Nobuyoshi is the one famous name of the Ryūmon group, a branch of Yamato swordsmiths active from the late Kamakura period into the Nanbokuchō. The published sources are nearly unanimous on his origins: "Nobuyoshi is traditionally said to have been a smith descending from the Senjuin line"[[c:1]], and because he lived at Ryūmon-shō in Yoshino District, on the road that runs from Yoshino through to Uda, he was given the byname Ryūmon Nobuyoshi. The group is said to have included other smiths, with names such as Nagayoshi and Yoshiyuki appearing in the reference works, but only Nobuyoshi became well known, to the degree that, as one Jūyō commentary puts it, "when one speaks of Ryūmon, it refers to Nobuyoshi"[[c:2]]. No dated blade by him survives; the swordbooks place him around the Shōō or Bunpō eras.
The hand that defines him is not one manner but two, and the NBTHK draws the division on nearly every paper. One mode forges "a lively midare, or a suguha-toned temper into which chōji-ashi enter"[[c:3]], with utsuri standing in the jigane and a Bizen character coming forward. The other is a suguha that frays into hotsure, in which "utsuri does not stand and the Yamato color is strongly shown"[[c:4]], quiet and austere in feeling. His finest signed tachi, the wide-bodied piece once held by the Hori viscount and treasured by Inukai Bokudō, is the showy mode at its best: a wide suguha-chō with shallow notare, mixing gunome, chōji, togariba and angular elements, ashi and yō entering, the nioiguchi tightening with ko-nie, nijūba and uchi-noke worked in, with kinsuji and fine sunagashi. The published sources call it "foremost among works by the same hand"[[c:5]].
The jigane is the constant that carries both modes. It is a well-forged itame that flows and inclines to masame, with thick ji-nie laid finely and chikei entering frequently, the masame strengthening toward the edge on the most Yamato of his blades. Over that jigane the utsuri is the variable: on the Bizen-leaning blades a clear midare-utsuri, sometimes a soft nie-utsuri; on the Yamato blades none at all. The bōshi runs straight and finishes in hakikake, often yakizume, sometimes a ko-maru with a short turnback, and across nearly the whole record the nioiguchi is bright and clear. Even in the lively mode the temper stays suguha-based with chōji and gunome set into it rather than opening into a free chōji-midare, so the bright suguha with hotsure and kuichigai-ba is the Yamato root that holds the two manners together.
His signature divides as his workmanship does. Two ways of cutting the right element of the character 延 are observed, a blocky kaisho form resembling an abbreviated 正 and a cursive sōsho form resembling 氏; the published sources record that later writers "call the former Masa-Nobuyoshi and the latter Uji-Nobuyoshi"[[c:6]]. The distinction is not merely calligraphic, for the sources note that blades with the former signature tend to a more tightly knit hada and those with the latter to a more standing grain, and one signed tachi is read as a transitional piece between the two. Signed works are set with a large two-character mei and survive in only a small number, so a genuine in-mei Nobuyoshi is a precious thing to encounter.
What places him is exactly this position between two traditions. His bright midare-utsuri and chōji-ashi set the Bizen-leaning mode apart from the plainer Senjuin and Taima suguha, while the subdued suguha-with-hotsure keeps him within Yamato. The published sources observe that his smaller-signature blades have since old times been confused with Ko-Bizen Ko-Ichimonji work, and that confusion is itself the measure of where he stands. On the mumei katana, which form the bulk of his record, the judges affirm the attribution from the high-shinogi construction, the flowing masame-inclined forging and the bright suguha alone, calling one such blade a full expression of "the characteristic features and merits of Ryūmon Nobuyoshi in both ji and ha."
For the collector he is a rare early Yamato name carried by a single great work. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. A signed tachi transmitted as an imperial possession of Emperor Go-Mizunoo is a National Treasure, and the published sources say plainly that "the presence of this celebrated masterpiece has contributed greatly to the high reputation of Nobuyoshi"[[c:7]]; two further signed tachi are Important Cultural Properties, one of them preserved at Shitsukiyama Shrine in Yamaguchi. These are heritage held in shrine and institution and are not encountered on the market. His blades carry distinguished provenance recorded on their own papers, the Hori viscount and Inukai Tsuyoshi on the Tokubetsu Jūyō tachi, the Date of Sendai and the Uesugi among the Jūyō. Beyond the locked tier his record runs through one Tokubetsu Jūyō, the Jūyō and the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, some twenty-six blades in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks all told, most held rather than traded. A signed example comes to light only seldom and a fine mumei attribution from time to time, so a privately held Ryūmon Nobuyoshi is a notable thing for a collector, a document of how Yamato and Bizen met in one Yoshino hand.
