Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch日本刀販売 | 銀座長州屋 |銘 (葵紋)康継入道南蛮鉄(二代) 於越州作之, 491 Ginza Choshuya 東京都中央区銀座3-10-4 月–土 9:30–17:30 康継二代は初代の嫡子で名を市之亟という。初代は慶長年間に主君結城秀康の父徳川家康の御前で妙技を披露し、感服した家康から康の一字を授かり、さらに葵紋を茎に刻することを許され、江戸と越前と往還して鍛刀している。康継二代は江戸で育ち、一子相伝の南蛮鉄の熟しと鍛えの秘術を会得。寛永十七年八月には三代将軍家光の出雲日御碕神社への奉納太刀を鍛造するなど、将軍家お抱え刀工の重責を担った。
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Echizen Shimosaka (Yasutsugu line, Echizen / Edo) · Musashi · around 1624-1644
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 8%
3 pieces on the market now
Around Keichō, the smith of the Echizen Shimosaka line was summoned to forge for Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hidetada, and as a result Ieyasu bestowed on him the character 康, whereupon he changed his name to Yasutsugu and was granted the right to cut the triple-hollyhock aoi crest on his tang. The published sources record that the line originated in Ōmi, moved to Echizen under the patronage of Yūki Hideyasu, and thereafter served the shogunal house in alternating years between Echizen and Edo, signing the long inscriptions that name the imported nanban-tetsu and Edo of Musashi. The first generation, who re-tempered fire-damaged Sōshū masterworks such as the Shishi Sadamune after the fall of Ōsaka, founded the house; this entry is read chiefly through the second generation, his legitimate heir Shimosaka Ichinojō, who took the tonsure as Kōetsu and died in Shōhō 3 (1646), and whose finest blades the published commentary holds difficult to tell from his father's.
The hand is read in the jigane first. It is an itame mixed with mokume that stands somewhat, in places flowing into nagare, with thick ji-nie, chikei entering, and at times jifu, the steel taking on the dark, blackish cast the published sources name as so-called Echizen steel. This dark, standing jigane is the constant across his work, and the commentary returns to it as the school's signature, noting again and again that the forging "displays the characteristics of Echizen steel"[[c:1]]. Over it the temper is built on notare into which gunome and ko-gunome are mixed, ko-ashi and yō entering, the nie strong with patches of coarse ara-nie gathering unevenly and scattering into the broken (basake) appearance that is his most personal effect; kinsuji and sunagashi run long, forming a striped course, the nioiguchi tending subdued (shizumi), with muneyaki along the back.
The bōshi is the surest single tell of the hand. It is most often a ko-maru, strongly swept in hakikake and turning back long, the published sources reading on one Jūyō katana that the temper "enters in midare-komi, sweeps strongly in hakikake, and turns back long with a ko-maru at the tip"[[c:2]]; on the quieter suguha pieces it shows the so-called Sanpin flavor with the same long, strong return. The rounded, swept ko-maru with its long kaeri recurs across the corpus, the point at times pointed (togari) or running in as midare-komi, but the long swept return is constant, and the judges read it together with the dark Echizen steel as the smith's own. A second native register sits beside the notare manner, and the published sources call it his intrinsic style: a suguha base, at times a medium suguha, into which small connected gunome are mixed, ko-ashi entering vigorously, the back generally hardened and the nioiguchi again subdued. On one such wakizashi the commentary names this the very type of his proper hand, "the intrinsic workmanship of the second-generation Yasutsugu"[[c:3]], the linked ko-gunome over a straight foundation, so that even where the temper quiets to suguha the steel keeps the smith's name.
The register the line is most celebrated for is its Sōshū-utsushi, the faithful copying of Sōshū masterworks at which the published sources say both the first and second generations excelled. The corpus holds reduced copies of the great meibutsu: an Ataka Sadamune katana carrying the gold-inlaid mark of the copy and a wakizashi reducing the same blade, and the only known second-generation copy of the Shishi Sadamune, whose burned original the first generation had re-tempered after the fall of Ōsaka. On these the forging tightens, the temper widens into notare mixed with gunome and large gunome and breaks into a large-pattern midare with tobiyaki and yubashiri toward a hitatsura feeling, the nie well adhered and the bōshi running almost as one sweep. On a tantō the judges read the deep nioi, the well-adhered nie and the kinsuji and sunagashi as an intent "aimed at the superior old Sōshū masters"[[c:4]], while observing that the standing jihada and the subdued nioiguchi still betray the Echizen hand. Distinct again is the carving: the deep, forceful Kinai-bori executed with the engravers Kiuchi Chisō and Kinai Tomochika, the three-deity figures, bonji, the Kurikara dragon, gomabashi and suken, by which the commentary even separates the generations, since the first generation's three deities are limited to Fudō Myōō with his two attendants while the second combines Jizō, Bishamonten and Monju.
What sets the second generation apart, in the judges' own framing, is how close he comes to the first while never quite reaching his scale. The commentary repeatedly measures him against his father: one katana it calls the work among his that "shows the style closest to the first generation"[[c:5]], and a late katana it praises as a blade in which "a level of skill not inferior to the first generation is demonstrated to the fullest"[[c:6]]. The signature itself carries the distinction, the form of the character 継 differing from the first generation's, and the line is read not against the old Sōshū it copied but by its own marks, the dark Echizen steel, the basake habuchi, the striped sunagashi, the long swept ko-maru return, and the deep Kinai carving.
Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku, and the Tōkō Taikan rates him at the upper end of the shintō field. He carries no designations at the highest national tiers; his record runs instead through twenty-four blades at the Jūyō rank. Two prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin katana signed Echizen Yasutsugu, which name no generation, are recorded under the first generation's entry by the default this catalogue applies when the papers do not say. The provenance roll is daimyō and warrior: the Honda house, with the ownership inscription of Honda Shichizaemon, several blades carrying gold-inlaid cutting-test inscriptions, one bearing the eccentric added line "Fuji hikashi," the smith's boast that even Mount Fuji stands low beside his sword. These are not blades that come to market often; with none held back at the highest protected tier yet most kept in long-standing collections, a signed Yasutsugu with the aoi crest appears from time to time and with patience, the broad, dark, powerfully built work the commentary calls full of "force and rustic flavor"[[c:7]] and well showing "the characteristics of Echizen work"[[c:8]].
Where Yasutsugu 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.
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Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Shinto · Echizen
39 pieces on the market now
The Shimosaka name began not as a single hand but as a trademark shared by a band of Echizen smiths at the dawn of the shinto era, and the designated record gathers their work under that one signature rather than parsing it into individuals. The published sources read the early inscriptions, the generic Echizen no Kuni Shimosaka and the titled Higo Daijo Fujiwara Shimosaka, as the product of a group, of which the first-generation Yasutsugu served as the representative. Born in Shimosaka village of Sakata district in Omi, Yasutsugu moved to Echizen under the patronage of Yuki Hideyasu, signing in his early years Higo no Daijo Shimosaka before his Keicho 10 to 11 summons to Edo, where he forged before Ieyasu and Hidetada and received the character Yasu and the right to cut the Tokugawa hollyhock crest on his nakago. The titled signature was carried by several Echizen hands at once, and the texts list Yasutsugu, Sadakuni and Kanenori among the smiths whose chisel movement and brush intent are too alike to part on present evidence. From this band the Echizen Yasutsugu line descended, dividing after the second generation into the Edo and Echizen Shimosaka houses, and around it formed the deep relief carving the province made its own. The school is recognized first in its steel. The forging is itame mixed with mokume that stands and opens, often flowing into nagare, carrying thick ji-nie and fine chikei, the kane taking on the blackish cast the sources name outright as Echizen-gane; the same dark, standing jihada recurs from Yasutsugu through his son, through Sadatsugu, Shigetaka and the unnamed Shimosaka hands, and the commentary returns to it as the group's signature. Over it the hamon favors a suguha to chu-suguha or shallow notare into which linked gunome and ko-gunome mix, ko-ashi and yo entering, the nie thick and gathering unevenly into rough patches, kinsuji and sunagashi streaming through, the nioiguchi tending to a sinking shizumi.
The boshi is the steadiest tell, running to a ko-maru swept in hakikake and turning back long, with a Sanpin-flavored reminiscence of the Mishina and Echizen-Seki inheritance. Yet the house is not uniform: Sadakuni works an austere suguha over an unusually refined ji with little of the blackish mokume, Sadatsugu fires the brightest, most choji-laden midare of the circle, and the third generation cleans the forging and brightens the nioiguchi toward his Edo contemporaries. Binding the registers is the carving, the deep Echizen-bori and Kinai-bori of kurikara, Fudo Myoo, bonji and gomabashi set in relief within the hi, which Sadakuni may have first supplied to Yasutsugu's blades. For the collector the school rewards reading by register rather than by a single famous holding. Yasutsugu is its summit, rated Jo-jo saku, retained smith to the shogunal house, whose Sadamune and Toshiro copies (the Namazuo, the lost Oyako, the Shishi) show his own Echizen hand under the model, and whose best katana carry the possession inscriptions of his patron Honda Hida no Kami Narishige and provenance in the Echizen and Kishu Tokugawa houses. The second generation follows so faithfully that his finest blades part from the father chiefly by the form of the character tsugu; the Edo third generation continues the suguha and ko-notare manners with a straight yakidashi and a Hojoji affinity. Around them the specialists define the edges of the idiom: Sadakuni and his quiet suguha with a pair of tanto recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, Sadatsugu with his Narishige-crested cutting-test blades, and Shigetaka, the most skilled of Yasutsugu's pupils, whose chestnut-tailed kurijiri nakago and Kinai carving (the Honebami and Hossho copies among his masterworks) name him at a glance and whose finest work approaches the master. A signed Shimosaka blade, whether a titled Yasutsugu beneath the aoi-mon, a named piece by one of the band, or a Higo Daijo pre-Yasutsugu register, comes to market only from time to time, valued as the wellspring from which the Echizen Yasutsugu line and its carving tradition arose. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Yasutsugu康繼 | 1596-1615 | 76 |
| Yasutsugu康繼 | 1624-1644 | 25 |
| Sadakuni貞國 | 1596-1615 | 11 |
| Yasutsugu康繼 | 1661-1673 | 8 |
| Shigetaka重高 | 1596-1615 | 7 |
The Edo period (1615 to 1868)
Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
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