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About the maker

Hasebe Kunishige國重

His National Treasure is the meibutsu Heshikiri Hasebe, the wakizashi long held by the Kuroda of Fukuoka, and the published sources reach for it when they want to fix his standing: among the unsigned works whose quality "compels assent to a direct connection with Masamune" (正宗との直結を首肯せしむる), the Heshikiri stands first. Hasebe Kunishige is the head of the Hasebe school, the Soshu tradition carried out of Sagami and resettled in Kyoto, at Gojo-bomon Inokuma, and he is counted in the old reckoning among the Masamune-juttetsu. The published record now favours a route for the school in which its "home province was Yamato" (本国は大和), that it matured in Soshu, and that it settled last in the capital; the Yamato substrate is exactly what shows through the Soshu manner in his steel. With the Nobukuni school the Hasebe are named as the pair that represent the Yamashiro smiths of Nanbokucho, and within his own line Kunishige and Kuninobu, transmitted as his younger brother or his pupil, are the two representative hands. The hand the published sources describe and then repeat almost word for word, text after text, is set against the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who worked the same flamboyant hitatsura in the same years. Soshu hitatsura takes choji and gunome as the base of its hamon, and its boshi "thrusts up and returns with a pointed tendency" (突き上げて尖りごころに返る); Hasebe builds instead from notare mixed with gunome, and his boshi is "large and round" (帽子が大きく丸く), the return burned far down so that it runs straight on into the muneyaki. That much is the surface of the kantei. Beneath it lies the single sharpest tell, which the texts name in nearly every entry: in the forging a masame strain "uncommon in Soshu shows conspicuously toward the edge side and the ridge side" (相州には少ない柾気が刃寄りと棟寄りに著しく), the Yamato grain surfacing where Sagami work shows none. To these the published sources add the very thin kasane of his construction as a habitual trait. His jigane is itame, standing out across the surface, the ha-yori and mune-yori flowing into nagare and masame, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering; on the broadest pieces it carries a jifu-like tone. Over it the temper is notare mixed with gunome, ashi and yo entering, the nioiguchi deep, ko-nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi running frequently and long, until tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki worked over ji and mune carry the whole into hitatsura. The boshi runs midare-komi with hakikake, rounded, the return burned far down. The carvings are bonji and suken, gomabashi, and grooves cut near the mune. The form is the period itself: hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, wide in mihaba, thin in kasane, sunnobi with a shallow sori, which the published sources read as the very build of a Nanbokucho hira-zukuri wakizashi. The work divides into four manners. The mainstream is the wide, thin, sunnobi hira-zukuri wakizashi and tanto with the full hitatsura just described. Beside it the texts expressly flag a quieter, rarer pole: his style "takes hitatsura as its type, but rarely" (皆焼をもって典型とするが、稀に) one sees a suguha or a shallow large notare, the edge fraying into hotsure and nijuba, the tobiyaki only slight; of one such piece a published source remarks that the workmanship "at a glance suggests an upper-rank Soshu hand" (一見相州伝上工を思わせる), and notes that this is not uncommon for Kunishige. His tachi-length work survives almost wholly as o-suriage mumei katana, the attribution carried by a kinzogan-mei the texts read as the brush of Hon'ami Mitsutsune; on these the hamon is a florid gunome-midare with ko-notare and a choji-like element, the mune tempered overall. Last is the body of signed work: most pieces carry Hasebe Kunishige in five characters near the centre of the nakago, the kuni-gamae at times enclosing gyoku or o, and the differing signatures with the spread of dates lead the published sources to an old theory of several smiths of one name working as a succession of generations. Reliably signed tachi are the rarest of all; the texts call "surviving examples of signed tachi extremely few" (有銘の太刀の遺例は極めて稀), prizing the handful that remain, slender and older in tone, as study material. What sets him apart is best read against the Sagami pair he worked beside, and it is his own grounded traits that draw the line. His notare-and-gunome hamon, his round boshi with its long return into the muneyaki, and above all the masame at the ha-yori and mune-yori separate him from the choji-and-gunome hitatsura and pointed boshi of Hiromitsu and Akihiro. The published sources read his quality high in the tradition: the kinzogan katana of the shogunal house they acclaim as "a superior piece attributed to this smith, overflowing with vigour" (覇気横溢した同工極めの優品), and the rare tachi as showing the high-rank Soshu-den character at its best. The Heshikiri itself, an o-suriage blade whose original signature survives as a gaku-mei, is cited again and again as the work whose excellence confirms the Masamune connection, the foundation of his place among the juttetsu. His dated pieces begin at Bunwa 4 (1355), the reliably oldest, which the published sources call "the touchstone of Hasebe study" (長谷部研究のつけ石); an older Jowa-dated tachi exists but is held still to need research, so the Bunwa 4 piece anchors the chronology, with later dates running through Enbun, Joji, Oan and into Eiwa. He is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, with a Toko Taikan valuation of 1,000. The weight of designation behind his name is heavy: his one National Treasure, the Heshikiri Hasebe, sits above three Important Cultural Properties and Important Art Objects, and beneath them forty-seven blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. The National Treasure and the Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, preserved as heritage and never to trade; the institutional holders recorded against his name include Atsuta Jingu, the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums and the Tokugawa Art Museum. His o-suriage kinzogan katana descend in the Tokugawa shogunal house, recorded as shogunal transmissions. The denrai roll runs through the daimyo houses: a Juyo wakizashi was received by the founding lord Honda Yasutoshi "when Shogun Hidetada made his official visit to Zeze Castle on the fourteenth day of the ninth month of Genna 3" (元和三年九月十四日、将軍秀忠が膳所城御成り) and descended in the Honda house thereafter; a Jubi tanto of Enbun 2 passed in the Naruse house, lords of Inuyama; and the Heshikiri itself was long held by the Kuroda of Chikuzen. Several of his Juyo blades carry Hon'ami origami. What a private collector may realistically encounter is one of the wakizashi or tanto of the tradeable tier, and even those reach the market only from time to time; a signed Hasebe Kunishige is a landmark when one appears, and the National Treasure and the great daimyo pieces are held, not traded.

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