Maeda Daimyo Fudo Tomoshige Tanto With NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon Certificate
Price on request
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Specifications
24.9 cm
About the school
Fujishima School藤島派
Among the provincial lineages of the Hokurikudo, the Fujishima school took its name and its base from the village of Fujishima in Kaga province, where Tomoshige stands as founder and the name he set down passed through several generations from the close of the Nanbokucho period across the Muromachi and on into the early-modern Shinto era. The members place the chronological anchor with care: the earliest firmly dated work is a *tanto* of Oei 2 (1395), and the NBTHK finds nothing among the surviving blades that goes back earlier than Nanbokucho. Old documentary tradition reads the first generation as a pupil of Rai Kunitoshi of Yamashiro, alternatively of Kashu Sanekage or Rai Toshimune, but the published sources doubt each reading in turn, finding no stylistic tie to Rai Kunitoshi and a chronological impossibility with Sanekage; judging from the make and the *nakago* finish, they settle by elimination toward the Yamato tradition, close to the Yamato Shikkake hand. A *tachi* held at Atsuta Shrine and a two-character *ken* read as the oldest surviving piece bracket the early end of the line. The recognition of the school lives in its *jigane*. The members agree on a board-grained *itame* that mixes in *mokume* and runs to *nagare*, standing somewhat open (*hada-dachi*), the surface gathering *ji-nie* and *chikei*, the steel carrying a distinct blackish cast named *kan'a-iro* and tied directly to the northern provinces as *hokkoku-hada*; a faint whitish *shirake-utsuri* rises quietly against this dark ground rather than a bright Bizen reflection. Over that ji the school tempers a *gunome-midare* into which box-shaped (*hako-ba*), pointed and angular (*togariba*) teeth enter together with *notare* and *ko-notare*, the *ashi* running rather long, the *ha* *nie*-laden with *sunagashi* sweeping it and *kinsuji* entering, small *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki* scattered here and there. The NBTHK reads the feel of it as a make in which Bizen temperament and Mino flavor coexist, the *boshi* running straight or *midare-komi* into a *ko-maru*, often swept with *hakikake* or running to *yakizume*. The members also mark the short blades apart: on the *tanto* the hand can quiet to a *ko-itame* and a narrow *hoso-suguha* or low *ko-gunome* with *ko-nie*, the *nioiguchi* sometimes clouding to *urumi*, the boshi turning *jizo*-like or returning deep, this the simplest face of the Yamato base while the dark steel keeps its northern mark. To *kantei* a Fujishima blade the eye works the conjunction rather than any single trait: the standing dark ji read together with the box-and-pointed midare and the constant *sunagashi* names the school where a clean Bizen *choji* or a true Yamashiro *ko-itame* would not. The members note works read variously toward an Aoe air, toward Naoe Shizu and Sekishu Naotsuna, the Mino and northern lines the school sits between, kin in feel to the Etchu and Echizen smiths of the same region. Among the membership Tomoshige carries the name and the standing; Fujishiro rates the founder Chu-jo saku and places others among the middle ranks of the koto smiths, and the most highly regarded work falls in the Oei generation while the Muromachi work survives most often. The single finest piece is a great spear (*o-mi-yari*) signed Fujishima Tomoshige and carved with a *sanko-ken* and the deity-name Myoken Daibosatsu, which the published sources judge not merely the best spear of the school but one of the representative famous spears of its age; surviving *naginata* by the line are noted as rare, their *ubu-nakago* valued as dating evidence. Provenance gathers around named houses recorded in the blades themselves, an Oei *katana* descended in the Inaba daimyo house and a tanto held in the Imperial collection, heritage pieces in long-standing hands; yet the line is not among the unattainable names, and a Juyo Tomoshige remains a realistic if uncommon encounter for the patient collector, valued for the way a single dark-steeled blade carries the whole northern school in its ji.
