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About the school

Sa School左派

In Chikuzen Province, on the northern coast of Kyushu, the Sa school (左, the Samonji line) took shape in the early Nanbokucho period as a deliberate break with the Kyushu work that came before it. Its founder, the smith who cut the single character 左 on his tang, is read in the published sources as Saemon Saburo, commonly called O-Sa or Samonji; he is placed as the grandson of Sairen and son of Jitsua, the old Chikuzen line whose steel, in the words the NBTHK restates blade after blade, ran sunken and rustic in a restrained *suguha* inherited from Yamato. The Muromachi sword books count O-Sa among the pupils of Masamune, and his study under the *Soshu-den* masters of Sagami is the pivot of the school's identity: against his forebears' provincial manner he is the reformer who established a clear, unprovincial *midare*, lifting Chikuzen work to a rank it had not before held. The single-character 左 signature, often paired with 筑州住 on the reverse, became the mark of a lineage rather than one hand, and around the founder a large body of pupils formed. What the Sa smiths held in common is a steel that runs bright and clear where the older Kyushu work ran dark. The shared vocabulary is a well-knit *itame*, tight *ko-itame* on the small *tanto* and standing more open on the grand *katana*, carrying dust-fine *ji-nie* and frequent dark *chikei*, the recurring institutional verdict being that *ji* and *ha* alike run limpid and lucid, free of the whiteness or blackness of lesser Kyushu steel. Over that ground the school tempers a *Soshu-den* *notare* mixed with *gunome* and *ko-gunome*, the *nie* deep and the *nioiguchi* bright, with *ashi* and *yo* entering and fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* drawn through the *ha*; the *boshi* thrusts up (*tsukiage*) to a pointed tip with a long brushed return, the one structural trait the judges look to across the whole line. Within that idiom the hands diverge by degree. O-Sa stands alone for the brilliance of his bright Chikuzen *ji-nie* and forceful pointed *boshi*; among the pupils and the later Sue-Sa generations the published sources read individual registers, Yukihiro set nearest the master in refined *ko-itame*, Yasuyoshi carrying a Bizen temperament with a whitish *utsuri* that strays toward Kanemitsu, Kunihiro the boldest and highest-tempered *midare*, Yoshisada the smallest and most compact pattern, Sadayoshi and Hiroyasu the quieter *suguha*-toned manner, and Hiroyuki a continuous restrained *gunome*. The school as a whole carries the Sagami manner into Kyushu and transforms it. A collector seeks Sa-mon work for what the founder accomplished and for how legibly the school can be read. Kantei proceeds first through the ji and the point: the bright, clear *ji-nie* free of whiteness is what tells a Sa blade from its Soshu fellows when the thrusting, pointed *boshi* alone will not, and the whole record divides cleanly into signed *hira-zukuri* *tanto* of fine flowing chisel and *osuriage-mumei* *katana* papered as Den Sa or simply to the school. O-Sa's own standing is the highest the Kyushu tradition reached, a Sai-jo saku hand whose register runs from the small signed *tanto* to the wide Nanbokucho *katana* held together as one hand by that limpid *ji* and *ha*; signature works such as the Kosetsu Samonji, his only signed *tachi* to survive, and named *meibutsu* held in the Owari Tokugawa, Date, Sakai, Tachibana, and Uesugi houses anchor his place, one *katana* having passed through Hideyoshi's hands. The pupils support that standing as members of the line rather than rivals to it: a signed Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, or Yoshisada, or a securely papered Den Sa *katana* attributed to Kunihiro, Hiroyasu, Hiroyuki, or Sadayoshi, comes to open hands only rarely, and a signed O-Sa *tanto* is a landmark of a collection when it appears. For the student of *Soshu-den*, the Sa school is the place where the Sagami manner becomes a Kyushu one, and a Sa-mon blade in private keeping is a tangible record of that transformation.

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