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About the maker

Horikawa Kunitomo國儔

Echigo no Kami Fujiwara Kunitomo was born at Obi in Hyūga and came up to the capital in the train of Horikawa Kunihiro, settling at Ichijō Horikawa in Kyoto, where he worked through the Keichō and Kan'ei years. The published record knows him as Kunihiro's pupil, by one tradition his nephew, and as the youngest of that circle, yet it is from his pupils rather than from documents that his standing is reconstructed. No work of his bears a date, and the Edo sword books pass on little beyond his birthplace and residence. What the judges do affirm is his place in the descent of the school: because the early manner and signatures of Izumi no Kami Kunisada and Kawachi no Kami Kunisuke so closely resemble his own, the published sources conclude that "their direct instruction was clearly carried out by Kunitomo" (彼らの直接的な指導は、国儔が行ったことは明らかである). He is thus the hinge of the Horikawa line, the man who taught the two smiths from whom the great Osaka shintō tradition would descend. His characteristic hand is the exception within his own school. Where most Horikawa work takes the superior Sōshū masters Shizu and Sadamune for its model, Kunitomo turns instead toward late Mino. Over a notare base he sets round-headed gunome, pointed togariba and ko-notare, and the nioiguchi tightens and sinks rather than opening bright, with nie that gathers at times coarse, sunagashi running through, and long kinsuji entering. The published sources name this their point of recognition for him: it is, they write, "the hallmark of Kunitomo to show, at a glance, workmanship reminiscent of late Seki, and of Kanenoshita above all" (一見末関、就中兼之などの出来口を思わせる作風を示すのが国儔の特色である). The bōshi follows the same quiet logic, a shallow notare turning ko-maru with hakikake and a deep return. The jigane comes in two modes, and the judges are careful to distinguish them. One is the standing, dry itame the whole school shares, mixed with mokume and flowing grain, coarse in the zanguri manner, with ji-nie and chikei; the other is a tightly consolidated ko-itame, clean and beautiful even by Horikawa standards. The sinking nioiguchi is the constant across both, so much so that when one katana departs from it the change is worth remark, the published commentary singling out a Jūyō blade in which, against the subdued temper usual to his work, "the brightness of the nioiguchi is especially noteworthy" (匂口が明るい点が特筆される). His wakizashi carry the Mino coloration more strongly still, often in hira-zukuri or kanmuri-otoshi shapes with su-ken and gomabashi carved into the base. Within this one hand the published sources read two registers. The prime is the late-Seki manner just described, and it reaches its clearest statement in a Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana that copies, down to its compact one-handed tang and sakizori, the uchigatana shape of the late Muromachi, from which the judges venture that "it may well be imagined that Kunitomo's ideal lay in Kaneshiba" (国儔の理想が兼芝にあったであろうことが大いに想像される). Beside it stands a calmer register in a wide suguha over the tighter ko-itame, gentle and dignified, that approaches his teacher; one Tokubetsu-Jūyō of this kind the commentary calls a masterpiece among his works, sound in both ji and ha. His signature is itself a kantei point. He invariably cuts the same seven characters and, as the sources note, "signs them without fail in seven characters, and no dated work is seen" (必ず七字に切り、年紀作を見ない), the chisel slightly distorted and growing larger as it descends. What sets Kunitomo apart from his fellow Horikawa smiths is therefore not refinement of the Sōshū copy but the Mino strain he carried alone, and the precision of his chisel. Among the whole group, the published sources observe, "his is the finest chisel" (一派の中では最も鏨細である), and where his fellow daisaku for Kunihiro, Ōsumi no Kami Masahiro, often cut a long tang, Kunitomo by contrast left works in which "the tang length is somewhat compact" (茎の長さがややつまったものがある). The contrast is a working connoisseur's tell. His calm wide-suguha pieces are held apart from the school by the cleanliness of the ji; his sinking, Mino-tinged ones, by the round-headed gunome and tight habuchi that no Shizu copy would show. For the collector Kunitomo is a substantial but rarely traded name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the modern designation tiers, three katana at Tokubetsu-Jūyō and some twenty-three at Jūyō, together with a prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin tachi once owned by Kishimoto Kannosuke of Kyoto. His blades are held in long-private hands, among them the Ikeda daimyō house, from whom one Tokubetsu-Jūyō descends. Signed works by him are not plentiful, and a designated example reaches the market only seldom, the more so because his finest pieces are held rather than traded. When one does appear it is a document of the Horikawa school at its hinge, the work of the quiet teacher who stood between Kunihiro and the founders of Osaka shintō.

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