his long-known signed tachi at their head, and five are prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, one a tanto formerly of the Aoyama viscount family of Sasayama. Eighteen blades hold the Tokubetsu Juyo rank and twenty-one the Juyo, thirty-nine in the two tiers together. The provenance roll is in keeping. A signed tanto with an origami of Hon'ami Koon descends in the Matsudaira house of Iyo Saijo, and a mumei tanto in the Reizei house of court poets; the Tokubetsu Juyo two-character tachi was owned by Okubo Ichio and passed to the Iwasaki house; a signed ken belongs to the Owari Tokugawa Reimeikai; and one signed tanto, by its scabbard inscription, was presented by Todo Takamutsu at a birth celebration in the Tokugawa house. Of recorded whereabouts today, examples rest in the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Kyoto National Museum and the Hikone Castle Museum, with others in private hands. For the collector, Kuniyoshi is by Awataguchi measure not wholly beyond reach. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony preserved outside the market, but the thirty-nine blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers are where a private example is met, most of them o-suriage mumei katana whose attribution rests on the doubled line along the ha. Such a blade comes to market only rarely, and is an event when it does; a signed tanto is rarer still, and a signed tachi, of which two certain examples exist, is among the rarest encounters the school affords.
Where Kuniyoshi 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
4 pieces on the market now
The steel is the first thing one learns to read in Awataguchi work: a ko-itame kneaded so tight that the surface takes on the pear-skin sheen the texts name nashiji-hada, the ji-nie dusted over it fine and even, slender chikei threading through, the whole carrying a moist luster (潤い) and a clarity that recurs in notice after notice. This is the steel of the early Yamashiro tradition at its summit. The forge stood at the foot of the Awataguchi slope in Kyoto, on the highway running toward Omi, and a community of smiths already worked there by the early Kamakura period; the tale collection Uji Shui Monogatari attests their presence, so this is a house with a documented place in the literature of its own century. The school is conventionally founded on the six brothers, Kunitomo the eldest, then Hisakuni, Kuniyasu, Kunikiyo, Arikuni and Kunitsuna, sons of the founder Kunika (also given as Kuniie). Kunitomo, Hisakuni and Kuniyasu were summoned as goban-kaji to forge on rotation at the cloistered court of the Retired Emperor Go-Toba, and Hisakuni is even transmitted as a teacher to the sovereign; that imperial patronage is the reason a slender tachi with so quiet a temper carries the authority it does. What binds the house across four generations is restraint married to refinement. Over the nashiji-hada the brothers set a calm suguha leaning into a shallow notare, mixed with ko-midare, ko-gunome and ko-choji, the nioiguchi tight and bright, ko-ashi and yo entering, kinsuji and sunagashi running within the ha; the boshi turns in a refined ko-maru that very often sweeps with hakikake. This is the opposite pole from the clove-flower flamboyance of contemporary Bizen, an edge whose interest lies in the activity within rather than the height of the pattern. Within that shared vocabulary the members are told apart by habit. Kunitomo and Kuniyasu hold to the compressed ko-midare of the founding generation, their nioiguchi clouding into urumi; Kuniyasu's linked ko-gunome picks him out alone within the school.
Kunitsuna is the divergence, a robust o-itame standing prominently over thick ji-nie, with conspicuously strong ha-nie that leans toward the Sagami manner about to be born. The later course runs through Norikuni, the bridge generation, into the tanto age of Kuniyoshi and Yoshimitsu, where the temper settles into bright suguha in fine ko-nie. Kuniyoshi's tell is the nijuba, the doubled (at times trebled) line along the ha; Yoshimitsu's is the linear kuisagari dropping of nie into the ji beneath the boshi, his suguha a narrow hoso-suguha under a bright nioiguchi. For the collector the school divides into work that can be studied and work that can be owned. Its summit, Toshiro Yoshimitsu, crowns the close of the line; paired with Shintogo Kunimitsu of Sagami as a master of the tanto and a virtuoso of suguha, and ranked in the Edo period with Masamune and Go among the Three Great Works under Heaven, he is a smith met in the great collections rather than possessed, his signed tanto the standard against which every attribution is measured. His teacher Kuniyoshi, whose nashiji-hada the texts name outright, is by Awataguchi measure not wholly beyond reach, his o-suriage mumei katana anchored on the doubled line. The house also seeded the eastern tradition: Kunitsuna's transmitted descent runs on to Shintogo Kunimitsu, the de facto founder of Soshu, whose own refined nashiji steel passes for Awataguchi until the chikei and kinsuji betray it, and from whose quiet nie-laden suguha Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige drew the nie-midare of the mature tradition. The refined nie-suguha the brothers fixed was likewise the wellspring the Rai masters drew from, the two hands sitting so close in the eye that gold-inlaid Rai attributions appear on blades grouped with Hisakuni. To kantei an Awataguchi blade is to read the pear-skin steel first, then the quiet nie-laden suguha, then the swept boshi, and to know which brother or pupil the habits name; to acquire one, of any generation, is among the scarcest encounters early Yamashiro affords. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Yoshimitsu吉光 | 1259-1260 | 44 |
| Kuniyoshi國吉 | 1275-1278 | 51 |
| Kunitsuna國綱 | 1240-1264 | 18 |
| Hisakuni久國 | 1190-1199 | 21 |
| Norikuni則國 | 1222-1224 | 15 |
Yamashiro in the Kamakura period
Power sat in Kamakura, but taste was still made in Kyōto. The Awataguchi school’s pear-skin steel became a byword for perfection, and the Rai line supplied dignified tachi to the court, senior warriors, and the great temples alike.
We could not find an authenticity certificate on the seller’s listing. Japanese swords and fittings are normally papered by the NBTHK (or the NTHK). Without one, the attribution is the seller’s own assessment and has not been independently verified — treat it with caution and ask the dealer about certification before buying.
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.
This is a katana attributed to Awataguchi Kuniyoshi, a Yamashiro smith active around the mid-Kamakura period (Koan era). Kuniyoshi was known as Saheiei-no-jo and crafted masterpieces, including the famous Nakigitsune Hirazukuri sword. The blade is o-suriage mumei (greatly shortened and unsigned).
NihontoWatchsuriage-mumei · Awadaguchi · Kamakura
Awataguchi (Yamashiro) · Yamashiro · around 1275-1278
Fujishiro Sai-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 2%
1 piece on the market now
Nearly every published designation text on Awataguchi Kuniyoshi cites the meibutsu Narukitsune, the Crying Fox, a large hira-zukuri wakizashi bearing his long signature Sahyoe-no-jo Fujiwara Kuniyoshi[[c:1]], and newly judged blades are still read against its manner. Kuniyoshi is recorded as the son of Norikuni, by some accounts his pupil, and a grandson of Kunitomo, eldest of the six Awataguchi brothers of Yamashiro; his younger brother was Kunimitsu. Transmitted as either his son or his student is Toshiro Yoshimitsu, the celebrated master of the tanto. A tanto dated Koan 3 (1280) survives, and the sword drawings of the old books preserve dates of Kenji 4 (1278), Koan 6 (1283) and Koan 10 (1287); by these the published sources confirm the traditional sequence of the Awataguchi generations and fix him in the middle Kamakura period.
The published record describes his manner in a settled formula: a finely kneaded ko-itame rich in ji-nie, beautiful in effect, and a suguha in well-attached ko-nie mixing ko-midare and ko-gunome, the ji and ha together judged "a degree stronger than the Rai works"[[c:2]]. Above everything stands the nijuba, the doubled line that runs conspicuously along the ha and is cited again and again as his greatest point. The Kaifunki already names it his habit: "as a habitual mannerism there is often nijuba, and silver often floats in the ji as in a cast object"[[c:3]]. At times the line trebles into sanjuba, often formed of yubashiri strung along the edge, and on more than one blade it carries into the boshi. Ashi and yo enter frequently, kinsuji and fine sunagashi work through the ha, and the nioiguchi is repeatedly described as bright and clear. The boshi is typically straight with a refined ko-maru turnback.
The jigane carries the school's name. He forges a ko-itame mixed with ko-mokume, kneaded extremely tight, over which ji-nie sits dust-fine and thick with delicate chikei, until the steel takes on the so-called nashiji-hada, the pear-skin steel of the Awataguchi idiom. Nie-utsuri stands over it, at times with a faint jifu-like tone mixed in. The Kokon Meizukushi praises the taste of his steel as a gleam deep in the color of the ji, "like the silver of a tenmoku bowl dusted with ash"[[c:4]].
His certain signed tachi number only two. One has long been an Important Cultural Property; the second surfaced only at its Juyo designation in 1997, a slender, elegant blade of high koshi-zori with funbari. A third, shortened, with a two-character mei low on the tang, was admitted at its Tokubetsu Juyo designation as extremely close to those two. The tanto are comparatively many and carry most of his signatures, the ken number several, and the Narukitsune stands apart as the single great wakizashi. The tanto shapes, stubby and wide like a kitchen knife, ordinary, slender and elongated, or wide and elongated, in uchizori or without curve, are called "remarkably diverse"[[c:5]] and opposed to the uniformity of the Rai school; like Yoshimitsu he often works the temper down over the machi, and gomabashi or bonji are carved on many. The unsigned blades are the more numerous, o-suriage katana of wide mihaba and shallow wa-zori with the chu-kissaki pulled in ikubi fashion, where the suguha grows busier with ko-choji and gunome, ashi and yo thick. On these the nijuba is the point on which the judges anchor the attribution, and one ayame-zukuri katana is judged to give the very impression of a Narukitsune enlarged[[c:6]]. The ken are elegant, the point not flaring, often in hoso-suguha with the boshi yakizume, and "the ken of this maker often show strong nie"[[c:7]]. The signature is normally the two characters Kuniyoshi, the chisel running from fine to ordinary to thick, a variety ascribed to difference of period.
On his relation to Yoshimitsu the published sources reason from the dates. Kuniyoshi has the Koan 3 tanto and the dated drawings of the old books; Yoshimitsu has no dated work at all, extant or recorded. Both made few tachi and excelled in tanto of unusually varied shape, and from this the judges find it reasonable to see the two not as father and son but as master and pupil of comparatively small age difference[[c:8]]. One text states plainly that together with Yoshimitsu of his school he produced many tanto, both displaying superior technique. The nijuba appears on nearly half of his records, only occasionally in Yoshimitsu's, and never in those of his father Norikuni; the sanjuba is met in his work alone among them; and it is on his records that the texts name the nashiji-hada outright.
Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku, and fifty-one designated works stand on record. There are no National Treasures among them, but seven blades are Important Cultural Properties, his long-known signed tachi at their head, and five are prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin, one a tanto formerly of the Aoyama viscount family of Sasayama. Eighteen blades hold the Tokubetsu Juyo rank and twenty-one the Juyo, thirty-nine in the two tiers together. The provenance roll is in keeping. A signed tanto with an origami of Hon'ami Koon descends in the Matsudaira house of Iyo Saijo, and a mumei tanto in the Reizei house of court poets; the Tokubetsu Juyo two-character tachi was owned by Okubo Ichio and passed to the Iwasaki house; a signed ken belongs to the Owari Tokugawa Reimeikai; and one signed tanto, by its scabbard inscription, was presented by Todo Takamutsu at a birth celebration in the Tokugawa house. Of recorded whereabouts today, examples rest in the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Kyoto National Museum and the Hikone Castle Museum, with others in private hands. For the collector, Kuniyoshi is by Awataguchi measure not wholly beyond reach. The Important Cultural Properties are patrimony preserved outside the market, but the thirty-nine blades of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers are where a private example is met, most of them o-suriage mumei katana whose attribution rests on the doubled line along the ha. Such a blade comes to market only rarely, and is an event when it does; a signed tanto is rarer still, and a signed tachi, of which two certain examples exist, is among the rarest encounters the school affords.
Where Kuniyoshi 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
4 pieces on the market now
The steel is the first thing one learns to read in Awataguchi work: a ko-itame kneaded so tight that the surface takes on the pear-skin sheen the texts name nashiji-hada, the ji-nie dusted over it fine and even, slender chikei threading through, the whole carrying a moist luster (潤い) and a clarity that recurs in notice after notice. This is the steel of the early Yamashiro tradition at its summit. The forge stood at the foot of the Awataguchi slope in Kyoto, on the highway running toward Omi, and a community of smiths already worked there by the early Kamakura period; the tale collection Uji Shui Monogatari attests their presence, so this is a house with a documented place in the literature of its own century. The school is conventionally founded on the six brothers, Kunitomo the eldest, then Hisakuni, Kuniyasu, Kunikiyo, Arikuni and Kunitsuna, sons of the founder Kunika (also given as Kuniie). Kunitomo, Hisakuni and Kuniyasu were summoned as goban-kaji to forge on rotation at the cloistered court of the Retired Emperor Go-Toba, and Hisakuni is even transmitted as a teacher to the sovereign; that imperial patronage is the reason a slender tachi with so quiet a temper carries the authority it does. What binds the house across four generations is restraint married to refinement. Over the nashiji-hada the brothers set a calm suguha leaning into a shallow notare, mixed with ko-midare, ko-gunome and ko-choji, the nioiguchi tight and bright, ko-ashi and yo entering, kinsuji and sunagashi running within the ha; the boshi turns in a refined ko-maru that very often sweeps with hakikake. This is the opposite pole from the clove-flower flamboyance of contemporary Bizen, an edge whose interest lies in the activity within rather than the height of the pattern. Within that shared vocabulary the members are told apart by habit. Kunitomo and Kuniyasu hold to the compressed ko-midare of the founding generation, their nioiguchi clouding into urumi; Kuniyasu's linked ko-gunome picks him out alone within the school.
Kunitsuna is the divergence, a robust o-itame standing prominently over thick ji-nie, with conspicuously strong ha-nie that leans toward the Sagami manner about to be born. The later course runs through Norikuni, the bridge generation, into the tanto age of Kuniyoshi and Yoshimitsu, where the temper settles into bright suguha in fine ko-nie. Kuniyoshi's tell is the nijuba, the doubled (at times trebled) line along the ha; Yoshimitsu's is the linear kuisagari dropping of nie into the ji beneath the boshi, his suguha a narrow hoso-suguha under a bright nioiguchi. For the collector the school divides into work that can be studied and work that can be owned. Its summit, Toshiro Yoshimitsu, crowns the close of the line; paired with Shintogo Kunimitsu of Sagami as a master of the tanto and a virtuoso of suguha, and ranked in the Edo period with Masamune and Go among the Three Great Works under Heaven, he is a smith met in the great collections rather than possessed, his signed tanto the standard against which every attribution is measured. His teacher Kuniyoshi, whose nashiji-hada the texts name outright, is by Awataguchi measure not wholly beyond reach, his o-suriage mumei katana anchored on the doubled line. The house also seeded the eastern tradition: Kunitsuna's transmitted descent runs on to Shintogo Kunimitsu, the de facto founder of Soshu, whose own refined nashiji steel passes for Awataguchi until the chikei and kinsuji betray it, and from whose quiet nie-laden suguha Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige drew the nie-midare of the mature tradition. The refined nie-suguha the brothers fixed was likewise the wellspring the Rai masters drew from, the two hands sitting so close in the eye that gold-inlaid Rai attributions appear on blades grouped with Hisakuni. To kantei an Awataguchi blade is to read the pear-skin steel first, then the quiet nie-laden suguha, then the swept boshi, and to know which brother or pupil the habits name; to acquire one, of any generation, is among the scarcest encounters early Yamashiro affords. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Yoshimitsu吉光 | 1259-1260 | 44 |
| Kuniyoshi國吉 | 1275-1278 | 51 |
| Kunitsuna國綱 | 1240-1264 | 18 |
| Hisakuni久國 | 1190-1199 | 21 |
| Norikuni則國 | 1222-1224 | 15 |
Yamashiro in the Kamakura period
Power sat in Kamakura, but taste was still made in Kyōto. The Awataguchi school’s pear-skin steel became a byword for perfection, and the Rai line supplied dignified tachi to the court, senior warriors, and the great temples alike.
We could not find an authenticity certificate on the seller’s listing. Japanese swords and fittings are normally papered by the NBTHK (or the NTHK). Without one, the attribution is the seller’s own assessment and has not been independently verified — treat it with caution and ask the dealer about certification before buying.
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.
