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Aoe Yoshitsugu吉次

In the eleventh month of Karyaku 3 (1328) Yoshitsugu (吉次) of Bitchū signed an ubu tantō "Bitchū no kuni jū Uemon no jō Taira Yoshitsugu saku" (備中国住右衛門尉平吉次作), an inscription the NBTHK judges of high documentary value. He belongs to the Aoe school, which flourished along the lower Takahashi river in a province the early eleventh-century Shin Sarugakuki already names for "the swords of Bitchū" (備中ノ刀); work to about mid-Kamakura is called Ko-Aoe, what follows simply Aoe. The records name him, "together with Suketsugu, Yoritsugu and Naotsugu, one of the representative smiths of the school in this era" (助次・頼次・直次らと共にこの時代の同派を代表する刀工の一人), and an older record calls him outright "the representative smith of the chū-Aoe" (中青江の代表工). His dated works carry Karyaku (1326-29) and Gentoku (1329-31), and the residence in his long signatures is written now "Bitchū no kuni Aoe jū" (備中国青江住), now "Bishū Manju jū" (備州万寿住), a divergence the records expressly point out. His foundation, and his declared strength, is the suguha of this generation at its calmest. Of the Karyaku 3 kodachi the judges write that it is "a blade in which the true mettle of Yoshitsugu, a smith whose forte is suguha, is displayed without reserve" (直刃を得意とする吉次の本領が遺憾なく発揮された一口). The line is a chū-suguha, undulating shallowly in places, mixing ko-gunome, ko-chōji and ko-midare; ko-ashi and yō enter with saka-ashi among them, yet the slanting habit that marks the Aoe ha shows in him only partially, here and there. The nioiguchi tightens, carries ko-nie, and is bright and clear; fine kinsuji and sunagashi run through, and intermittent yubashiri near the base raises a nijūba-like effect. On the tantō the line narrows to a hoso-suguha with fine hotsure, the temper carried down through the hamachi, a habit shared also by the Gentoku 1 tantō of Sahyōe no jō Naotsugu (左兵衛尉直次); of the Karyaku 3 tantō the record writes that the quiet suguha yakiba "overflows with a deep savor" (滋味に溢れている). The jigane is Bitchū's own. He forges a well-knit ko-itame mixed with ko-mokume and flowing hada, the ji-nie thick and extremely fine, minute chikei entering; jifu (地斑) recurs blade after blade, the clear sumihada (澄肌) of the school appears, and on the gold-inlaid Nabeshima katana the finely standing ko-itame takes on a crepe-like complexion (縮緬肌状を呈し). Over this a faint midare-utsuri rises, and on the small works the utsuri divides, "a midare-utsuri toward the mune and a linear utsuri toward the ha" (棟寄りに乱れ映り・刃寄りに筋状の映り立ち), the so-called dan-utsuri (段映り). The bōshi runs straight to a ko-maru return, at times tending to a point or lightly brushed with hakikake. Of the niji-mei tantō the judges write that the scenery of the utsuri and the tight, bright nioiguchi of the suguha are "Aoe through and through" (いかにも青江らしく). The signed and dated core of his work is anchored on the title. He often cut long signatures headed Uemon no jō with the Taira clan name; among the signed reference works the published sources name a tachi in the Tokyo National Museum dated Gentoku 2 and a katana-mei blade at Hie Shrine, both Important Cultural Properties. His small works are rare survivals, "surviving examples of Yoshitsugu's tantō are exceedingly rare" (吉次の短刀の遺例は稀有であり), and the signed kodachi is likewise a form seldom seen in the school. A two-character mei cut on the haki-ura of one slender tachi is read as his earlier work, predating the long-signature pieces. At the far edge of the name stands a generation question: the Jūyō Bijutsuhin record matches the folded-signature katana of the Owari Tokugawa, a wide work in gunome-deki, to the Yoshitsugu the Meikan places in Nanbokuchō around Jōwa (1345-50), and calls the smith of the Karyaku tantō "presumably his predecessor" (先代であろう); Honma adds the caveat that "appraisals to individual names within Aoe will always invite both assent and dissent" (青江の個銘の極めは賛否があろう). The designation records meanwhile draw the line by manner, noting of his quiet suguha tantō that "they differ in feeling from the works of the school of the Nanbokuchō period" (南北朝期の同派の作とは趣きを異にしている). A second register stands on kiwame. Ō-suriage mumei katana of deep curvature and ample hiraniku carry his attribution. The Nabeshima katana bears a gold-inlaid attribution, not a signature, recording its shortening in Genna 5 (1619), and its workmanship is judged "the typical late-Kamakura make of the Aoe school in both ji and ha" (地刃の出来は鎌倉末期の青江派の典型的のもの). The mumei katana under a Kyōhō 9 (1724) origami of Hon'ami Kōchū, valued at 150 kan, is judged "an outstanding piece even among the Yoshitsugu attributions" (吉次極めの中でも傑出した出来映え), "a robust figure, heavy in the hand" (手持ちの重い頑健な刀姿). The kiwame are honest: of the katana descended in the Naitō family the judges write that at a glance it might also be appraised as Bizen Motoshige or the like, "and it is difficult to assert Yoshitsugu definitively" (吉次と断定することは困難である), while holding it a late-Kamakura Aoe blade. Within the school his place is the quiet pole of the generation: where Naotsugu signs Sahyōe no jō, Yoshitsugu answers with Uemon no jō (右衛門尉) and the Taira name, and where the slanting chōji of Aoe comes out in force elsewhere, his blades keep the calm bright line, the saka element only glimpsed. He is rated Jō-jō saku by Fujishiro, and seventeen designated works stand on the official record: two Tokubetsu Jūyō and ten Jūyō, twelve blades in those two tiers; three Jūyō Bijutsuhin; one Important Cultural Property, a signed blade preserved at Fujishima Jinja; and a signed blade, once of the Imperial Family and the Mōri family, now in the Kyoto National Museum. Eleven of the seventeen carry a mei, five are mumei under kiwame, and the Nabeshima katana carries its attribution in gold inlay. The provenance runs through great houses: the gold-inlaid katana descended in the Hizen Ogi branch of the Nabeshima family, recorded in the Tsuchiya Oshigata as "an ancestral sword worn at the first assault on Hara castle" (原城一番乗りのとき祖先の佩刀), the blade of the Shimabara rising; the Naitō katana of Murakami carries the family tradition "Aoe Yoshitsugu bestowed by the Taikō" (太閤拝領青江吉次), received from Hideyoshi at the Odawara campaign of 1590; the folded-signature katana descended in the Owari Tokugawa and remains with the Tokugawa Reimeikai; the Karyaku-dated Jūyō Bijutsuhin tantō now belongs to the Sano Art Museum. The Important Cultural Property and the shrine and museum pieces are preserved as cultural patrimony and will not trade; a collector may realistically encounter the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tier, twelve blades among them the dated tantō and tachi and the quiet suguha katana under kiwame, and one comes to the open market only rarely, a quiet masterpiece of the Aoe suguha at its calmest when it does.

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