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About the maker

Oei-Bizen Morimitsu盛光

Morimitsu of Osafune, who worked under the title Shuri-no-jō, stands with Yasumitsu as one of the twin pillars of the early-Muromachi Bizen smiths the published sources group together as Ōei-Bizen (応永備前). In the Ōei era (1394 to 1428), after the great *ōdachi* of the late Nanbokuchō had fallen out of fashion, smiths such as Morimitsu, Yasumitsu, Iesuke and Tsuneie revived the Osafune workshop with work of notably elevated refinement, and the published commentary on a dated *tachi* of 1405 names him, with Yasumitsu, "the most technically complete smith" of the group (康光と並んで技術が最も充実した工). The sword-mei reference works record him as of the line of Osafune Moromitsu (師光), one tradition holding him Moromitsu's son. His dated work is plentiful and runs densely through the Ōei years, his oldest a *tachi* of Meitoku 5 (明徳五年), that is 1394, his cyclic dates reaching from the early Ōei into the 1420s. The ideal the Ōei-Bizen smiths pursued was a return to Kamakura, and the published sources say their work can at a glance recall the Ichimonji lineage and the classical Osafune of Mitsutada and Nagamitsu, in the graceful *tachi* proportions and in the revival of a *chōji*-bearing temper. What is Morimitsu's own, and the school's, declares itself elsewhere. His prime and typical hand is a large-patterned, flamboyant *midareba* built on a *koshibiraki-gunome*, a *gunome* that opens wide at its waist, into which *chōji*, *ko-gunome* and angular and slightly pointed elements are mixed; *ashi* and *yō* enter abundantly, the line is *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie*, fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* run through it, bead-like *tobiyaki* sometimes scatter, and the *nioiguchi* is bright. Within this the gunome and chōji heads run broad and loosely rounded, a feature the published sources mark as his particular see-here: of one *tachi* they note that "chōji with rounded heads are observed" (頭の丸い丁子), and of his finest that the heads of the *midare* are "as loosely and broadly rounded as could be" (乱れの頭がいかにもゆったりと丸い), in which his strengths show most plainly. It is the working distinction a collector draws against Yasumitsu, whose *midare* heads tend rather to point. The forging beneath is an *itame* mixed with *mokume*, with some *nagare* and a tendency for the grain to stand, the *jihada* carrying fine *ji-nie* and, in the larger pieces, a *chikei*-like dark steel woven through it. Over this the *jigane* throws up *utsuri*, most often a *midare-utsuri* but frequently, as the published sources note of this school, a *bō-utsuri*, a linear reflection standing along the *ha*; on the calmer blades a clear *sugu-utsuri* runs by the edge. The *bōshi* turns *midare-komi* and points, the tongue-shaped tip the judges liken to a candle-wick, the "rōsoku no shin" (ローソクの芯) they return to again and again as the defining Ōei-Bizen turnback. The carving is the other constant: a *bō-hi*, often with a *soe-hi*, finished round above the *machi* in *maru-dome*, a school tell, and on the lower body religious *horimono* in the Osafune carving tradition the published sources trace from Nagamitsu and Kagemitsu, *bonji*, a *sankoken*, *gomabashi*, *Kurikara* (倶利迦羅) and carved deity names, among them "Hachiman Daibosatsu" (八幡大菩薩). The published sources name two hands in him. Beside the flamboyant *midare* they record a quiet and elegant *suguha*, a *chū*- or *hoso-suguha* of *ko-nie-deki* whose *nioiguchi* is tight, bright and clear, faintly broken with *ko-gunome* and a sunken *saka-ashi*, the edge sometimes frayed with *hotsure* into a *kuichigai-ba*; on it the *bōshi* runs straight to a *ko-maru* with a slightly pointed turn. This second hand they call comparatively scarce in him: in the commentary on a wakizashi the NBTHK writes flatly that "compared with Yasumitsu, Morimitsu has few examples in suguha" (康光に比して、盛光には直刃の作例は少ない), which is the chief discriminator between the twin pillars, Morimitsu the more *chōji*-rich and flamboyant, Yasumitsu the more given to the calm straight temper. A third, temporal manner the published sources draw from his oldest dated blades: the Meitoku 5 *tachi* and the earliest Ōei pieces work small-patterned, a *gunome* with *ko-notare* and varied teeth that runs close to the previous era's *ko-reba* (small-curvature) school, the signature too cut small in the older manner, and the judges prize these as material for studying his transition into full Ōei-Bizen. Where his suguha hand grows most archaic it borders the late-Kamakura Osafune, and the published sources note that one such *tachi* "at a glance recalls Kagemitsu or the Unrui, but the bōshi differs" (一見すると景光や雲類等をおもわせるが、帽子が異っており), the candle-wick turn the feature that gives the Ōei date away; of another they say it could be "mistaken for late-Kamakura Osafune or the Unrui." A *suguha* carrying *saka-ashi* can in turn evoke Aoe, yet here too the standing *mokume*-bearing *itame* and the *sakizori* *sugata* settle the appraisal on Morimitsu. The lineage closes downstream as well: the 盛光 name continued, and one *tachi*'s commentary states that "the dates seen in his work run from Ōei into Bunmei, and across that span a first and a second generation exist" (その作刀にみる年紀は応永から文明に亘っており、その間、初、二代が存在する). The corpus on record is overwhelmingly the Ōei *shodai*, the Shuri-no-jō; with Yasumitsu he is the standard by which later Sue-Bizen looked back, the *koshibiraki-gunome* and candle-wick *bōshi* carried forward as the Bizen mainstream of the later Muromachi. He is graded *Jō-jō saku* by Fujishiro, and the designation record behind his name is substantial: three of his blades are Important Cultural Properties, with five at Tokubetsu Jūyō and forty-eight at Jūyō, fifty-three in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers together. He left accomplished work in every form, *tachi*, *katana*, wakizashi and *tanto*, and a relatively large number survive; the published sources call several his masterworks, naming one *tachi* "the white of Morimitsu's work" (盛光中の白眉), handed down in the Kishū Tokugawa Family. The provenance recorded against his blades carries names of standing, the Kishū Tokugawa, the Akimoto, Nanbu and Satake families, the Imperial Family, and shrine collections at Tanzan and Yasukuni. A handful are held forever in the Important Cultural Property tier and can never come to market; his Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō blades are heritage long held, in public collections and in old private hands, and come into open circulation only from time to time. For a leading Ōei-Bizen master they are not beyond a patient collector's reach, but neither are they readily found, and a signed and dated Morimitsu of the Shuri-no-jō is a thing of consequence whenever it appears.

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