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About the maker

Aoe Hirotsugu弘次

Hirotsugu is a Ko-Aoe smith of Bitchū province whose surviving signed work falls across the early to middle Kamakura period, the span under which the Aoe school's earliest and most archaic blades are gathered. The Aoe group worked at Ko'i and Manju in the lower Takahashi river basin, and is traditionally founded by Yasutsugu around the Jōan era of the early 1170s. The published sources place Hirotsugu within the *meikan* as a son of Kunitsugu, his period given as Kōan, the name continuing through several recorded generations from the Genryaku era down to a late appearance in the Bunwa era of the Nanbokuchō period. Against that documentary placement the workmanship of his surviving tachi reads older: the judges on the 24th-session Jūyō blade note that although the *meikan* gives a Kōan date, its two-character signature and archaic manner give it points in common with the early-Kamakura Aoe group (鎌倉初期の青江派に共通性がみられる). His extant signed work is comparatively scarce, the commentary on the earliest of his Jūyō tachi noting only that he was an Aoe smith whose pieces are few (比較的数が少ない), so his hand is read from a small but consistent body of slender tachi. The forging is where his blades are first known, and it is the Aoe *jigane* in its clearest form. Over an *itame-hada* thick with *mokume* the grain stands and gathers into the crepe-like texture the school is named for, what the published sources call the so-called *chirimen* skin (いわゆる縮緬状の肌合). Through that crepe *ji* fine *ji-nie* attaches thickly and *chikei* enter, and into it is mixed *jifu*, the patchy mottling of old Bizen-related steel, out of which a faint *jifu-utsuri* rises rather than the bright *midare-utsuri* of contemporary Bizen work. This is the discriminating mark of his *jigane*: not a clear reflection read across the *ji*, but a speckled, quiet shadow gathered out of the mottling, the Aoe variant of the Bizen feature. It is a *jigane* of subdued depth, and the published sources, characterizing the school, say that compared with contemporaneous Bizen work it is somewhat plainer and carries a quietly astringent savor (総じて同時代の備前物に比べると幾分地味で渋い味わいを醸すものである). The temper sits over a *chū-suguha* base broken low into small *midare*, with a tendency toward small *gunome* and, on the more restrained blades, small *chōji*. *Ashi* and *yō* enter frequently, the work carried in *nie*, the *habuchi* showing *hotsure* with fine *sunagashi*; the *nioiguchi* runs deep and in places takes on an *urumi* softness. On the 60th-session Jūyō tachi, the richest of his extant *ha*, the activity opens further: *ashi* and *saka-ashi* together, the reverse-slanting feet that are the Aoe hallmark, with *ko-nie*, small *yubashiri* and *tobiyaki*-like spots, *hotsure*, *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* all entering. That *saka-ashi*, the feet slanting back toward the base, is the clearest point by which his *hamon* parts from the straight *ashi* of Bizen. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns back small, *ko-maru* on most blades and pointed on others, often touched by *hakikake*, and once ending in *yakitsume*. The signature is cut in two characters at the tip of the *nakago*, and four of the five surviving tachi are *suriage* with one preserved *ubu*. Within that single coherent manner the published record draws one telling distinction, concerning the brightness of the *nioiguchi*. Many Ko-Aoe works tend to a *shizumi*, a sinking and subdued *nioiguchi*, part of what the sources mean in calling the school plainer than Bizen. Against this the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi is singled out: whereas the usual Ko-Aoe blade sinks, this one is instead rather bright, a point the judges expressly draw attention to (むしろやや明るい点が注目される). The same blade is read as expressing the features of the school with particular clarity, a crepe *ji* with *jifu* and a *jifu-utsuri*-like reflection, an archaic and well-*nie*'d *suguha* foundation mixed with small *midare* and a tendency to small *gunome*, the fine variation along the *habuchi* conveying an old flavor. The *ubu* 37th-session tachi shows the other side of his range, carrying *horimono*, a *suken* at the *koshimoto* and *bō-hi* with *soe-hi* run as *kaki-nagashi*, its two-character signature cut large with a thick chisel, the kind of confident original blade that anchors the reading of the *suriage* pieces. Hirotsugu's place is among the early Ko-Aoe makers whose work the NBTHK gathers close to old Bizen, and his distinction is carried by his own attested traits rather than by the comparison: the crepe *itame* with its *jifu*, the faint *jifu-utsuri*, the *saka-ashi*-bearing *suguha* worked in *nie*. The published commentary on the 14th-session tachi reads the slender, shallow-*sori*, small-pointed build together with the small *itame* turning to *chirimen-hada* and the *suguha* base mixed with *ko-chōji midare* as clearly showing the characteristic features of the Aoe school of the Kamakura period (青江派の特長をよく示している), and finds it an excellent tachi in both *ji* and *ha*. His archaic, *nie*-worked *suguha* sets him apart from the later Aoe smiths, whose *saka-chōji* and *dan-utsuri* grew more pronounced into the Nanbokuchō period; he belongs to the quieter, earlier register of the school, the manner the sources repeatedly read as old-fragrant and classically elegant. The 60th-session tachi is judged a Ko-Aoe work rich in subdued savor whose activities in both *ji* and *ha* are full of nuance (滋味に溢れた古青江の優品), valued besides as study material for an extant example by his hand. The weight of designation behind his name is modest in number but high in tier. Of the works on official record, five are designated, reaching the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks and one Important Cultural Property; there are no National Treasures. The Important Cultural Property tachi is held at the Akihasan Hongū Akiha Shrine, patrimony in shrine keeping rather than anything that moves, and one further blade is recorded as a Prefectural Cultural Property in private hands. None of his blades carries a recorded *denrai* lineage of owners, so the connoisseurship rests on the tier record and on the quality the judges read into individual pieces, foremost the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi, whose original robust construction is described as well retained, a thick *kasane* and full *hiraniku* surviving the shortening into a *hamaguri-ba*, plainly a careful commission for a warrior house (往時の雄武な造込みがよく残されており). With his signed tachi few and the foremost held as cultural property, a Hirotsugu in open hands is among the rarer encounters in old Aoe work, the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō pieces reaching the market only seldom and a signed example a landmark when one does.

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