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About the maker

Kiyomitsu清光

The single piece that anchors Kiyomitsu on record is the katana dated Tenmon twenty-three (1554) and signed at full length "Bizen no Kuni ju Osafune Kiyomitsu," raised to Tokubetsu Jūyō in 2014, a broad, deep-curved *uchigatana* that carries no byname yet which the published sources read, from the breadth of its signature, as the work of Gorōzaemon-no-jō (「銘振りよりして、五郎左衛門尉と鑑せられる」). He is one of the leading names of *Sue-Bizen*, the term used for the late-Muromachi Osafune workshops and their output collectively, and within that crowded field he is almost wholly knowable: every blade here carries an *ubu* tang with a long signature and a date, most of them clustered in the Tenmon years between 1532 and 1555. The published record lists as many as ten smiths who signed Kiyomitsu in this period, bearing the bynames Gorōzaemon-no-jō, Magouemon-no-jō, Yosozaemon-no-jō, Hikobei and Magobei, and singles out Gorōzaemon-no-jō and Magouemon-no-jō as the two superior hands. It is the first, the Tenmon-dated Gorōzaemon, whose work fills this record, and whom the published sources place at the head of a line that runs on into a second generation of the same byname in the Eiroku and Tenshō years. His reputation rests first on *suguha*. The published sources name him, with Tadamitsu, as the master of the straight temper among the *Sue-Bizen* smiths (「忠光と並んで直刃の名手」), and call the wide *suguha* the very signboard of the Kiyomitsu house (「清光家の看板であるところの広直刃」). His characteristic blade is a thick, sturdy *uchigatana*, broad in the body with the *kasane* heavy and the *shinogi* high, *saki-zori* standing toward a *chū-kissaki* that extends a little, over which he lays a wide *suguha* mixed with small *gunome* and small *chōji*. Within it the *ashi* and *yō* enter freely, and the abundant *yō* the sources record as his typical tell, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running and the *nioiguchi* bright and clear. A robust shape tempered in this manner, with the edge well worked and the *nioiguchi* shining, is what the published sources call the true heart of the smith who excelled at the straight temper (「直刃を得意とする清光の真骨頂」). The *jigane* beneath that temper is as much a part of his recognition. He forges a packed *itame* and *ko-itame* with *mokume* mixed in, *ji-nie* applied in fine grain, *chikei* entering, and a faint *utsuri* standing pale over the surface. The published sources distinguish his *jigane* from that of Tadamitsu and of Yosozaemon Sukesada by its tendency to stand a little more, an *itame* in which the *mokume* shows, so that on the run of his blades the *hada* is the slightly more open one of the three. The exception is telling: on his finest pieces, including the Tokubetsu Jūyō katana, the same sources remark that the *jigane* is unusually well packed and refined by contrast with his common work, its quality lifting those blades above the rest. The *bōshi* returns in a small round with a sweep of *hakikake*, and on the straight-tempered blades runs straight to that small round, in places pointing or doubling toward the back. Against that calm register he forges two showier manners, and the published sources treat them as fully typical of him rather than as departures. The first is a *gunome-midare* whose mark is the *koshi-no-hiraita gunome*, the *gunome* opened at the base, mixed with *ko-chōji* and small *gunome* over a *chū-suguha* base, *ashi* and *yō* well in and *sunagashi* running, which the sources read as bringing him near Yosozaemon-no-jō Sukesada (「与三左衛門尉祐定に近い」), the other great *Sue-Bizen midare* hand. The second is *hitatsura*: the temper taken high, *chōji-midare* with *gunome* and small *chōji*, *tobiyaki* entering and *muneyaki* running strongly until the whole edge takes a *hitatsura* form, the *nie* laid strongly and *sunagashi* running. Here the published sources name a structural tell: *Sue-Bizen* is generally thick in the *kasane*, but a blade tempered in *hitatsura* is necessarily made thinner (「皆焼を焼いた場合は必ず重ねが薄くなる」), so the thinned construction itself is the feature to watch, sometimes joined by a *maru-mune* the school occasionally shows. The same flamboyance appears on a *shōbu-zukuri* blade and on a wide *tantō*, the form varying while the hand stays constant. What sets Gorōzaemon-no-jō apart within *Sue-Bizen* is read through his own work rather than by contrast. His bright wide *suguha* with its abundant *yō* is the manner the sources tie to his name, the calmest of his three registers, while the *koshi-no-hiraita gunome* and the *tobiyaki*-and-*muneyaki hitatsura* extend his range toward Sukesada and toward the showy late-Bizen taste; Tadamitsu shares the *suguha* but not the *hitatsura*, Sukesada the *midare* but not the straight temper held at full breadth. Several of his blades carry order-inscriptions that fix him in time and place, among them one forged below Tatsuno castle in Harima, which the published sources value as documentary evidence of the smith's movements, and one whose patron Masahide was a commander of the Urakami faction. The broad, deeply curved shapes, made for the wars of the period, are themselves part of the reading; the sources note of a wide *moroha-zukuri tantō* that the temper of the warring age shows plainly even in its bearing (「戦国時代の気風が姿にもよくあらわれて」). The weight of designation behind his name is steady rather than vast. One of his blades holds the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank and eighteen more are Jūyō, with nothing on record in the highest designated tiers, so his is a record built in the upper-middle reaches of designation rather than at its summit. The *Tōkō Taikan* values him in the middle range of the Osafune masters, and his provenance, where it is recorded, runs through houses of consequence: one katana descends from the Matsudaira house of Shinobu (「忍の松平家伝来」), and another from the swordsmith-scholar Masahide. Genuine signed, dated Gorōzaemon-no-jō blades survive in fair number for a *Sue-Bizen* name, and an *ubu*, signed example in its original form, of the kind the published sources hold up as an outstanding piece of his hand, is among the more attainable of the great late-Bizen smiths for a collector who waits, the Jūyō tier appearing from time to time, the single Tokubetsu Jūyō a landmark when it does.

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