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About the maker

Horikawa Kunikiyo國清

A ken signed Yamashiro no Kami Fujiwara Kunikiyo and dated Kan'ei 22 (1645) was dedicated to the shrine of Amaterasu Omikami, the great sun deity, and the published sources call it valuable as a record as much as fine in its making. The smith who forged it stands at the head of an Echizen line that carried the one name Kunikiyo across several generations. The first generation came, by the received account, from Matsushiro in Shinshu, was held to be the son of the third-generation Shimada Sukemune, and was first called Yoshiemon; he went up to the capital to study in the gate of Horikawa Kunihiro, took the name Kunikiyo, and after Kunihiro's death entered the service of the Matsudaira house at Takada in Echigo, following his lord when the house was transferred to Fukui in Echizen. He received the title Yamashiro-daijo in Kan'ei 4 and Yamashiro no Kami the next year, and was granted the chrysanthemum crest to cut into his nakago. Of the same-name smiths the published sources rank the generations plainly, the first the most skilled and the second the most accomplished after him. His forte is suguha. The published sources name him a smith who was most given to a straight temper, a chu-suguha or a narrow hoso-suguha that leans here and there into a shallow notare, with short gunome ashi entering, the habuchi faintly frayed in hotsure, the nioi deep and the ko-nie thick, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running through it and the nioiguchi tending to sink. The boshi runs straight into a ko-maru with a little hakikake brushing the tip. Beside this calm forte he also tempers a midare, a hamon based on a shallow notare with gunome that at its broadest opens into large gunome breaking up into bold, irregular peaks, small gunome and pointed gunome crowding in, with slight tobiyaki mixed and the nie clumping into muranie in places, the deep nioi and the sunagashi and kinsuji carrying over from the suguha. The wide hira-zukuri wakizashi of large gunome that survives is singled out as a shape uncommon both in his own work and within his line. The jigane is the constant beneath both manners and the surest mark of the hand. Over a standing itame mixed with mokume and flowing hada the ji-nie gathers dust-fine and thick in mijin, fine chikei enter well, and the steel takes a blackish tone, which the published sources read as the special quality of the northern-province steel, the hokkoku-gane, well shown and at its finest dense and pure. On the best of his katana the forging is described as standing finely yet refined, dark steel mixed through it, the maker's full strength on view. The suguha and the boshi sit on this jigane without strain, and where the everyday is exceeded the temper widens a shade, the nioi deepens, the nie grow larger and more even, and the steel turns finer still, the make that the published sources call his true character fully realized. The nioiguchi that sinks, recurring across the katana, draws the ji and the ha close without letting the border blur into the Soshu manner the school descends from. The order of his work is read less by date, which is scarce, than by signature. The plain long mei is taken for the first generation; the character ichi cut below the chrysanthemum crest is read as the second generation and after, the second generation being Shinbei, the first generation's second son. The form of the 国 character separates them as well, the five and eight strokes of the element inside the enclosure running parallel on the first generation's hand. Yet the published sources keep their caution in plain sight, holding that cleanly dividing the first and second generation is at present difficult and a matter for further study, even where the ichi-marked mei of a katana resembles the dated Tenna 2 tanto closely enough to suggest the second generation. The few dated pieces are prized for their rarity, the Kan'ei 9 (1632) katana among them, and the second generation's Tenna 2 (1682) tanto, a suguha of clear ji and ha, anchors his hand at the later end of the line. What sets him apart is told through his own grounded traits rather than through the school he came from. His suguha is the calmest register of an Echizen hand whose jigane is dark and dense, the dust-fine ji-nie and the fine chikei of the hokkoku-gane carrying the work where a Soshu smith would carry it with standing hada and a brighter, more broken ha. The Jubi note transmits a scholar's reservation about the received descent, observing that among examined works of this smith a make that necessarily compels the Horikawa Kunihiro connection is rare; the standing dark itame and the nie-laden suguha nonetheless sit within the broad Horikawa current, and his carving and his steel count among the typical Echizen-bori and Echizen-gane of the day. The kantei of the line runs backward as readily as forward, the generation read off the mei and the form of one character because the styles themselves will not separate, which is the school's defining condition as much as its difficulty. Kunikiyo is rated Jo-saku by Fujishiro, and twelve of his blades have reached the Juyo level with one further katana an Important Art Object, all of them signed. His designations run to the Juyo and Jubi tiers rather than the highest patrimony, so the line is not removed wholly from circulation as the very first names are; the designated work is held rather than traded, and a Juyo Kunikiyo comes before a private collector from time to time and with patience rather than readily. Provenance of recorded whereabouts is thin but distinguished where it survives: the Kan'ei 22 ken descends from its dedication to the shrine of Amaterasu Omikami, and a blade of the line is recorded among Imperial Family holdings, the kind of standing the chrysanthemum crest on his nakago already declares. Cutting-test inscriptions attend his katana, a gold-inlaid three-body test on one Kan'ei 6 piece and a kesa-otoshi inlay on another, the marks of a steel valued for its edge as much as for the quiet dignity of its suguha.

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