This is a katana by Yamatonokami Yasusada, a Shinto smith from Musashi province. The blade is 76.5cm long and features a cutting test inscription by Yamano Kanjuurou. It is designated as a Tokubetsu Hozon Token.
NihontoWatchmei · Kanei (1624-1644) · nagasa 76.5cm · sori 1.1cm
Edo Ishido (Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, Kanbun-shinto) · Musashi · around 1618-1685
Fujishiro Jo saku
6 pieces on the market now
On the reverse of a katana now in Kochi is cut a gold-inlaid inscription recording a two-body cutting test performed at Edo in Bushu in Manji 2 by Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, and the same hand signed the omote Yamato-no-kami Yasusada in a bold five-character mei. That pairing of a robust signed blade with a Yamano test-cut runs through almost the whole of Yasusada's surviving work and is the readiest mark of him. He was born in Genna 4 (1618) under the surname Tomita, read Tonda, and the published sources, following the Shinto Bengi, now place his origin not in Echizen, as was long believed, but in the Kishu Ishido group, from which he came up to Edo by Keian 1 to become one of the representative makers of the Kanbun-shinto era. The older account that made him a pupil of the first-generation Echizen Yasutsugu the published sources reject on chronological reasoning, since a blade inscribed made at age fifty-three and dated Kanbun 10 fixes his birth in Genna 4, three years before that master's death; the strongest reading instead makes him a pupil of Izumi-no-kami Kaneshige, on the evidence of shared workmanship, tang construction, and the common presence of the Yamano cutting inscriptions.
His sugata is the heavy katana of the mid-seventeenth century, shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, the sori shallow, the shinogi high and the shinogi-ji broad relative to the blade width, with a sense of funbari at the base and a compact chu-kissaki, the kasane often thick and the build frankly robust. Over this he forges a tightly packed ko-itame, mokume mixed in and at times conspicuous on the ura, the steel taking on a somewhat blackish tone where the grain stands a little; into it dust-fine ji-nie settles thickly and fine chikei enter well, so that the jigane reads as close and bright in his best Edo work. The temper that most distinguishes him is a notare carrying gunome whose heads and valleys turn angular, mixed with ko-gunome and somewhat pointed elements, the nioi deep and ko-nie adhering well, with coarse nie intermixed here and there until the line grows uneven, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running through, and the nioiguchi inclining to a subdued, shizumi tone. The published sources name that angularity of the midare, together with the shizumi nioiguchi and the steep drop of the iori-mune, as the points by which his hand is told.
The boshi answers the temper below it, running sugu or shallowly notare and turning back in ko-maru, sometimes with a slightly deep return, the tip frequently brushed into hakikake; on one Manji wakizashi the omote is straight while the ura carries a faint notare nuance, the kind of small asymmetry that recurs across his work. Activity outside the yakiba is part of the picture as well: small yubashiri-like tobiyaki drift through the ji on some blades, and the nakago, ubu and finished with ha-agari kurijiri and steep o-sujikai file marks, is itself a Yamano-consistent feature that the published sources count among the evidence for the Kaneshige attribution. Horimono is uncommon, though one early wakizashi carries gomabashi on both faces, short on the omote and long on the ura.
The published record divides his work into two manners, in a sentence that recurs almost verbatim across his designations: 「安定の作風は, 大別すると二様があり, 一つはのたれに互の目を交え, のたれが角ばる傾向のものと, 他は互の目を主調とした乱れ刃であり, 同作中では, 前者の作例が多い」[[c:1]]. The first and more numerous is the angular notare mixed with gunome described above; the second is a midareba led by gunome, rising at times into a large, high-tempered pattern of o-gunome with abundant kinsuji, nie-suji and sunagashi, a more florid result that the sources count the rarer of the two. The angular gunome read within the second manner ties it back to the first and lets his individuality be seen even where the pattern is least typical. His dated works run from Keian through Enpo, but the published sources regard the Manji era as his time of full maturity, noting that 「万治頃が大成期とみられ, 最も覇気のある作品が多い」[[c:2]].
In standing he is read against the smiths nearest his own hand rather than against his nominal teacher: the published sources find his manner closest to Izumi-no-kami Kaneshige, with whom he shares the clarity of ji and ha, the tang construction and the Yamano inscriptions, and at times close to Izumi-no-kami Kanesada, while in style his blades are said to share elements with Kotetsu, the celebrated Edo contemporary whose robust katana his own most resemble. His bond with the test-cutter is the firmest thread of all: among Edo smiths only Kotetsu carries the Yamano family's gold-inlaid cutting inscriptions in comparable density, and the published sources record that on Yasusada the count of Nagahisa's test-cuts is reckoned 「馬徹とほぼ同数かそれを上回ると思われる数」[[c:3]], roughly equal to or exceeding that on Kotetsu. A second generation also signed Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, but its output is extremely scarce, so that the name in practice belongs to the first.
Yasusada's blades survive in the Juyo tier, his record carrying no higher designation; the eight blades on official record here are all Juyo, seven of them signed and most bearing the Yamano cutting test. Provenance attaches to the test-cutter himself, the gold-inlaid inscriptions of Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, called Eikyu, standing on the reverse of his finest work, with one sword also naming a holder, Ichiha Sanshiro, whom the published sources leave to further research. The eighth-session masterpiece in Akita the NBTHK calls 「同作中の傑作の一本である」[[c:4]], and of the broad, robust Manji katana in Kochi it writes 「豪壮な造込みに相応しい出来映えを示した本作は同工の入念且つ会心の一口と言えよう」[[c:5]]. A signed Yasusada with its Yamano test-cut intact is not beyond the reach of a serious collector in the way the highest-designated blades are, since most of his record sits in the tradeable Juyo and Tokubetsu-Hozon tiers; even so such blades are held more than traded, and a fully documented example, robust in build and carrying Nagahisa's inscription, comes to market only from time to time and stands among the more sought pieces of the Kanbun-shinto Edo when it does.
Where Yasusada 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Shinto · Musashi
18 pieces on the market now
The Edo Ishido school (江戸石堂) is the capital branch of the Ishido lineage, a body of shinto-era smiths who carried the Bizen choji tradition into Edo and there pursued a single deliberate project: the revival, in the brighter steel of the early-Edo forges, of the flamboyant choji-midare worked by the medieval Fukuoka-Ichimonji masters of Bizen. The school's makers came up from Omi by way of Kyoto rather than directly, the Akasaka-signed blades of Mitsuhira fixing that route, and several of its leading hands trace to the Kyo-Ishido line before the move to the capital; Heki Mitsuhira, eldest son of Yamashiro-no-kami Ippo, and Tsushima-no-kami Tsunemitsu stand as the twin pillars of the early school, while the Edo Ishido Korekazu line carried the house specialty forward, the seventh-generation Korekazu keeping it alive through the nineteenth-century shinshinto revival. A separate Edo strand runs through Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, whom recent research and the Shinto Bengi place within the Kishu Ishido group, a Kanbun-era master of the capital whose temper turns toward the angular rather than the choji of his school-fellows. What binds the school is a shared vocabulary rather than a single hand. The defining work is the choji-midare tempered over a bright shinto ko-itame, a crowded line mixing gunome, ko-gunome, round-topped choji and small choji with angular and pointed elements, the yakiba rising and falling in marked height, the ashi and yo entering vigorously, the nioiguchi clear; on the most successful pieces a midare-utsuri stands in the jigane, the koto-Bizen reflection raised again on a shinto blade, the single feature that carries the Ichimonji comparison furthest. Mitsuhira tempers this revival chiefly in nioi, and the NBTHK reads his choji over its utsuri as the fullest realization of the school's program, a splendid choji-midare that recalls the old Ichimonji. Korekazu departs precisely here: where the other Bizen-leaning smiths held their choji in nioi-deki, he forged the house pattern in nie-deki, deep in nioi and thick in nie over a ko-itame approaching a muji-fu tightness, with sunagashi, kinsuji and nie-suji threading the edge, a Bizen pattern carried on a Soshu-leaning base.
Yasusada marks the school's outer divergence, working a notare mixed with gunome that boxes at peak and valley, the nioiguchi inclining to a subdued shizumi and a steeply raised iori-mune among his marks, his Soshu-leaning nie temper inherited through Kaneshige. Across all of them the jigane is the constant that underwrites the edge, a densely forged ko-itame, sometimes mixed with mokume, the ji-nie laid dust-fine and chikei entering well. To kantei an Edo Ishido blade is to read a revived Bizen choji set on an unmistakably shinto ji: the choji-midare draws the eye to old Ichimonji, but the steel beneath is the bright, clean forging of the Kanbun and later forges, frequently on the broad body, thick kasane and contracted chu-kissaki of the era, with Mitsuhira's transitional silhouette retaining a touch of funbari and standing sori. The utsuri when present confirms the school's intent; the choice of nie-deki over nioi-deki separates Korekazu from his fellows; the boxed notare and shizumi nioiguchi mark out Yasusada, whose hand is read against Kotetsu rather than against his school. The NBTHK ranks the best of these makers among the leading smiths of their respective ages, Mitsuhira as one of the most skilled to represent the Edo Ishido and Korekazu beside Jirotaro Naokatsu and Hosokawa Masayoshi among the late-Edo masters. Provenance is generally quiet, held in private and public hands rather than great houses, though the school's blades carry the texture of their moment: the Yamano gold-inlaid cutting-test inscriptions recur on Yasusada and on Mitsuhira's earliest dated work, one Korekazu blade is held by the Imperial Family, and his man'yogana and joi-slogan inscriptions voice the late-Edo current that the school's final flowering of Bizen-den outlived. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Korekazu是一 | 1817-1891 | 25 |
| Yasusada安定 | 1618-1685 | 11 |
| Yasusada安定 | 1673-1681 | 9 |
| Mitsuhira光平 | 1619-1685 | 10 |
Edo held Japan’s largest sword-wearing population, gathered by the alternate attendance system. The shogunal smith Yasutsugu was granted the Aoi crest for his tangs; many of Kotetsu’s blades carry gold-inlaid cutting attestations. Proof mattered here.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteReturns/exchanges/cancellations not accepted after shipment except for significant defects; if defective, return/exchange possible within 3 days of arrival (return shipping paid by customer).
This is a katana by Yamatonokami Yasusada, a Shinto smith from Musashi province. The blade is 76.5cm long and features a cutting test inscription by Yamano Kanjuurou. It is designated as a Tokubetsu Hozon Token.
NihontoWatchmei · Kanei (1624-1644) · nagasa 76.5cm · sori 1.1cm
Edo Ishido (Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, Kanbun-shinto) · Musashi · around 1618-1685
Fujishiro Jo saku
6 pieces on the market now
On the reverse of a katana now in Kochi is cut a gold-inlaid inscription recording a two-body cutting test performed at Edo in Bushu in Manji 2 by Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, and the same hand signed the omote Yamato-no-kami Yasusada in a bold five-character mei. That pairing of a robust signed blade with a Yamano test-cut runs through almost the whole of Yasusada's surviving work and is the readiest mark of him. He was born in Genna 4 (1618) under the surname Tomita, read Tonda, and the published sources, following the Shinto Bengi, now place his origin not in Echizen, as was long believed, but in the Kishu Ishido group, from which he came up to Edo by Keian 1 to become one of the representative makers of the Kanbun-shinto era. The older account that made him a pupil of the first-generation Echizen Yasutsugu the published sources reject on chronological reasoning, since a blade inscribed made at age fifty-three and dated Kanbun 10 fixes his birth in Genna 4, three years before that master's death; the strongest reading instead makes him a pupil of Izumi-no-kami Kaneshige, on the evidence of shared workmanship, tang construction, and the common presence of the Yamano cutting inscriptions.
His sugata is the heavy katana of the mid-seventeenth century, shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, the sori shallow, the shinogi high and the shinogi-ji broad relative to the blade width, with a sense of funbari at the base and a compact chu-kissaki, the kasane often thick and the build frankly robust. Over this he forges a tightly packed ko-itame, mokume mixed in and at times conspicuous on the ura, the steel taking on a somewhat blackish tone where the grain stands a little; into it dust-fine ji-nie settles thickly and fine chikei enter well, so that the jigane reads as close and bright in his best Edo work. The temper that most distinguishes him is a notare carrying gunome whose heads and valleys turn angular, mixed with ko-gunome and somewhat pointed elements, the nioi deep and ko-nie adhering well, with coarse nie intermixed here and there until the line grows uneven, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running through, and the nioiguchi inclining to a subdued, shizumi tone. The published sources name that angularity of the midare, together with the shizumi nioiguchi and the steep drop of the iori-mune, as the points by which his hand is told.
The boshi answers the temper below it, running sugu or shallowly notare and turning back in ko-maru, sometimes with a slightly deep return, the tip frequently brushed into hakikake; on one Manji wakizashi the omote is straight while the ura carries a faint notare nuance, the kind of small asymmetry that recurs across his work. Activity outside the yakiba is part of the picture as well: small yubashiri-like tobiyaki drift through the ji on some blades, and the nakago, ubu and finished with ha-agari kurijiri and steep o-sujikai file marks, is itself a Yamano-consistent feature that the published sources count among the evidence for the Kaneshige attribution. Horimono is uncommon, though one early wakizashi carries gomabashi on both faces, short on the omote and long on the ura.
The published record divides his work into two manners, in a sentence that recurs almost verbatim across his designations: 「安定の作風は, 大別すると二様があり, 一つはのたれに互の目を交え, のたれが角ばる傾向のものと, 他は互の目を主調とした乱れ刃であり, 同作中では, 前者の作例が多い」[[c:1]]. The first and more numerous is the angular notare mixed with gunome described above; the second is a midareba led by gunome, rising at times into a large, high-tempered pattern of o-gunome with abundant kinsuji, nie-suji and sunagashi, a more florid result that the sources count the rarer of the two. The angular gunome read within the second manner ties it back to the first and lets his individuality be seen even where the pattern is least typical. His dated works run from Keian through Enpo, but the published sources regard the Manji era as his time of full maturity, noting that 「万治頃が大成期とみられ, 最も覇気のある作品が多い」[[c:2]].
In standing he is read against the smiths nearest his own hand rather than against his nominal teacher: the published sources find his manner closest to Izumi-no-kami Kaneshige, with whom he shares the clarity of ji and ha, the tang construction and the Yamano inscriptions, and at times close to Izumi-no-kami Kanesada, while in style his blades are said to share elements with Kotetsu, the celebrated Edo contemporary whose robust katana his own most resemble. His bond with the test-cutter is the firmest thread of all: among Edo smiths only Kotetsu carries the Yamano family's gold-inlaid cutting inscriptions in comparable density, and the published sources record that on Yasusada the count of Nagahisa's test-cuts is reckoned 「馬徹とほぼ同数かそれを上回ると思われる数」[[c:3]], roughly equal to or exceeding that on Kotetsu. A second generation also signed Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, but its output is extremely scarce, so that the name in practice belongs to the first.
Yasusada's blades survive in the Juyo tier, his record carrying no higher designation; the eight blades on official record here are all Juyo, seven of them signed and most bearing the Yamano cutting test. Provenance attaches to the test-cutter himself, the gold-inlaid inscriptions of Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, called Eikyu, standing on the reverse of his finest work, with one sword also naming a holder, Ichiha Sanshiro, whom the published sources leave to further research. The eighth-session masterpiece in Akita the NBTHK calls 「同作中の傑作の一本である」[[c:4]], and of the broad, robust Manji katana in Kochi it writes 「豪壮な造込みに相応しい出来映えを示した本作は同工の入念且つ会心の一口と言えよう」[[c:5]]. A signed Yasusada with its Yamano test-cut intact is not beyond the reach of a serious collector in the way the highest-designated blades are, since most of his record sits in the tradeable Juyo and Tokubetsu-Hozon tiers; even so such blades are held more than traded, and a fully documented example, robust in build and carrying Nagahisa's inscription, comes to market only from time to time and stands among the more sought pieces of the Kanbun-shinto Edo when it does.
Where Yasusada 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Shinto · Musashi
18 pieces on the market now
The Edo Ishido school (江戸石堂) is the capital branch of the Ishido lineage, a body of shinto-era smiths who carried the Bizen choji tradition into Edo and there pursued a single deliberate project: the revival, in the brighter steel of the early-Edo forges, of the flamboyant choji-midare worked by the medieval Fukuoka-Ichimonji masters of Bizen. The school's makers came up from Omi by way of Kyoto rather than directly, the Akasaka-signed blades of Mitsuhira fixing that route, and several of its leading hands trace to the Kyo-Ishido line before the move to the capital; Heki Mitsuhira, eldest son of Yamashiro-no-kami Ippo, and Tsushima-no-kami Tsunemitsu stand as the twin pillars of the early school, while the Edo Ishido Korekazu line carried the house specialty forward, the seventh-generation Korekazu keeping it alive through the nineteenth-century shinshinto revival. A separate Edo strand runs through Yamato-no-kami Yasusada, whom recent research and the Shinto Bengi place within the Kishu Ishido group, a Kanbun-era master of the capital whose temper turns toward the angular rather than the choji of his school-fellows. What binds the school is a shared vocabulary rather than a single hand. The defining work is the choji-midare tempered over a bright shinto ko-itame, a crowded line mixing gunome, ko-gunome, round-topped choji and small choji with angular and pointed elements, the yakiba rising and falling in marked height, the ashi and yo entering vigorously, the nioiguchi clear; on the most successful pieces a midare-utsuri stands in the jigane, the koto-Bizen reflection raised again on a shinto blade, the single feature that carries the Ichimonji comparison furthest. Mitsuhira tempers this revival chiefly in nioi, and the NBTHK reads his choji over its utsuri as the fullest realization of the school's program, a splendid choji-midare that recalls the old Ichimonji. Korekazu departs precisely here: where the other Bizen-leaning smiths held their choji in nioi-deki, he forged the house pattern in nie-deki, deep in nioi and thick in nie over a ko-itame approaching a muji-fu tightness, with sunagashi, kinsuji and nie-suji threading the edge, a Bizen pattern carried on a Soshu-leaning base.
Yasusada marks the school's outer divergence, working a notare mixed with gunome that boxes at peak and valley, the nioiguchi inclining to a subdued shizumi and a steeply raised iori-mune among his marks, his Soshu-leaning nie temper inherited through Kaneshige. Across all of them the jigane is the constant that underwrites the edge, a densely forged ko-itame, sometimes mixed with mokume, the ji-nie laid dust-fine and chikei entering well. To kantei an Edo Ishido blade is to read a revived Bizen choji set on an unmistakably shinto ji: the choji-midare draws the eye to old Ichimonji, but the steel beneath is the bright, clean forging of the Kanbun and later forges, frequently on the broad body, thick kasane and contracted chu-kissaki of the era, with Mitsuhira's transitional silhouette retaining a touch of funbari and standing sori. The utsuri when present confirms the school's intent; the choice of nie-deki over nioi-deki separates Korekazu from his fellows; the boxed notare and shizumi nioiguchi mark out Yasusada, whose hand is read against Kotetsu rather than against his school. The NBTHK ranks the best of these makers among the leading smiths of their respective ages, Mitsuhira as one of the most skilled to represent the Edo Ishido and Korekazu beside Jirotaro Naokatsu and Hosokawa Masayoshi among the late-Edo masters. Provenance is generally quiet, held in private and public hands rather than great houses, though the school's blades carry the texture of their moment: the Yamano gold-inlaid cutting-test inscriptions recur on Yasusada and on Mitsuhira's earliest dated work, one Korekazu blade is held by the Imperial Family, and his man'yogana and joi-slogan inscriptions voice the late-Edo current that the school's final flowering of Bizen-den outlived. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Korekazu是一 | 1817-1891 | 25 |
| Yasusada安定 | 1618-1685 | 11 |
| Yasusada安定 | 1673-1681 | 9 |
| Mitsuhira光平 | 1619-1685 | 10 |
Edo held Japan’s largest sword-wearing population, gathered by the alternate attendance system. The shogunal smith Yasutsugu was granted the Aoi crest for his tangs; many of Kotetsu’s blades carry gold-inlaid cutting attestations. Proof mattered here.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteReturns/exchanges/cancellations not accepted after shipment except for significant defects; if defective, return/exchange possible within 3 days of arrival (return shipping paid by customer).
