¥480,000

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About the school

Ishido School石堂派

The Ishido school (石堂) traces its root to Omi Province, where smiths surnamed Hioki and bearing names such as Ishido worked before the line dispersed across the country in the early Edo period. From that Omi stem grew four principal branches: the Fukuoka Ishido of Chikuzen, the Edo Ishido carried east by makers who had first gone up from Omi to Kyoto, the Osaka Ishido seeded by smiths who settled in the merchant city, and the Kishu Ishido working under the Kii daimyo. What bound these scattered workshops was a single, deliberate program: the recovery of the *choji-midare* of the old Ichimonji and Ko-Bizen, complete with the *utsuri* that the medieval Bizen masters had carried in their steel. The school's very name records this revival as a historical project rather than an imitation, for its smiths set out to recover the bright, reflection-bearing Bizen *jigane* that most *shinto* makers of the seventeenth century could no longer produce. Korekazu, Tsunemitsu, Moritsugu, and Tameyasu stand among the names by which the branches are known, alongside Bicchu no Kami Yasuhiro, who bridged the Kishu and Osaka lines, and Tatara Nagayuki of Osaka. The shared vocabulary of the school begins with the temper. Over a tightly forged *itame*, often a well-packed *ko-itame* mixing *mokume* and a little *nagare-hada*, the Ishido smiths cut a *choji-midare* crowded with double-flower *juka-choji*, *fukuro-choji*, large and small *choji*, *gunome*, and pointed elements, so the line shows pronounced height as it crests and falls. *Ashi* and *yo* enter in profusion, the work turning *nioi*-dominant with attached *ko-nie*, *sunagashi* running through and *kinsuji* appearing here and there. Beneath sits the surer half of the recognition: a well-forged *itame* carrying *ji-nie* in minute particles, across which stands a *midare-utsuri*. *Utsuri* on a new-sword blade is rare and deliberate, and its recovery was the school's whole purpose, so a flamboyant *choji* standing over a clear irregular reflection is the first thing that separates an Ishido blade from any other *shinto choji*. The published sources name the school's two Bizen models directly: the Ichimonji-copy *choji-midare* and the Sue-Bizen-copy *gunome* with an opened lower contour, both worked in *nioi-deki*. Within these constants the branches diverge. Tsunemitsu of the Edo group holds his bright, height-varied *juka-choji* over a vividly standing reflection across every blade on record; Yasuhiro of the Kishu and Osaka lines tells himself by a *saka-gokoro*, a reverse slant in the *choji* and *ashi* most marked in his early work, and by the chrysanthemum crest of his titled years; Nagayuki of Osaka, reckoned the leading *Bizen-den* hand among the *shinto* makers, divides cleanly between his Ichimonji *choji* and a *gunome* modeled on Yosazaemon no Jo Sukesada, the *boshi* entering *midare-komi*, pointed at the tip, and turning back deeply. To *kantei* an Ishido blade is to read revived Bizen *choji* on a *shinto* ground: the flamboyant clove temper above, the *midare-utsuri* standing below, but a *jigane* whose *nie* and forging belong unmistakably to the new-sword period rather than to any true *koto* reflection. The recurring verdict the judges return to is that the best work recalls the old Ichimonji of classical times, brought vividly to mind by Tsunemitsu's Edo pieces in particular. Among the school's members the first-rank names carry the recognition: Korekazu and his fellows of the Fukuoka and Edo branches, Tsunemitsu by his standing *utsuri* and *juka-choji*, Yasuhiro at the junction of two branches, and Nagayuki at the head of the *Bizen-den shinto* hands. Provenance attaches to a portion of the school's record; Yasuhiro's broad pre-title *wakizashi* was transmitted in the Shimazu house of Satsuma, and one of his *katana* is recorded in the Imperial collection, while much of the wider Ishido output sits in the *Juyo* tier, more often kept than traded. A securely signed Ishido blade, showing the bright clove over a standing reflection, remains the document of how a *shinto* school brought the old Ichimonji *choji* back to life.

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