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About the maker

Miike Mitsuyo光世

Mitsuyo of Miike heads one of the great names of Chikugo, and the published sources fix his standing in a single sentence: the founder, Denta Mitsuyo, is a renowned master of the late Heian period whose representative work is the Meibutsu Ōdenta of the Maeda house, one of the *Tenka-goken*, the five most celebrated swords of Japan. The same descriptions are equally plain about how little of his own hand survives. Among authentically signed work, they state, 'none exists today apart from the single Meibutsu Ōdenta' (現存する有銘作は名物大典太一口よりなく), the later blades cut with the Mitsuyo signature being the work of smiths who inherited the name. So the name is the lineage. Mitsuyo was not one man but a succession, the signature borne from the Kamakura period into the Muromachi, and the designated work that comes down to us is read by the NBTHK as the school manner carried intact rather than as the founder's own blades. The smith stands, in consequence, in a rare double light: a maker famous for one unrepeatable masterpiece, the Ōdenta, and at the same time the head of a recognizable Kyūshū hand traced across three centuries of inherited work. That hand is a flowing, soft-looking manner the published sources hold to a quiet register. Over an *itame* mixed with *mokume* that flows and stands somewhat, *ji-nie* adhering, the descriptions linger longest on the *jigane* itself, calling it a surface 'sticky and, in a sense, very soft to the eye' (ねっとりとして如何にも軟らかそうに見える肌合), one that inclines toward a whitish *shirake* tone with a *shirake-utsuri* rising on the broader blades. The temper is built on *suguha*: a slender, fine *suguha* on the *hira-zukuri* work and a *chū-suguha* carrying *ko-gunome* on the *katana*, *ko-nie* adhering well, with *sunagashi* and *yō* and, in places, *nijūba*, *hotsure* and *kuichigai-ba*. The published sources note that even where the *ha* is otherwise bright the *nioiguchi* tends to settle, describing it as a temper 'whose *nioiguchi* takes on a subdued cast' (匂口が沈みごころとなる刃文). Against this restrained *ji* and *ha*, the one feature the descriptions single out as the school's own is the carving, and they return to it as the surest mark of the name. The *sugata* is the grand early figure the school is known for, a broad *shinogi-zukuri tachi*, *iori-mune*, wide in *mihaba* and wide in the *shinogi*, of moderate *kasane* with a deep *koshizori* and a compact *chū-kissaki*; on the longest surviving examples it has been shortened to an *ō-suriage katana*, the original *tachi* signature lost and the attribution carried instead by an inlaid name on the shortened *nakago*. Across the forging the *itame* runs conspicuously, the published record describing a steel in which 'the *itame* flows abundantly with *ji-nie* adhering' (板目がさかんに流れて地沸つき) before it settles into that soft, whitish *ji*. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns in a calm *ko-maru*, or on one *katana* it tempers to a *yakizume* with a slight *hakikake*. On both faces the carving is a wide *bō-hi* run as *kaki-nagashi*, with an accompanying *soe-hi* on the *wakizashi*, and it is here that the descriptions locate the school's individuality, writing that 'a personality of the line can be discerned in its preference for carving wide, comparatively shallow *bō-hi*' (幅広で比較的浅い棒樋を好んで掻くところに一派の個性が窺われる). Because the name spans three centuries, the published sources order the work not by date but by manner and by the attesting inscription. The surviving designated *katana*, the descriptions are careful to say, do not date back as far as the late Heian; yet their *jihada*, *hamon* and carving display the school's characteristics, so that the attestations upon them are judged sound and the blades placed broadly at the end of the Kamakura period. Those attestations are themselves part of the record. One *ō-suriage katana* bears a gold-inlaid Mitsuyo that the descriptions read as an authentication 'by such authorities as Hon'ami Kōchū' (本阿弥光忠などの極めと鑑せられる); another carries a large gold-powder *Miike Mitsuyo* and a red *origami* notation that the Hon'ami house valued it, in Kanbun 1, at seven *mai* of gold, the descriptions affirming that 'the gold-powder attestation is appropriate' (金粉銘の極めは妥当). The signed *wakizashi*, a wide *hira-zukuri* piece with a boldly cut two-character signature, the NBTHK calls 'sound, the workmanship in both *jihada* and *hamon* good' (健全で地刃の出来がよい). The whole make, founder and successors alike, the descriptions trace to the Ōdenta and class as 'common to early Kyūshū work' (九州古作に共通するもの). What sets the Miike hand apart from the schools its quiet *suguha* might otherwise suggest is the *jigane* and the groove. A measured *suguha* in *ko-nie* belongs to several traditions, and on the *ji* alone a Yamashiro or Rai blade keeps a clear, bright steel; the Miike *ji* instead whitens and softens into the *nettori*, sticky character the published sources name, so that the soft *shirake* *ji* and the wide shallow *bō-hi* together pull the work back to Chikugo. The descriptions read the line as part of the broad family of early Kyūshū smiths, founded by Denta Mitsuyo rather than descending from a named teacher, its inheritance visible less in the founder's own blades, of which only the Ōdenta is known, than in the unbroken transmission of the name and its traits. For the collector the reckoning follows from the rarity of the founder and the scattering of the name. Mitsuyo carries no National Treasure within reach and a heavy weight of designation around the one that stands above all: the Ōdenta is the founder's representative work, 'known as the representative piece, transmitted in the Maeda house' (前田家伝来の「名物大典太」が代表作として知られる), and it is patrimony, never offered. Two Important Cultural Properties carry the name in public and sacred keeping rather than on the market, among them the Sohaya-no-tsurugi, a blade of Tokugawa Ieyasu held at the Kunōzan Tōshōgū, and a *tantō* preserved at Honmyō-ji. Of the blades that survive in the wider record, one signed *katana* is held in the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum and a *naginata* in the Tokyo National Museum, so that most of his work, like the Ōdenta, is gathered into shrines, temples and long-standing collections. Behind these stand the three blades in the Jūyō tier that the Hon'ami papers attest, a small number of recorded whereabouts, of which a privately held Mitsuyo is among the rarer things a collector could hope to encounter, coming to market only seldom and as a landmark when it does. He is the Chikugo master known to the world through one unrepeatable treasure, and recognized, wherever the name was carried, by a soft whitish *jigane* and a wide shallow groove.

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