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About the maker

Katayama Ichimonji Norifusa則房

Norifusa worked in the middle of the Kamakura period and is one of the masters who carried the Ichimonji school to its height. The published sources place him with Yoshifusa and Sukezane (助真・吉房らと並んで華やかな丁子乱れを焼き) as the smiths who tempered the most flamboyant choji-midare of their day, and read him as one of the representative hands of the mid-Kamakura Ichimonji (鎌倉時代中期の一文字派を代表する刀工). He is held to be the son of Sukefusa of the Fukuoka Ichimonji, and because he later moved to the district of Katayama (のち片山の地に移住したため片山一文字と称されている) his line is called the Katayama Ichimonji. Where that district lay is itself unsettled. The older view placed Katayama in Bitchu, but the published sources now raise the possibility that it was a Katayama near Fukuoka in Bizen (近年備前国福岡近在の片山ではないかとする説), and leave the question open for further study. The name carries a second complication. The signatures show several distinct hands and the workmanship covers a wide range (則房の銘字には数種の書体が見られ), so that the name is thought to have run for several generations rather than belonging to a single man. The surviving signed pieces are limited to tachi, yet he was famed from of old as a master of the naginata (現存する有銘の作は太刀に限られているが、古来薙刀の名手と伝え), and many of the mumei works attributed to that form carry his name. The forging is an itame, well packed in the finer pieces and standing in the bolder ones, with mokume mixed in and fine chikei entering. Over it stands the feature the school is read by: a clear midare-utsuri, the steel bright and cold, the ji-nie laid down to a fine mist. This vivid utsuri over a lively itame is the floor on which everything else is built, and it is named again and again in the published sources as the first thing that marks a Norifusa. The hamon is a choji-midare with gunome mixed in, ashi and yo entering well, in deep nioi with ko-nie, a little sunagashi and kinsuji, and here and there tobiyaki and muneyaki along the upper half. The recognition point is set out plainly: his merit lies in a jigane that is strong and clear, a choji-midare that leans back, and fine ashi within the ha (則房の見どころは、地がねが強く冴え、丁子乱れが逆がかり、刃中の足が細かいところにある). The back-leaning saka-gakari is what parts him from his peers, for his choji tends to a somewhat smaller pattern than that of Yoshifusa and Sukezane (丁子乱れが助真・吉房らに比して幾分小模様となり), and that reverse tendency, set against the short fine ashi, is the surest tell of his hand. The boshi is the point a careful eye holds to. It runs midare-komi to a small round, often turning back with a pointed tendency and brushing out in hakikake, the published sources recording on one blade a boshi that is midare-komi with hakikake, the point of the omote turning back with a pointed tendency (帽子乱れ込み、掃きかけ、先表は尖りごころに返り). On the bolder pieces the omote can show a yakitsume tendency while the ura turns in ko-maru and sweeps; the swept, pointed tip is as much his mark as the leaning choji below it, and a flat ko-maru without that brushwork should give the kantei pause. For the collector Norifusa stands among the least attainable of the koto masters. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku, and his work counts National Treasures and a high tally of Tokubetsu Juyo blades among it, set with the histories of the great houses: a tachi that descended to the Yanagisawa daimyo of Yamatokoriyama, blades held by the Tokugawa shogun house and by Tokugawa Yoshimune and Tsunayoshi, others through the Ikeda and the Takasu Matsudaira, and a naginata recorded in the treasure inventory of the Uesugi. One of the Yanagisawa tachi still carries the memory of a Honami Koshu origami. Almost nothing he made ever reaches the market: the named pieces sit in institutions such as the Kyushu National Museum, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, the Tokyo Fuji Museum and the Fukuyama Art Museum, and a blade by his hand coming to trade is closer to a once-in-a-career event than a purchase to be planned for.

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