NihontoWatchHozon Token Shinshinto Mumei Keishinsai Naomasa with Koshirae. 幕末、相馬中村藩の名工、慶心斎直正の作品。 本作は古刀を写した物で、凄い刃を焼いています。 刀身は71.7cmで研ぎ上がり状態、柄巻も新品、鑑賞のみならず居合にも最適です。 A work by Keishinsai Naomasa, a renowned swordsmith of the Soma-Nakamura domain in the late Edo period. This piece is an utsushi (reproduction) of a kotō, featuring an outstanding hamon. The blade measures 71.7 cm, is in freshly polished condition, and the tsuka-maki is newly done. It is ideal not only for appreciation but also for Iaido. 「刀姿 sword figure」 鎬造り庵棟、身幅重尋常、鳥居反り中鋒。茎は磨り揚げられ切鑢がかかる、茎尻は一文字に切られる。 「地鉄 jigane」 地鉄は板目肌が流れ柾となり、地沸付く。 「刃紋 hamon」 刃紋は沸出来の互の目乱れ、刃縁沸が付き砂流しかかり、刃中は金筋が栄んに働く。釯子は乱れ込み小丸に返る。 「特徴 detailed」 慶心斎直正、江戸時代末の相馬中村藩の藩工、大慶直胤の門、銘は「中村臣慶心斎直正作之」「宮崎越前守直正作之」等と切る。 明治12年11月24日没。 本作は、元々薄錆が多く地刃が曇っていたので研ぎ直したところ、見事な地鉄と金筋が栄んに入った素晴らしい刀身が蘇えりました。これは、もしかしたら相州伝上位の磨り揚げ物かと思い。 日本美術刀剣保存協会の審査に出したのですが、結果は「無銘 慶心斎直正」に極められました。想像するに古刀の写しを狙って作った物でしょう。 しかし慶心斎直正の技術は凄く、ここまで古刀を写せるのかと感服しました。 刀身は4月に研ぎ上がったばかり、柄巻は5月に巻替えたばかりの新品です。長さも2尺3寸7分あり、反り頃合い、バランスも良く鑑賞のみならず、居合にも最適です。 なおNBTHKの鑑定書は到着次第、発送します Keishinsai Naomasa was the official swordsmith of the Soma-Nakamura domain in the late Edo period and a disciple of Taikei Naotane. He signed his works as “Nakamura Shin Keishinsai Naomasa Saku Kore” and “Miyazaki Echizen no Kami Naomasa Saku Kore,” among others. He passed away on November 24, 1879 (Meiji 12). This piece originally had heavy surface rust and the jihada and hamon were obscured, but after being polished, a magnificent blade was revealed, displaying beautifully forged steel and abundant kin-suji activity. At first glance, it appeared to me that it might have been a suriage work from the upper-level Sōshū tradition. I submitted it to the NBTHK (Society for the Preservation of the Japanese Art Sword) for appraisal, and the result was attribution as “Mumei – Keishinsai Naomasa.” It is likely that this blade was made as an intentional utsushi (reproduction) of a kotō. The skill of Keishinsai Naomasa is truly remarkable, to the point that I was deeply impressed at how faithfully he could replicate the work of the old masters. The blade was freshly polished in April, and the tsuka-maki was rewrapped in May, so both are like new. With a length of 2 shaku 3 sun 7 bu, an elegant curvature, and excellent balance, this sword is not only ideal for appreciation but also highly suitable for Iaido practice. The NBTHK certificate of authenticity will be shipped as soon as it arrives. 「拵 Koshirae」 ハバキ(habaki) :銀無垢一重の腰祐乗。 鍔(tsuba) :鉄地丸形雲形影透かし。 縁頭(futikasira):赤銅魚子地金象嵌花鳥風月の図。 目貫(menuki) :赤銅地金色絵藤の図。 柄(tsuka) :鮫は親粒が付く。柄巻は正絹黒の諸撮み巻。 鞘(saya) :黒呂。 「刀剣の状態 condition of blade」 研:4月に研ぎ上げたばかりです。 傷:欠点に成るような傷は有りません。
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Shinshinto · Mutsu · around 1864-1865
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At Hamachō in Edo, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nineteenth, Suishinshi Masahide[[c:1]] gathered the school that would turn Japanese swordmaking back toward its medieval models. Born Kawabe Gihachirō at Akayu in Dewa in 1750, signing first as Suzuki Takahide and then Eikoku, he studied under the Shitahara smith Yoshihide of Musashi, took the name Masahide in An'ei 3, and served the Akimoto house of Yamagata before settling in Edo, where he worked for nearly fifty years. He is the founding figure of the shinshintō and the theorist of the fukko-tō (revival-sword) doctrine, the argument that the sword ought to return to its Kamakura forms. Around that teaching he drew a large body of pupils, among them Taikei Naotane, who would give the revival its fullest practical form, the future second Masayoshi (Hosokawa Morihide), and a wider Edo and provincial following that carried the program into the Mito, Yonezawa, Tsuyama, and Tatebayashi domains. The shared vocabulary of the school is the deliberate reach back into the koto traditions, worked over a tightly forged, often muji-toned ko-itame with thick ji-nie. Masahide's own prime hand was the Ōsaka-utsushi, the surging tōran-midare of Tsuda Sukehiro opening from a long yakidashi and the broad suguha after Inoue Shinkai, betrayed on even his closest copies by a blackish, coarse nie that spills from the ha into the ji. Naotane gave the revival its Bizen and Sōshū faces: a reverse-leaning chōji-midare with angular kaku-gunome and saka-ashi, modeled on the late-Kamakura Osafune masters Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu and anchored by a consciously revived midare-utsuri that no ordinary shinshintō steel carries, set beside a Sōshū notare with its whorled uzumaki-hada and coarse, striped nie. The pupils divided this inheritance along their own lines. Jirōtarō Naokatsu, Naotane's adopted son, took a Bizen-den led by a kataochi-gunome from Kanemitsu with a pervasive saka-gakari slant and chōji- or midare-utsuri in the ji.
Suishinshi Masatsugu reproduced Naotane's two traditions, Sōshū and Bizen, down to the cut of his signature. Through Masayoshi the Bizen current passed to his heir Hosokawa Masamori of Tsuyama, whose chōji clusters mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba. The Osaka wave traveled separately into Mito through Naoe Sukemasa, who set a Shinkai-styled suguha and a Sukehiro tōran over a clear ko-itame, while Chōunsai Tsunatoshi of the Uesugi service carried a nioi-deki chōji mixed with gunome, suguha, and tōran-midare, often with carving by his own hand. To kantei the school is to weigh a tradition consciously copied against the period marks the copy cannot shed: the constant of the line is that the hamon is never the pure nioi-deki of old Bizen but carries nie throughout, a difference the NBTHK names outright as the divide between koto and shinshintō. The revived utsuri in Naotane and Naokatsu, the spilling nie in Masahide, the whorled uzumaki-hada shared across the line, and the broad, thick-kasane late-Edo sugata are the surest tells, narrowed further by the school's habit of full, dated signatures that make these smiths among the most exactly knowable of their age. Masahide stands at the head as the teacher and theorist, his finest work in his Ōsaka copies rather than the doctrine he proclaimed; Naotane stands ahead of him in execution, his Bizen-den held the finest among the shinshintō. Their pupils define the late-Edo Osafune and Sōshū revivals as practiced through Edo and the domains, with Naokatsu and Masatsugu read as the next hands after Naotane and Masayoshi. The provenance of the school runs through domain commission and bestowal (Mito blades forged at the Kōrakuen by lordly order, Tsuyama and Yonezawa fief work, Naotane's Sanada daishō and a tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection) rather than ancient daimyō transmission, fitting for a movement that, within a single generation at Edo, redrew the direction of nineteenth-century swordmaking by turning it back toward the old models. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Naotane直胤 | 1801-1837 | 40 |
| Masahide正秀 | 1777-1817 | 28 |
| Sukemasa助政 | 1804-1825 | 8 |
| Jirotaro Naokatsu直勝 | 1805-1858 | 7 |
| Masayoshi正義 | 1791-1860 | 5 |
The Shinshintō revival
Around 1800 Suishinshi Masahide argued in his writings that the craft must return to the old masters’ methods: the fukkotō revival. His greatest successor Naotane worked convincingly in Bizen and Sōshū manners that had been dead for centuries.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official siteWithin 3 days of the item's arrival, we offer a refund or an exchange. Return shipping and the bank transfer fee for the refund are at the customer's expense.