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About the maker

Rai Kunitoshi國俊

A single dated work anchors the two-character Kunitoshi in time: a tachi inscribed in Koan 1 (1278), designated an Important Cultural Property and preserved in the Tokyo National Museum. Its maker, Kunitoshi of Yamashiro, cut his name in two characters only, without the character Rai, and the published sources accordingly call him Niji Kunitoshi, the two-character Kunitoshi, to part him from the smith who signed Rai Kunitoshi in three. He is traditionally recorded as the son of Rai Kuniyuki, and of the Rai mainline he stands closest to his father, down to details of forging and carving that the designation records trace from one hand to the other. He worked at the school's grand mid-Kamakura moment, and whether he and the three-character Rai Kunitoshi are one man or two remains the classic question of the Rai school, carried in nearly every published entry as an open verdict. The hand the published sources describe as typical is the most flamboyant in the Rai mainline. His blades run wide in mihaba with little taper from base to point, the kasane thick, the curve a deep wa-zori, the point a compact, stout ikubi-kissaki. Over this powerful build he burns a choji-dominant midare in ko-nie-deki, so showy that the records repeat the verdict of the old books that it "resembles the Bizen Ichimonji" (備前一文字などに似たり). Ashi and yo crowd into the ha, sunagashi and kinsuji stream through it, and yubashiri plays at the heads of the yaki. Patches of muneyaki lie along the back, a feature one entry names a habit of the Rai hand (来物の手癖). The Kyoto marks are stated just as plainly: the nie within the ha is markedly strong, the stated point of difference from Bizen; the utsuri that rises is, as a rule, a nie-utsuri; and the ashi, chiefly on the wearing side, slant back toward the nakago, opposite to the Bizen direction, the so-called kyo-sakaashi (京逆足). The jigane is in his father Kuniyuki's manner, an itame of comparatively large texture with a tendency to stand, under ji-nie laid thick and fine chikei, the steel bright. Beside the usual nie-utsuri a midare-utsuri rises on occasion; one Tokubetsu Juyo entry notes a midare-utsuri accompanied by a dark band as a rarity otherwise confirmed on signed works of Rai Kunitoshi and Ryokai, so that even his exceptions stay inside the school. On the flamboyant works the boshi runs in midare-komi, sweeps in hakikake, and often finishes near yakizume with considerable force, while the calmer works settle into a quiet ko-maru. Most blades carry bo-hi, and on more than one the groove at the koshimoto holds a suken in relief, a carving the published sources point out exists in the same form (同調の彫物) on work of Kuniyuki. Signed works are comparatively few, and nearly all of them are tachi. The published record long repeated that his tanto came to "merely one piece" (僅かに一口), the meibutsu Aizen Kunitoshi, an Important Cultural Property, until a second signed tanto was recognized at the 61st Juyo session and later raised to Tokubetsu Juyo, its signature judged on the close likeness of the character for Kuni to the dated Koan 1 tachi. It is on the signed blades that a second, quieter register concentrates: a chu- or hiro-suguha with ko-choji and ko-gunome over a tight ko-itame with dust-fine ji-nie, the boshi a calm ko-maru. The sources read a shu-mei tachi from the Kishu Tokugawa house as showing "a workmanship close to Kuniyuki" (国行に近接した出来口), judge the ubu tachi of the Owari Tokugawa "hardly different from Rai Kunitoshi" (来国俊と殆ど大差のない), and call a signed tachi in true suguha "precious material" (貴重な資料) should the one-smith theory be argued. The scholarship turns on exactly this. The dated examples of the two signatures span Koan 1 to Genko 1, about forty years, no impossible working life for a single smith; counted back from the Rai Kunitoshi tachi dated Showa 4 (1315) with an age of seventy-five, the same man would have been thirty-eight in Koan 1. Against this the Kaifunki draws the line another way: "the two-character Kunitoshi was Kuniyuki's heir and died young; Rai Kunitoshi was the second son, and from him the cutting of the character Rai began" (二字国俊是は国行が嫡子也。若時死たり。来国俊国行が二男也。是より来の字を打初むる). The most recent designation entries record that re-examination of workmanship and signatures has lately revived the one-smith view, prompting, in their words, a reconsideration of the two-smith position. Against the Ichimonji, the smiths his work most resembles, he is told by his own marks: the strength of the nie within the ha, the utsuri rising as a nie-utsuri, and the kyo-sakaashi slanting toward the nakago. One Juyo entry states the position from inside the school, placing him in a working range that, within the Rai school, can pass among the showy productions of the Ichimonji and Osafune. His place in the lineage is double. Upstream he is the nearest of the Rai smiths to Kuniyuki, sharing the standing itame, the muneyaki and the carving in the groove; downstream his calm signed suguha flows directly into the refined manner of the three-character Rai Kunitoshi. Brother, father or the same man's earlier self, he is the bridge over which the school's grand mid-Kamakura style passes into its late-Kamakura refinement. Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku, the highest rank. Eighty-four designated works stand on record: twenty-one Tokubetsu Juyo and forty-eight Juyo, sixty-nine blades in those two tiers together, with nine Juyo Bijutsuhin and four Important Cultural Properties above them, among the last the Aizen Kunitoshi and the dated Koan 1 tachi of the Tokyo National Museum. The meibutsu Torikai Kunitoshi, a kodachi of one shaku nine sun nine bu listed in the Meibutsucho, passed to the Owari Tokugawa after the death of Tokugawa Ieyasu and is held by the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation. The provenance roll is substantial: nineteen blades carry recorded histories through the Owari and Kishu Tokugawa, the Maeda, Hosokawa, Uesugi, Date, Asano, Yamauchi, Hachisuka and Matsudaira houses and the Imperial Family, one Owari blade entering the registers as a Suruga Tokugawa distribution piece ranked in the house's highest group (仁壹ノ廿), with Hon'ami origami of Genroku and Hoei attached to others. His Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, preserved in the Tokyo National Museum and in long-held collections, and of the remainder the recorded whereabouts run heavily to institutions and old families. For the private collector the realistic field is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, some sixty blades that can in principle change hands; in practice they are held far more often than they are traded, and a two-character Kunitoshi coming to market is a rare event, standing at the very top of the field when it does.

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