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About the maker

Awataguchi Kunikiyo國清

Kunikiyo was the fourth of the six brother-masters of the early Awataguchi school in Yamashiro, working in the opening years of the Kamakura period. The published sources set him in that celebrated company: a son of Kuniie, his elder brothers Kunitomo, Hisakuni and Kuniyasu and his younger brothers Arikuni and Kunitsuna, the six of whom all served as appointed swordsmiths to the Retired Emperor Go-Toba. Of his own work very little survives in signature. One Jūyō entry states plainly that 'extant signed pieces are few, numbering only two' (在銘の現存するものは少なく二口を数えるのみ), so his name is carried today chiefly by a small group of *ō-suriage*, *mumei* katana judged to him, alongside the rare signed *tachi*. His hand is the bright, quiet manner of early Awataguchi. The *jigane* is a closely forged *ko-itame*, in places running a little or mixed with larger grain, carrying abundant *ji-nie* and, on the finest blade, frequent *chikei*; the published sources call the steel notably bright, with a faint *midare-utsuri* standing in places. Over that *jigane* he sets not the flamboyant *chōji* of Bizen but a *suguha*-toned *ko-midare*, shallowly *notare* and worked with *ko-chōji*, *ko-gunome* and *gunome*, *ashi* entering, the *nioiguchi* deep and bright, *nie* well adhered, with fine *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* running through. The *bōshi* goes straight to a *ko-maru* or *ō-maru* and returns. Within that suguha-based edge the judges single out one piece of scenery: patches of *yubashiri* toward the *monouchi* that gather into a *nijūba*-like double line, a feature the published commentary notes on more than one of the *ō-suriage* blades. It is a restrained tell, in keeping with a smith whose whole character is calm rather than showy. The published sources read Kunikiyo closest to his brother Kuniyasu. On the signed *tachi* transmitted in the Unshū Matsudaira house, the commentary finds the temper 'on the whole resembling Kuniyasu' (総じて国安に似ている); on one of the *ō-suriage* katana the tightly packed intervals of the *midare* and an *urumi* tendency of the *nioiguchi* are held to share 'a thread of affinity with Kuniyasu' (国安に一脈通じるものがあり). It is exactly this affinity, set on the characteristic bright Awataguchi *ko-itame*, that carries the attribution where the signature is gone, and the sources affirm such blades as work that 'at a glance can be appraised as Awataguchi of the early Kamakura' (一見して鎌倉初期の粟田口物と鑑せられる出来である). He stands within the early Awataguchi mainstream, before the school's later flowering, the quiet suguha-toned *ko-midare* and the *urumi* *nioiguchi* the marks of the family hand. For the collector Kunikiyo is a rare early Awataguchi name, graded *sai-jō saku* by the Fujishiro appraisers. He has no National Treasures; his record runs through one work designated Important Cultural Property, the Aoyama-family signed *tachi*, together with the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin signed *tachi* from the Unshū Matsudaira house, and a small group of *ō-suriage mumei* katana reaching the Jūyō and Tokubetsu Jūyō tiers, only five works carrying an official designation in all. The Tokubetsu Jūyō katana descended through the Sakai house of Himeji, and the published sources call it a superior blade whose 'glittering *nie* within the temper is especially magnificent' (殊に刃中のひかり輝く沸は見事である); among recorded whereabouts a blade is held by the Fukuyama Art Museum, and his provenance runs through old daimyō and imperial collections. With so few works on record and most of them long held, a signed Kunikiyo comes to light only rarely, and a privately held example of either his signed tachi or his attributed katana is among the more notable things a collector of early Yamashiro could hope to encounter.

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