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Tegai Kanekiyo包清

A tantō dated to the second month of Ōan 3 (1370) carries the long signature Kuchū Saemon no Jō Kanekiyo saku, and it is the dated cornerstone of a name that the published record otherwise reconstructs from style alone. Kanekiyo was a swordsmith of the Yamato Tegai school, the line that resided outside the Tengaimon, the western great gate of Tōdai-ji, and that worked in a dependent relationship with the temple. The reference works transmit the first Kanekiyo as a son or a disciple of Kanenaga, with one tradition making him a son of the second-generation Kanenaga, and an extant tantō dated Karyaku 4 (1329) anchors the family at the earliest end. The name was then carried across several generations down into the Muromachi period. Of the five Yamato schools the published sources call Tegai the most prosperous, the one line that in the Muromachi age appears to have absorbed the others so that it essentially alone continued, and Kanekiyo stands within that long descent as a representative Nanbokuchō hand. His is a Yamato hand read first in the steel. Over a forging in which masame stands out, mixed with itame and a flowing grain, the ji-nie lies thick and chikei enter, he tempers a narrow suguha that is never left plain. Along its edge run the activities by which the Yamato schools are known: hotsure that frays the habuchi, nijūba doubling the line, kuichigai-ba where the temper steps and crosses, with sunagashi and fine kinsuji sweeping through, the whole well charged with nie and the nioiguchi bright and clear. The bōshi answers the habuchi, running straight to a small komaru and finishing in hakikake, the swept brushstroke at the point, the kaeri at times somewhat deep. On the shinogi-zukuri katana the construction itself reads as Yamato, the shinogi-suji standing high and the shinogi-ji comparatively wide, a frame the published sources name when they accept the traditional attribution. Of one such katana the NBTHK writes that the characteristics of the Tegai style are well manifested in both the jigane and the hamon, calling it a 「地刃に手掻流の特色がよく示され」 and a 「健全で出来のよい短刀」. The jigane is the more telling half of the pair. Where many Yamato hands run a quieter masame, Kanekiyo's grain stands and flows at once, the masame conspicuous on the wide-ridged katana and ko-itame closing in beneath it, ji-nie applied thickly and chikei entering well, so that the surface carries a restrained brightness rather than the misty whiteness of plainer Yamato work. A faint whitish utsuri shows on the smaller pieces, the natural reflection of a steel forged in standing grain rather than a deliberate Bizen effect. Against this ji the suguha keeps its discipline, but the activity never lets it settle: on the signed tachi the line frays into hotsure and doubles into nijūba, the nie well formed with kinsuji and nie-suji entering, and the published sources find the school's hallmark precisely where the coarse nie sparkles, 「輝く荒目の沸がつくところに手掻派の特徴がよくあらわれており」. It is in this register that his work is most securely his own, a Nanbokuchō Tegai suguha animated by Yamato hataraki and kept clear in its nioiguchi. The corpus draws three points along a single descent. The bulk of the blades are the Nanbokuchō prime, suguha-based and masame-laden, most of them ō-suriage and unsigned and attributed to Tegai Kanekiyo by the judges, the signed tachi carrying the identical hand. The dated tantō of Ōan 3 stands apart from these: somewhat wide in mihaba and slightly sun-nobi, its hamon a shallow, large midare mixed with small notare and fraying into hotsure, strongly nie-laden with sunagashi and kinsuji, the nie growing especially strong and coarse in the upper half, the bōshi a jizō-gokoro on one face and a pointed turnback on the other. The published sources read this as the work that the genealogies place as a son of the second-generation Kanenaga, and they value its inscription as much as its forging, noting that 「銘文は資料的に貴重である」. The latest piece departs furthest: a sun-nobi tantō signed in a bold five-character hand Tegai-jū Kanekiyo, whose ō-gunome-midare in a notare tone, with the mune also tempered and tobiyaki scattered into a hitatsura tendency, the published sources read as closely resembling Sengo Muramasa, 「千子村正の作に近似する」, and prize as 「末手搔の作域を知る上でも好資料」 for the working range of late Tegai. What sets him apart within his own school is best taken from his own blades rather than from contrast. His masame stands more openly than the quieter Yamato grain, his suguha is fuller of hotsure and nijūba than a plain Hōshō line, and his nie is at its most characteristic where it grows coarse and bright along the upper edge. When the judges weigh a softening of the older Tegai manner they do so on his terms, finding one early Muromachi tantō, comparable to the contemporaneous Kaneshige and Kanetoshi in its deeply tempered komaru bōshi, nonetheless 「同時代のものの中で優れたものである」. Toward the end of the line that suguha gives way to the o-gunome hitatsura close to Muramasa, and the school whose founder Kanenaga worked a Kamakura suguha is thereby traced, through Kanekiyo's hand, down into the Eishō and Kyōroku eras. The arc from a Nanbokuchō suguha to a late hitatsura is the descent of late Tegai itself, told in one name. Kanekiyo is held entirely in the Jūyō tier rather than the topmost ranks: the record carries eight Jūyō blades and none in the higher designations, and the smith's toko-taikan standing is mid-range among kotō names. Several of the katana are ō-suriage mumei pieces brought to him by appraisal, one bearing a gold-inlaid attribution by Hon'ami Kōichi that the published sources read as indicating not Kanenaga himself but a Tegai smith of slightly later date. No daimyō provenance attaches to the recorded blades, and no current institutional holder is on record, so the honest picture is of a smith preserved in private and designated hands rather than in the great museum collections. For a collector this means a Tegai Kanekiyo is among the more attainable of the old Yamato names without ever being common: his blades come to market from time to time, the signed and dated tantō a rarity to be met with patience, the ō-suriage suguha katana the likelier encounter, and the late Tegai-jū hitatsura tantō a singular reference piece. Of the soundest of his katana the NBTHK writes 「地刃健やかにして出来がよく、同工極めの優品である」, and in another the Tegai character is judged 「手掻派の特色が十分に示されている」, the verdicts by which his work is best valued and met.

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