¥8,500,000

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About the maker

Fukuoka Ichimonji Yoshimoto吉元

Yoshimoto is a Bizen smith of the Fukuoka Ichimonji group whose readable record is small and uncommonly distinguished: three blades at the Juyo rank, including a katana carrying a kiwame gold-inlaid signature, and two tachi designated Juyo Bijutsuhin before the war, one of them published in the Kozan Oshigata. The Fukuoka Ichimonji was the Bizen school that arose in the early Kamakura period with Norimune as its founder and that, by the mid-Kamakura, brought the choji temper to its most consciously decorative maturity, mixing large choji, layered double-flower choji and frog-spawn choji with abundant ashi and yo. The name Yoshimoto sits across two lineages in the Meikan, one strand among the Fukuoka Ichimonji and one among the Osafune smiths, and the published sources note that the second generation later relocated to Osafune, recording of the first that "its second generation is said to have moved to Osafune." One tradition transmits the first generation as a son of Yoshifusa, the school's foremost master of the flamboyant choji. His hand is read in two manners. The first is an archaic, somewhat subdued early-Kamakura tachi: over a slender body with high koshizori and clear funbari, ending in a ko-kissaki, he forges an itame that runs in places and tends slightly to stand, a faint midare-utsuri rising over it. The temper is a ko-choji mixed with small irregularity and ko-gunome, hotsure breaking the line in places, ashi entering well throughout, ko-nie adhering and sunagashi running, the boshi straight with a yakitsume tendency. On the slenderer of the signed tachi the lower half settles toward a suguha base and a chiba-utsuri, the speckled reflection of old Bizen steel, is discerned in the ji. The published sources read this restrained early work as archaic in ji, ha and form alike, holding that "its workmanship and shape are archaic in character and it is appraised to the early Kamakura period." The ji carries his recognition as much as the temper. The forging is an itame, in one piece mixed with mokume and running here and there, tending a little to stand, with ji-nie attaching, and over it the midare-utsuri rises. It is faint on the early tachi and discerned as a chiba-utsuri on the shortened one, and it stands vividly on his mature katana, where a densely forged ko-itame carries fine ji-nie and chikei beneath a clear reflection. The published sources call that jigane bright in steel and well refined, writing of the katana that "the forging, with its vivid midare-utsuri standing, is bright in steel color and well worked." The hamon enters in nioi with ko-nie attaching, the fine kinsuji and sunagashi of his developed hand running through it, the boshi straight or very shallowly midare-komi and turning back in a small round. His kinzogan-mei katana shows the school's mature manner at its developed height and supplies the second of his two registers. Greatly shortened, the body somewhat wide with little difference between base and tip width, it retains koshizori with added curvature toward the tip and a chu-kissaki, with bo-hi carved through on both sides. The temper is a choji-midare mixed with ko-choji and togariba; in the upper half it rises high and varies in height to a splendid effect, ashi and yo entering well, the nioiguchi bright and nioi-dominant. This is the flamboyant choji the school is known for, where his early tachi keep the calmer ko-choji of the old Bizen tone, so a collector reads the two pieces as one smith working at the two ends of his school's range. The kinzogan attribution itself rests on a connoisseur's judgment of manner, and the published sources locate it in the temper, holding that "compared with Yoshifusa, the slightly more restrained setting of the habuchi accords convincingly with the kiwame to Yoshimoto." That last judgment places him within the Fukuoka Ichimonji rather than apart from it. His own grounded tells are the bright midare-utsuri over a well-worked itame, the ko-choji-toned early temper and the slightly calmer habuchi that the appraisers weighed against Yoshifusa's more exuberant hand, and these set him within the school without naming a rival's features. The recognized signed work belongs to the Fukuoka Ichimonji Yoshimoto, distinguished from the Osafune namesake by the archaic ji, ha and form of his early-Kamakura tachi, while the Meikan's double entry and the recorded move of the second generation carry the name forward into the rising Osafune school. The published sources resolve the homonym on a Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi by style and signature, judging that of the two Yoshimoto smiths "this one is thought to correspond to the former," the son of Yoshifusa in the Fukuoka line. Yoshimoto is graded Jo-saku by Fujishiro, and his designated record, though small, is high: a kiwame gold-inlaid katana and two signed tachi at the Juyo rank, and two signed tachi recognized as Juyo Bijutsuhin in the prewar years, five designated works on record in all. One Juyo tachi is published in the Kozan Oshigata; the Juyo Bijutsuhin pair appears in the Shinto Koto Taikan, the Token Mei Taishu and the Shinko Meito Zufu. The blades whose owners are recorded passed through private hands, Kikuchi Takashi of Kyoto and Honma Yusuke of Yamagata holding the two Juyo Bijutsuhin tachi at the time of their designation, the early Juyo tachi recorded with private owners in Tokyo and abroad. No National Treasure or Important Cultural Property bears his name, so his work is not held out of reach in museums and shrines but survives in long-held private collections. A signed Yoshimoto tachi is a rare thing, the more so an ubu-mei example, which the published sources prize as reference material; one reaches the market only seldom, and a piece in this archaic Fukuoka Ichimonji hand rewards the patience of the collector who waits for it.

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