This is a wakizashi by Sukemitsu, who was the father of Ukyo-no-suke Katsumitsu and Sakyo-no-shin Munemitsu. Active around the Bun'an era (Muromachi period) in Bizen province, Sukemitsu is recognized as a pioneer among later Muromachi Bizen smiths like Katsumitsu, Munemitsu, Tadamitsu, Kiyomitsu, and Sukesada, known for pursuing beauty in ji-ha and excellent handling.
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Bizen Osafune (Sue-Bizen) · Bizen · around 1429-1462
Tōken Taikan top 21%
1 piece on the market now
The earliest dated work that survives under Sukemitsu of Bizen Osafune is a tachi of Eikyo 9 (1437), an ubu, signed blade that displays the manner the published sources call Oei-Bizen, and which they pronounce an imposing, dignified piece[[c:1]]. The latest is a katana of Kansho 3 (1462) that carries within its signature the common name and title Rokurozaemon no Jo. Between those two dates lies a span of twenty-five years and a stylistic crossing, for Sukemitsu worked the moment the published record names the move from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen. The Meikan lists seven smiths who signed this name, and the NBTHK, judging from the year inscriptions, reads the dated works gathered here as the shodai among them, the head of the Osafune family who fathered the brothers Ukyo no Suke Katsumitsu and Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu. His blades stand at the hinge of that descent, the Oei-Bizen manner of the early fifteenth century already turning toward the Sue-Bizen workmanship his sons would lead.
The matter that distinguishes his work is a koshi-no-hiraita gunome, a gunome whose valleys open wide at the waist, mixed with a little choji and built into a varied midare. It is nioi-dominant with ko-nie attaching, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running within, the nioiguchi at its best bright. On the early Eikyo tachi the temper opens at the waist with pointed elements mixed in, slight sunagashi and kinsuji laid over it, and the boshi runs straight with hakikake to a pointed tip. On the mature dated pieces the same waist-open gunome takes in togari-ba and angular teeth, in places reminiscent of shima-ba, the whole still nioi-dominant with ko-nie and bright in the habuchi. The descent of his date is read off the temper itself: of the Kakitsu 3 (1443) wakizashi the published sources note that the amplitude of the midare is small and the choji inconspicuous[[c:2]], and in that quieting of the once-flamboyant Oei-Bizen clove pattern they read the period coming down. The waist-open temper is his constant, and its narrowing waves are his clock.
Beneath the hamon lies an itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing in places, over which a clear bo-utsuri rises, the bar-shaped reflection of the Osafune steel. The ji-nie attaches somewhat thickly and chikei enter well; on the broader tachi the ji-nie grows fine and dustlike, a faint utsuri drifting above it. The boshi answers the temper, turning in midare-komi to a ko-maru on the agitated blades, running straight to a small round turnback or pointing and returning on the quieter ones. The sugata moves with his dates and forms: the early tachi slender with deep koshizori and a ko-kissaki in the Oei-Bizen stance, the mature tachi of standard width with a noticeable taper and a thick kasane, the wakizashi and tanto broad hira-zukuri pieces, elongated and thick. The carvings are a recurring pleasure of his work, a grass-script kurikara and bonji and a sutra text on one blade, twin grooves on another, and on a Bun'an 6 (1449) tanto the incised deity name Ichinomiya Daimyojin. The published sources call that tanto a piece in which Sukemitsu's working range is clearly shown[[c:3]].
The generations are the open question of his name, and the published sources resolve it by date. They observe that several generations of Sukemitsu have been pointed out and that the Meikan lists seven of the name, an earlier small-curvature Sukemitsu of around the Eiwa era among them; the dated blades, on the evidence of their year inscriptions, they assign to the first generation. His fatherhood of Katsumitsu and Munemitsu is fixed by a document blade outside the corpus, a Bunmei 9 tanto of Munemitsu inscribed as the work of Osafune Sukemitsu's second son, Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu, which the judges say clearly demonstrates the transitional workmanship as Bizen moved from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen[[c:4]]. His own dated pieces show that same hand mid-transition, the Eikyo tachi imposing and Oei-Bizen in flavor, the later wakizashi and tanto calmer in their dekiguchi, the construction and the ji-and-ha still carrying an Oei-Bizen character while the choji recedes and the waves narrow. The blades signed with the full Rokurozaemon no Jo title, of which the published sources say extant examples are extremely few[[c:5]], are the ones they treat as the touchstone of the shodai.
Within the school he belongs to the Osafune main line at its mid-Muromachi turn, the generation between the Oei-Bizen of Morimitsu and Yasumitsu and the dense Sue-Bizen workshop his sons would run. His distinction is read not by borrowing a comparison but by his own grounded traits, the waist-open gunome with its subdued choji, the bo-utsuri over a standing itame, the bright nioiguchi and the pointed and angular teeth that mark the Sue-Bizen direction of his hand rather than the round clove of the older Bizen. The published sources value his blades as material as much as as swords: a wakizashi signed as made at Takehara in Settsu records the documented movement of Bizen smiths to other provinces in this period and is called valuable source material for the study of the late-Bizen smiths[[c:6]]. Through Katsumitsu and Munemitsu his line became the principal Osafune workshop of the late Muromachi, the names that would lead the school into the mass production of the Eisho and Tenmon eras.
Fujishiro's rating is not recorded for him, and his designation record is modest in scale: seven works on record, all at the Juyo level, with a further blade preserved in the Imperial collection, and none of the higher tiers among them. That Imperial Koto blade descends in the Imperial Family and is held today in the Hayashibara Museum of Art, the one clear provenance to survive in his data. The blades are a body of mid-Muromachi Bizen tachi, wakizashi and tanto held in private and long-recorded hands, and one of recorded whereabouts appears from time to time rather than rarely, a more findable thing than a Kamakura tachi though not on that account common. The value of his work is partly documentary, for the dated, signed, ubu pieces let the Oei-Bizen to Sue-Bizen crossing be worked out blade by blade. A Bun'an 5 (1448) tachi bears on the ura a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription by the celebrated tester Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, evidence that his swords were proven as cutters generations after they left his forge. For a collector the Rokurozaemon no Jo Sukemitsu is the dated, knowable end of the Osafune name at its transition, a sword on which the period arc and the family question can be read in the hand, and on the best of which the working range of the smith is fully shown.
Where Sukemitsu 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.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Bizen-den · Bizen
236 pieces on the market now
No single workshop in the history of Japanese swordmaking grew larger or lasted longer than Osafune, the riverside village in Bizen Province whose name became, across three centuries, a byword for the province's mainline. Its de facto founder was Mitsutada (光忠), working at Osafune in the middle Kamakura period; tradition makes him the son of Chikatada, and the genealogies derive his line from the Ko-Bizen Masatsune group already settled in the village. His blades, bold and imposing with a jigane so refined the sources say it can at a glance suggest Kyoto work, were treasured from old as the swords of commanders, and from his hand the school spread immediately: his sons Nagamitsu (長光) and Sanenaga (眞長), his grandson Kagemitsu (景光), and outward through pupils and collaterals until, by the late Kamakura years, Osafune was less a family than an industry. The line is conventionally read as a three-generation spine, Mitsutada founding it, Nagamitsu setting its classical standard, Kagemitsu bringing both temper and forging to their finished form before handing the manner to his pupil Chikakage (近景), whose echo of the master is so close that signed Kagemitsu blades are sometimes read as Chikakage daimei. What binds the membership is a shared steel before any shared temper. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, tightening on the finest blades into a dense ko-itame; fine ji-nie adheres, chikei enter, and over all of it stands the midare-utsuri that anchors even the most Kyoto-like jigane back to Bizen. On that floor the founding generation tempers a flamboyant choji-midare mixed with gunome: Mitsutada's tadpole-headed kawazuko-choji, Nagamitsu's round-topped plump choji, the deep nioi with ko-nie, the bright nioiguchi. From here the school divides by hand and by era. Sanenaga draws the calm pole, a gentle chu-suguha of tightened nioiguchi; Kagemitsu completes the slanting, square-shouldered kataochi-gunome over a suguha base, the family's last great Kamakura invention, carried on by his close kinsman Kagemasa (景政). The Nanbokucho generation then turns toward Soshu-den: Kanemitsu (兼光), fourth master of the mainline, pioneers a broad notare and is read, with Chogi (長義), as the head of Soden-Bizen, the Bizen wing that worked Soshu nie into a jigane that still throws a Bizen utsuri.
Chogi is called the most un-Bizen of Bizen smiths, his ear-shaped mimigata his tell; around him Nagashige (長重), Yoshikage (義景), Tomomitsu (倫光) and Kanenaga (兼長) press the Soshu side by degrees, while Motoshige (元重), of a separate Hatakeda descent, carries an Aoe-tinged squared, slanting ha. Two generations later the Oei revival returns to Kamakura: Yasumitsu (康光) and Morimitsu (盛光), the twin pillars of Oei-Bizen, revive the tachi shape and the choji temper over a wide-waisted koshibiraki-gunome, both finishing in the pointed rosoku-no-shin (candle-wick) boshi that gives the late date away. For the collector the school is a school of discriminations, and to kantei it is to read those fine partitions. The constant midare-utsuri over a bright ko-itame fixes the province; the boshi then sorts the maker, Mitsutada's pointed midare-komi against Nagamitsu's composed ko-maru Sansaku turn, Kagemitsu's contained return, the candle-wick tongue of Oei. Within a single phase the calls turn on a half-step: Nagamitsu's plump crests against Sanenaga's cooler nioiguchi, Kagemasa's freer play against Kagemitsu's tighter order, Nagashige read out of Chogi by a nie that surpasses his brother's. The standing of the best is matched by their patrimony. Mitsutada, Nagamitsu and Kagemitsu each hold National Treasures and stand at the head of Fujishiro's Sai-jo saku; their named blades, the Daihannya Nagamitsu, the Kogaryu Kagemitsu, the O-Kanemitsu, passed through Nobunaga, Ieyasu, Uesugi Kenshin and the great daimyo houses. Because Nagamitsu and the Nanbokucho masters signed and survived in number, Osafune offers what most peerage names cannot, a deep field of Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo work that a patient collector may still realistically hold. Through every register the same hand declares itself: the bright steel, the vivid reflection, and a temper that runs, across three centuries, as the spine of Bizen. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsutada光忠 | 1238-1239 | 60 |
| Nagamitsu長光 | 1274-1304 | 244 |
| Kagemitsu景光 | 1303-1336 | 143 |
| Kanemitsu兼光 | 1323-1370 | 231 |
| Sanenaga眞長 | 1299-1309 | 64 |
Bizen in the Muromachi period
Muromachi Osafune was an export industry: the Ming tally trade carried some 128,000 Japanese blades abroad, and Sengoku armies bought at home. Custom orders, often inscribed with the patron’s own name, were forged beside the bundle swords of the ranks.
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 wakizashi by Sukemitsu, who was the father of Ukyo-no-suke Katsumitsu and Sakyo-no-shin Munemitsu. Active around the Bun'an era (Muromachi period) in Bizen province, Sukemitsu is recognized as a pioneer among later Muromachi Bizen smiths like Katsumitsu, Munemitsu, Tadamitsu, Kiyomitsu, and Sukesada, known for pursuing beauty in ji-ha and excellent handling.
NihontoWatchBizen Osafune (Sue-Bizen) · Bizen · around 1429-1462
Tōken Taikan top 21%
1 piece on the market now
The earliest dated work that survives under Sukemitsu of Bizen Osafune is a tachi of Eikyo 9 (1437), an ubu, signed blade that displays the manner the published sources call Oei-Bizen, and which they pronounce an imposing, dignified piece[[c:1]]. The latest is a katana of Kansho 3 (1462) that carries within its signature the common name and title Rokurozaemon no Jo. Between those two dates lies a span of twenty-five years and a stylistic crossing, for Sukemitsu worked the moment the published record names the move from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen. The Meikan lists seven smiths who signed this name, and the NBTHK, judging from the year inscriptions, reads the dated works gathered here as the shodai among them, the head of the Osafune family who fathered the brothers Ukyo no Suke Katsumitsu and Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu. His blades stand at the hinge of that descent, the Oei-Bizen manner of the early fifteenth century already turning toward the Sue-Bizen workmanship his sons would lead.
The matter that distinguishes his work is a koshi-no-hiraita gunome, a gunome whose valleys open wide at the waist, mixed with a little choji and built into a varied midare. It is nioi-dominant with ko-nie attaching, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running within, the nioiguchi at its best bright. On the early Eikyo tachi the temper opens at the waist with pointed elements mixed in, slight sunagashi and kinsuji laid over it, and the boshi runs straight with hakikake to a pointed tip. On the mature dated pieces the same waist-open gunome takes in togari-ba and angular teeth, in places reminiscent of shima-ba, the whole still nioi-dominant with ko-nie and bright in the habuchi. The descent of his date is read off the temper itself: of the Kakitsu 3 (1443) wakizashi the published sources note that the amplitude of the midare is small and the choji inconspicuous[[c:2]], and in that quieting of the once-flamboyant Oei-Bizen clove pattern they read the period coming down. The waist-open temper is his constant, and its narrowing waves are his clock.
Beneath the hamon lies an itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing in places, over which a clear bo-utsuri rises, the bar-shaped reflection of the Osafune steel. The ji-nie attaches somewhat thickly and chikei enter well; on the broader tachi the ji-nie grows fine and dustlike, a faint utsuri drifting above it. The boshi answers the temper, turning in midare-komi to a ko-maru on the agitated blades, running straight to a small round turnback or pointing and returning on the quieter ones. The sugata moves with his dates and forms: the early tachi slender with deep koshizori and a ko-kissaki in the Oei-Bizen stance, the mature tachi of standard width with a noticeable taper and a thick kasane, the wakizashi and tanto broad hira-zukuri pieces, elongated and thick. The carvings are a recurring pleasure of his work, a grass-script kurikara and bonji and a sutra text on one blade, twin grooves on another, and on a Bun'an 6 (1449) tanto the incised deity name Ichinomiya Daimyojin. The published sources call that tanto a piece in which Sukemitsu's working range is clearly shown[[c:3]].
The generations are the open question of his name, and the published sources resolve it by date. They observe that several generations of Sukemitsu have been pointed out and that the Meikan lists seven of the name, an earlier small-curvature Sukemitsu of around the Eiwa era among them; the dated blades, on the evidence of their year inscriptions, they assign to the first generation. His fatherhood of Katsumitsu and Munemitsu is fixed by a document blade outside the corpus, a Bunmei 9 tanto of Munemitsu inscribed as the work of Osafune Sukemitsu's second son, Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu, which the judges say clearly demonstrates the transitional workmanship as Bizen moved from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen[[c:4]]. His own dated pieces show that same hand mid-transition, the Eikyo tachi imposing and Oei-Bizen in flavor, the later wakizashi and tanto calmer in their dekiguchi, the construction and the ji-and-ha still carrying an Oei-Bizen character while the choji recedes and the waves narrow. The blades signed with the full Rokurozaemon no Jo title, of which the published sources say extant examples are extremely few[[c:5]], are the ones they treat as the touchstone of the shodai.
Within the school he belongs to the Osafune main line at its mid-Muromachi turn, the generation between the Oei-Bizen of Morimitsu and Yasumitsu and the dense Sue-Bizen workshop his sons would run. His distinction is read not by borrowing a comparison but by his own grounded traits, the waist-open gunome with its subdued choji, the bo-utsuri over a standing itame, the bright nioiguchi and the pointed and angular teeth that mark the Sue-Bizen direction of his hand rather than the round clove of the older Bizen. The published sources value his blades as material as much as as swords: a wakizashi signed as made at Takehara in Settsu records the documented movement of Bizen smiths to other provinces in this period and is called valuable source material for the study of the late-Bizen smiths[[c:6]]. Through Katsumitsu and Munemitsu his line became the principal Osafune workshop of the late Muromachi, the names that would lead the school into the mass production of the Eisho and Tenmon eras.
Fujishiro's rating is not recorded for him, and his designation record is modest in scale: seven works on record, all at the Juyo level, with a further blade preserved in the Imperial collection, and none of the higher tiers among them. That Imperial Koto blade descends in the Imperial Family and is held today in the Hayashibara Museum of Art, the one clear provenance to survive in his data. The blades are a body of mid-Muromachi Bizen tachi, wakizashi and tanto held in private and long-recorded hands, and one of recorded whereabouts appears from time to time rather than rarely, a more findable thing than a Kamakura tachi though not on that account common. The value of his work is partly documentary, for the dated, signed, ubu pieces let the Oei-Bizen to Sue-Bizen crossing be worked out blade by blade. A Bun'an 5 (1448) tachi bears on the ura a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription by the celebrated tester Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, evidence that his swords were proven as cutters generations after they left his forge. For a collector the Rokurozaemon no Jo Sukemitsu is the dated, knowable end of the Osafune name at its transition, a sword on which the period arc and the family question can be read in the hand, and on the best of which the working range of the smith is fully shown.
Where Sukemitsu 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.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Bizen-den · Bizen
236 pieces on the market now
No single workshop in the history of Japanese swordmaking grew larger or lasted longer than Osafune, the riverside village in Bizen Province whose name became, across three centuries, a byword for the province's mainline. Its de facto founder was Mitsutada (光忠), working at Osafune in the middle Kamakura period; tradition makes him the son of Chikatada, and the genealogies derive his line from the Ko-Bizen Masatsune group already settled in the village. His blades, bold and imposing with a jigane so refined the sources say it can at a glance suggest Kyoto work, were treasured from old as the swords of commanders, and from his hand the school spread immediately: his sons Nagamitsu (長光) and Sanenaga (眞長), his grandson Kagemitsu (景光), and outward through pupils and collaterals until, by the late Kamakura years, Osafune was less a family than an industry. The line is conventionally read as a three-generation spine, Mitsutada founding it, Nagamitsu setting its classical standard, Kagemitsu bringing both temper and forging to their finished form before handing the manner to his pupil Chikakage (近景), whose echo of the master is so close that signed Kagemitsu blades are sometimes read as Chikakage daimei. What binds the membership is a shared steel before any shared temper. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, tightening on the finest blades into a dense ko-itame; fine ji-nie adheres, chikei enter, and over all of it stands the midare-utsuri that anchors even the most Kyoto-like jigane back to Bizen. On that floor the founding generation tempers a flamboyant choji-midare mixed with gunome: Mitsutada's tadpole-headed kawazuko-choji, Nagamitsu's round-topped plump choji, the deep nioi with ko-nie, the bright nioiguchi. From here the school divides by hand and by era. Sanenaga draws the calm pole, a gentle chu-suguha of tightened nioiguchi; Kagemitsu completes the slanting, square-shouldered kataochi-gunome over a suguha base, the family's last great Kamakura invention, carried on by his close kinsman Kagemasa (景政). The Nanbokucho generation then turns toward Soshu-den: Kanemitsu (兼光), fourth master of the mainline, pioneers a broad notare and is read, with Chogi (長義), as the head of Soden-Bizen, the Bizen wing that worked Soshu nie into a jigane that still throws a Bizen utsuri.
Chogi is called the most un-Bizen of Bizen smiths, his ear-shaped mimigata his tell; around him Nagashige (長重), Yoshikage (義景), Tomomitsu (倫光) and Kanenaga (兼長) press the Soshu side by degrees, while Motoshige (元重), of a separate Hatakeda descent, carries an Aoe-tinged squared, slanting ha. Two generations later the Oei revival returns to Kamakura: Yasumitsu (康光) and Morimitsu (盛光), the twin pillars of Oei-Bizen, revive the tachi shape and the choji temper over a wide-waisted koshibiraki-gunome, both finishing in the pointed rosoku-no-shin (candle-wick) boshi that gives the late date away. For the collector the school is a school of discriminations, and to kantei it is to read those fine partitions. The constant midare-utsuri over a bright ko-itame fixes the province; the boshi then sorts the maker, Mitsutada's pointed midare-komi against Nagamitsu's composed ko-maru Sansaku turn, Kagemitsu's contained return, the candle-wick tongue of Oei. Within a single phase the calls turn on a half-step: Nagamitsu's plump crests against Sanenaga's cooler nioiguchi, Kagemasa's freer play against Kagemitsu's tighter order, Nagashige read out of Chogi by a nie that surpasses his brother's. The standing of the best is matched by their patrimony. Mitsutada, Nagamitsu and Kagemitsu each hold National Treasures and stand at the head of Fujishiro's Sai-jo saku; their named blades, the Daihannya Nagamitsu, the Kogaryu Kagemitsu, the O-Kanemitsu, passed through Nobunaga, Ieyasu, Uesugi Kenshin and the great daimyo houses. Because Nagamitsu and the Nanbokucho masters signed and survived in number, Osafune offers what most peerage names cannot, a deep field of Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo work that a patient collector may still realistically hold. Through every register the same hand declares itself: the bright steel, the vivid reflection, and a temper that runs, across three centuries, as the spine of Bizen. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsutada光忠 | 1238-1239 | 60 |
| Nagamitsu長光 | 1274-1304 | 244 |
| Kagemitsu景光 | 1303-1336 | 143 |
| Kanemitsu兼光 | 1323-1370 | 231 |
| Sanenaga眞長 | 1299-1309 | 64 |
Bizen in the Muromachi period
Muromachi Osafune was an export industry: the Ming tally trade carried some 128,000 Japanese blades abroad, and Sengoku armies bought at home. Custom orders, often inscribed with the patron’s own name, were forged beside the bundle swords of the ranks.
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.
![Katana - Hozon - by Osafune Sukemitsu - Bishu Osafune Sukemitsu, Bunmei [Year] August](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fitbhfhyptogxcjbjfzwx.supabase.co%2Fstorage%2Fv1%2Fobject%2Fpublic%2Flisting-images%2Fsamurai-shokai%2FL110342%2F02.jpg&w=2560&q=90)
