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About the maker

Mito (Swordsmiths) Tokukatsu徳勝

Katsumura Tokukatsu, commonly called Hikoroku, was born in Bunka 6 (1809) at Mito and was a retainer-smith of the Mito domain, dead on the twenty-ninth day of the second month of Meiji 5 (1872) at the age of sixty-four. The published sources set down his training in a fixed sequence: he first learned forging from the Mito domain smith Sekinai Tokumune, and in Kaei 5 (1852), sent up to Edo by order of the domain together with his disciple the first-generation Masakatsu, he studied in the circles of Hosokawa Masayoshi and the Ishidō master Ozaki Suketaka, also called Unju Korekazu. From the Bunkyū years he moved to the Mito domain residence at Koishikawa in Edo and left a considerable number of blades there. He belongs to the late-Edo Mito, or Suifu, school of the shinshintō period, and what fixes his name among its smiths is not his Edo Ishidō schooling but the manner he settled into afterward, a Yamato-den held to consistently for the rest of his working life. The published record draws that turn in plain terms. In his early period he followed his teacher Sekinai, forging an itame and tempering a gunome; then, as the sources put it, 「中期以降は大和伝に終始し」, from his middle period onward he kept entirely to the Yamato tradition, 「柾目鍛えに砂流しかかる直刃を焼いた」, forging in masame and tempering a suguha through which sunagashi runs. None of his designated blades is read as belonging to the early Sekinai face, so that itame-and-gunome manner survives in the texts as a point of departure rather than as an extant example, and every one of his recorded katana shows the masame-and-suguha hand of his maturity. That hand is the first thing to name in his work. The jigane is a masame-hada, closely packed yet tending in places slightly toward standing grain, with ji-nie adhering finely and at times a chikei-like windblown variation entering the surface; over it the temper is a chū-suguha base that takes a shallow notare and in places mixes in connected ko-gunome, the habuchi fraying into hotsure, sunagashi running frequently, kinsuji entering, and the nioiguchi bright. The straight grain and the frayed straight temper are the heart of his kantei, for they hold together across every blade and they are never the clean suguha he might have brought back from his Edo teachers. The masame stands tight rather than coarse, with the fine ji-nie scattered over it, and on the widest pieces the steel takes on flowing nagare-hada and leans further toward masame still. The suguha that sits on it is worked, not quiet: ko-ashi enter well, the nie forms strongly, and on the broadest blades a little tobiyaki appears near the monouchi. The bōshi completes the Yamato reading, straight and turning back in a small ko-maru on every piece, the point swept vigorously with hakikake. Of his first designated katana the published sources write 「この刀は徳勝の大和伝であり」, this sword is Tokukatsu's Yamato-den, and find in its masame, its frayed suguha, and a yakihaba that deepens toward the monouchi a careful attention to older models, judging that 「地刃ともによく沸づいて覇気がある」, both ji and ha are well covered in nie and the blade carries a forceful spirit. The sugata on which all this sits is its own tell, a body the published sources call the broad, long, thick-kasaned and shallow-sori construction of Mito swords, stout and martial in shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune. The lengths run long, from blades of a chū-kissaki drawn out to one of fully ninety centimetres finished in an ō-kissaki, and the kasane is thick throughout. Two registers stand apart within this single Yamato-den manner. Two of the katana the smith himself styled with a gō, Shōri, Victory, cutting the name into the blade, and the sources read these self-named pieces as works he held in particular regard. One katana of the thirty-first session carries horimono uncommon on his blades, two bonji set in overlap on one face and a sankō-ken in relief on the other, which the sources call rare for him and well-judged in its harmony with the sword. They name this same blade, with its deeper nioi and its conspicuous kinsuji and sunagashi, 「初代徳勝快心の一口である」, a fully satisfying piece by the first-generation Tokukatsu. What sets him within the Mito circle is held in that recurring word, the Yamato temperament the published sources find in him; they write of his designated work that 「大和気質が窺われる」, a Yamato disposition can be perceived, and read his finish as recalling the old Shikkake masters of the Yamato tradition. His own grounded traits make the distinction without recourse to comparison: the tight masame, the frayed and nie-laden suguha, and the vigorously swept ko-maru bōshi set his hand apart from the cleaner Ishidō suguha he had studied, and his blades wear that Yamato temper on a frankly Mito body, 「水戸刀特有の幅広・長寸」, the broad and long form characteristic of Mito swords. His disciple the first-generation Masakatsu, who had gone up to Edo with him by domain order, worked at his side, and on the katana of the forty-eighth session the sources reason from the manner of the signature that the long mei is 「正勝の代銘になるものと推せられる」, inferred to be a daimei cut by Masakatsu in the master's stead, the reading turning on the signature rather than on any departure in the workmanship, which is his customary Yamato-den. Tokukatsu's recognized work survives on five Important Sword designations, from the twenty-third session of 1975 through the sixty-sixth of 2020, all of them katana of the broad, long, thick-kasaned Mito build, signed in a long inscription in the Suifu-jū Katsumura Tokukatsu saku form or its variants, two of them styled by the smith himself with the gō Shōri. He has no National Treasure, no Important Cultural Property, and no Tokubetsu Jūyō on record, so the population a collector may realistically meet is this group of Jūyō katana and the signed blades of his that stand below them. The recorded pieces carry no documented daimyō or temple provenance; their standing rests instead on what the published sources praise on each, the soundness of ji and ha, the deep nioi and bright nioiguchi of his best, and the rarity of a Mito Yamato-den blade good enough to reach the Jūyō level. A signed Tokukatsu, its masame tight and its frayed suguha sound in ji and ha, is among the surer ways to hold the late-Edo Mito hand in a single blade, a shinshintō smith more readily met than the great koto Yamato names yet seen only from time to time, a deliberate acquisition when one appears rather than a chance one.

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