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About the maker

Ishido Korekazu是一

Korekazu, by common name Masatarō, was the seventh-generation head of the Edo Ishidō line, the house that carried the Bizen *chōji* tradition into the capital and kept it alive through the Shinshintō revival of the nineteenth century. The published sources fix his biography in a nearly fixed formula repeated across his designation entries: he was a nephew of the Yonezawa domain smith Katō Chōunsai Tsunatoshi, learned forging first under Tsunatoshi, then married into and succeeded the sixth Ishidō Korekazu, and died in Meiji 24 (1891) at the age of seventy-five. His working life ran from the closing years of Tenpō into early Meiji, and comparatively many of his blades survive, nearly all of them signed and dated katana. He stands among the leading masters of the late Edo period; the published commentary ranks his skill alongside Jirōtarō Naokatsu and Hosokawa Masayoshi. His hand is defined not by a motif but by a method, and the published sources state it the same way again and again. His works divide broadly into two modes, *Bizen-den* and *Sōshū-den*, but his true strength lay in the Bizen *chōji* that may be called the hereditary specialty of the Ishidō house. Where the other *Shinshintō* smiths working in the Bizen manner tempered their *chōji* in *nioi-deki*, Korekazu tempered his in *nie-deki*, and the commentary locates his originality precisely there, summing it up as the work of a smith popularly described as having "tempered Bizen-style *chōji-midare* in *nie*" (備前伝の丁子乱れを沸で焼いた), so that "in this one can discern his originality" (ここに彼の独創性が窺える). Over a well-packed *ko-itame* he sets a *chōji* mixed with *gunome*, *ko-chōji*, *ko-gunome* and slightly pointed elements, the *ashi* entering long and frequently, the *nioi* deep, the *nie* thick with patches of coarser *nie* that leave the temper a little uneven, and through it run *sunagashi* and long *kinsuji*. It is a Bizen pattern carried on a Sōshū base, and the *sunagashi* threading nearly four of every five of his blades is the visible proof of it. The *jigane* is the constant that underwrites the temper. His *ko-itame* is tightly forged, at times mixing flowing grain or *mokume*, the *ji-nie* laid in a dust-fine, thick cover with fine *chikei* entering frequently, and where the forging tightens hardest it approaches a *muji-fū*, near-featureless surface. The published sources single this forging out as especially strong even within his own work. The *bōshi* runs *midare-komi* to a *ko-maru*, often with *hakikake* at the tip and on his boldest pieces a flame-like sweep, and one entry notes that the handling of the *bōshi* betrays the mannerisms of his teacher Tsunatoshi, allowing a stylistic line to be drawn back to the older smith. The blades themselves are robust *ubu* katana, wide in body with thick *kasane*, the *sori* from shallow to deep and the point a long *chū-kissaki* or a generous *ō-kissaki*, the tang cut with bold *ō-sujikai* *keshō* file marks and a long six-character signature. Within this one perfected manner the published sources read a style split rather than a sequence of periods. The Bizen *nie-deki chōji* is the core and the bulk of the record, and the judges call its finest examples the typical and outstanding work of the smith. The *Sōshū-den* register he himself claimed as a strength stands beside it: here the grain rises and flows rather than packs, and the temper turns toward *ko-notare* and *gunome* carried in *nie* with *sunagashi*, a manner allied to the Sōshū-leaning *nie* work fashionable in his day. The Ansei 2 (1855) *daishō* with its formal *rō-nuri* mounting and the Aizu collaboration with Kakuda-suke Gengō, where Gengō forged the blade and Korekazu set the temper, are its successes, the latter a sword the judges found to seem "entirely the work of Korekazu" (全く是一の作と見える). A third, rarer face is the quiet one: on rare occasions he made *suguha*, and one Ansei 5 katana is singled out as comparatively gentle and restrained for him, a *suguha-chō* with *gunome* over a *muji-fū* *jigane*. Because all three share his deep-*nioi*, *nie-deki* temper, they read as one *nie*-based hand worked over different *jigane* rather than as opposed styles. What sets Korekazu apart within the crowded Bizen revival is therefore not a feature but a technique, and the published sources are careful to draw the line the same way each time. Many *Shinshintō* smiths could reproduce the *chōji-midare* of old Bizen in *nioi*; Korekazu held the house *chōji* but forged it in *nie*, deep in *nioi* and thick in *nie*, with *sunagashi*, *kinsuji* and *nie-suji* working within the edge and a bright, clear *nioiguchi*. The link to Tsunatoshi is real and acknowledged in the *bōshi*, yet the *nie-deki* approach is his own departure from his teacher's tighter *nioi*-bound *chōji*. He is the smith who took the most academic of the *Shinshintō* programs, the literal copying of Kamakura Bizen, and made it personal by changing how the steel was hardened rather than what pattern it drew. For the collector Korekazu is one of the more attainable of the major *Shinshintō* names, and his record should be read for what it is. Fujishiro grades him *Jō saku*, and the *Tōkō Taikan* values him at four hundred. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his standing rests instead on the modern designation tiers, where roughly two dozen of his katana have reached the Jūyō rank across sessions spanning from 1964 to 2022, a steady presence that reflects how many sound, dated, signed works of his survive. The published commentary repeatedly calls his best the representative and typical work of the smith, and of one Jūyō katana it writes that it is "a blade in which the true specialty of Korekazu is brought forth without reservation, demonstrating an exceptionally distinguished workmanship" (運寿是一の本領が遺憾無く発揮された一口で、秀抜な出来映えを示している). Among the recorded provenance is one blade held by the Imperial Family. His pieces also carry the texture of their late-Edo moment: one bears a carved slogan voicing the *jōi* ("expel the barbarians") sentiment of the day, and a Sanada-commissioned katana is inscribed in *man'yōgana* with the line "this tachi holds but one stored intent, to protect, indeed, for my lord" (この太刀に貯めし心は身一つよ、守るたまかは我が君のため). A signed, dated Korekazu katana comes to the serious collector with some regularity rather than as a once-in-a-lifetime event, and a well-made example in his hallmark *nie-deki chōji* is among the most rewarding ways to hold a piece of the Bizen tradition's final flowering.

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