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About the maker

Chogi Yoshikage義景

Two of Yoshikage's signed blades carry a date, one to Enbun 2 (1357) and one to Ōan 7 (1374), and on these few inscribed pieces the whole of his record rests. He is a Bizen Osafune smith of the Nanbokuchō period, counted among the makers the published sources call *Sōden-Bizen* (相伝備前), the Osafune hands who worked the Sōshū-influenced manner in Bizen beside the lines of Kanemitsu and Nagayoshi. His lineage has long been argued. The older books made him a second son of Kagemitsu, or a pupil of Kanemitsu, or a pupil of Nagayoshi; in recent years, on the close resemblance of his workmanship and the distinctive way he cut his signature with the reverse chisel, the prevailing view is that he was "a collateral Osafune smith of the same kin as Chikakage and Morikage" (近景や盛景らと同族の長船傍系の刀工ではないか). The sword registers transmit two generations, a first toward the end of Kamakura and a second around Jōji, and authentic signed works are so scarce that the two are not easily separated. The hand the published sources describe is a small-patterned, varied *midare* rather than the orthodox Osafune clove-flower. Over the *jigane* he tempers a *suguha* base into which he mixes *ko-gunome*, *ko-chōji*, angular *kakubaru-ba* and pointed *togariba*, the elements kept small and the intervals of the undulation tight, so that the line reads as densely animated yet modest in pattern. Within it run abundant *ashi*, *saka-ashi* and *yō*, the temper *nioi*-dominant with *ko-nie* that gathers somewhat in clusters, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* worked through and a slight *yubashiri*-like *tobiyaki* intermingled. The *nioiguchi* tends to subside, and it is exactly there that the judges locate him: in the Sōden-Bizen group, the published sources hold, "where the *hamon* keeps to small clusters and the *nioiguchi* subsides lies the point that marks out Yoshikage" (匂口が沈むものに義景の見どころがあり). The *bōshi* runs *midare-komi* with a pointed tendency and *hakikake*, on one Tokubetsu Jūyō katana turning at the tip in a pointed manner that the commentary names as conspicuously his own. The *jigane* is the constant beneath that quiet temper. It is an *itame* mixed with *mokume* that tends to stand, a *hada-dachi* into which fine *ji-nie* settles densely, *chikei* enters well, and a *jifu*-toned texture appears in places, with a *midare-utsuri* standing in the surface. On the broadest blades the *ji-nie* is laid *mijin*, dust-fine and thick, and the *chikei* runs strong. This strongly *nie*-laden forging, with its frequent *kinsuji* and *sunagashi*, is what the prewar connoisseurs read when they placed him without hesitation among the Sōshū-den smiths, and what the modern judges mean when they say a blade "manifests the working range of Sōden-Bizen." His recognized prime is the broad Nanbokuchō blade in the height-of-period shape: wide in body with little taper from base to tip, the *kasane* often notably thick, ending in a large point, and surviving for the most part *ō-suriage* and *mumei*. Against this stand the rare signed pieces, which skew quieter: one Jūyō *tachi* is essentially *suguha-chō*, subdued in workmanship, that the published sources keep precisely because authentic signatures are so few and it is valuable as reference. A separate register is the *naginata-naoshi*, blades reshaped from the polearm, for the published sources call him "an old master of the naginata" (古来薙刀の上手) and a large share of his attributions take that form, wide-bodied and shallow in *sori*, the *shinogi-ji* planed down, sometimes keeping traces of the *naginata-hi* and *soe-hi* on the tang. The two dated signatures, of Enbun and Ōan, fix this varied output securely in the mid-to-late Nanbokuchō. What separates Yoshikage from his neighbours is what the judges name on his own blades. Within Sōden-Bizen his temper is read as "neither Kanemitsu's nor Nagayoshi's" (兼光でもなく、長義でもなく): smaller in pattern than the orthodox Osafune *chōji*, more subdued in the *nioiguchi* than the showier Chōgi hand, and laid over a *jigane* that carries a step more *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* than the Kanemitsu work. His signature, cut with the reverse chisel, is read in the same breath as his kantei, the commentary treating "the distinctive signature cut with the reverse chisel" (逆鏨にきる特色ある銘振り) as one of the marks that fixes both his hand and his kinship to the collateral Osafune line. He stands, in short, as the quiet, *nie*-laden member of the Sōden-Bizen circle, the one whose interest lies in restraint rather than in flame. For the collector Yoshikage is a scarce name on which little can ever change hands. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through two Important Cultural Properties, one a signed *wakizashi* dated Ōan 7 held at Tanzan Shrine in Nara, the other a signed *tachi*, together with three Tokubetsu Jūyō and some sixty Jūyō blades, and the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin. Of recorded whereabouts his blades pass through long-held hands rather than the open market: a *tachi* once in the Date family, another transmitted in the Arisugawa-no-miya house, a katana whose tang bears the gold-inlaid possession inscription of Ōkubo Shirōzaemon-no-jō. The published commentary singles out his finest *naginata-naoshi* as "foremost among works by the same hand" (同工中の屈指). With reliably signed pieces extremely few and most survivors *ō-suriage* and *mumei*, a Yoshikage in private hands comes to light only from time to time, and seldom near the top of his range; when one does, it is a quiet document of how the Sōshū manner was carried into late Osafune.

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