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About the maker

Ishido Mitsuhira光平

On the omote of a katana dated Shoho 3 (1646), eighth month, cut on the shinogi-suji in a large, bold five-character hand and joined on the reverse by a gold-inlaid cutting test, stands the earliest dated work that survives from Heki Mitsuhira, the Tokubetsu Juyo blade the published sources call the most retrograde of his dated pieces and a resource of exceptional value for the study of him. Mitsuhira signed Minamoto Mitsuhira, and sometimes Heki Dewa-no-kami Minamoto Mitsuhira beneath a chrysanthemum crest; he was born in Gamo district of Omi (近江国蒲生郡の生まれ), eldest son of Yamashiro-no-kami Ippo of the Kyo-Ishido line, and first styled himself Heki Shichirobei. He stands, the NBTHK states plainly, as one of the most outstandingly skilled smiths who represent the Edo Ishido (江戸石堂を代表する最も技量の卓抜した刀工), the equal and senior of Tsushima-no-kami Tsunemitsu and one of the two pillars of that school. His program was a revival: to forge again, in the bright nioi of the early-Edo workshops, the gorgeous choji-midare of the old Bizen Fukuoka-Ichimonji that the medieval makers had carried over a midare-utsuri jigane. The feature that names his work is the choji-midare itself, and the published sources read it as his forte. He tempers it chiefly in nioi, mixing many kinds of teeth into one lively, crowded line: gunome and ko-gunome, round-topped choji and small choji, angular elements and others tending to a point. The yakiba rises and falls in marked height, ashi and yo enter vigorously, and the nioiguchi runs bright and clear. The result is what the institution calls a splendid choji-midare that recalls the old Ichimonji (華麗な丁子乱れを焼いて古作の一文字を髣髴とさせる), and across his blades the NBTHK names the achievement the same way each time, a piece in which he privately emulated the old Ichimonji and succeeded (古作の一文字に私淑して成功した一口). On his most florid katana small tobiyaki gather at the heads of the temper and fine sunagashi is drawn through it, touches the sources read as lending an antique flavor to the otherwise new-sword brightness. The jigane beneath that temper is what carries the Ichimonji comparison the rest of the way. He forges a ko-itame or an itame mixed with mokume and flowing hada, tightly worked, with the ji-nie gathered dust-fine, and over it stands a clear midare-utsuri, the koto-Bizen reflection that almost no other Edo hand reaches with such conviction. It is the single feature of the jigane that most marks his revival, the old reflection raised again on a shinto blade, and the published sources note it as prominent on piece after piece. The boshi answers the flamboyance of the ha quietly, running straight or in a small midare into a ko-maru, turning back shallowly, often with a touch of hakikake at the point. Ji and ha alike are described as sound, the steel bright rather than dark, the whole reading as Bizen seen through the cleaner light of the Kanbun forges. Mitsuhira is best understood not through dated periods, since his dated blades are few, but as one perfected manner read at two intensities and set on the build of his age. The constant is the choji-midare over its utsuri; the variation is the nioiguchi. On his finest pieces the published sources mark a tightening and a further brightening, writing of the Tokubetsu Juyo katana that, in comparison with his usual works, the nioiguchi is somewhat tighter and shines with a particularly bright clarity (常々の彼の作に比して、匂口がしまり気味となり、一際明るく冴えわたっている), and that even among his oeuvre it shows an exceptional sharpness of effect (同作中でも抜群の刃味のよさを示している). His blades carry the broad body, the thick kasane and the contracted chu-kissaki of the Kanbun era, yet the sources read the silhouette carefully as a transitional one: at a glance it recalls the Kanbun-shinto shape, but the sori stands somewhat more and a touch of funbari remains at the base, a transitional shape in the shift from Keicho-shinto toward Kanbun-shinto (慶長新刀より寛文新刀へ移行する過渡期の姿態) common to the smiths of the Kan'ei and Shoho years. He signs a long mei of distinctive script in bold, thick chisel strokes on the ubu nakago, sometimes under the chrysanthemum crest with his titles Dewa-no-kami and Dewa-nyudo Taishin hokkyo. What sets him apart within his own school is finally a matter of the signature, and the published sources make the point through the very biography they repeat. By the common account Mitsuhira moved from Omi to Edo alongside Tsunemitsu, Echizen-no-kami Munehiro and the first Ishido Korekazu, but the NBTHK corrects both the route and the kinship from surviving inscriptions. The Akasaka-signed blades show that the Edo Ishido smiths went first from Omi to Kyoto and only afterward on to Edo rather than directly; and the old tradition that Mitsuhira was Tsunemitsu's younger brother is set aside, since dated pieces worked back show that he was in fact six years the elder (光平の方が六歳年長であることが理解される). He used the Minamoto surname while Tsunemitsu used Tachibana, and for that reason, though their workmanship is granted to share much, the brotherhood is doubted. The two are thus the twin masters of the Edo Ishido whose hands run close and whose names part only at the mei, and it is in Mitsuhira's that the Ichimonji revival is reckoned to have succeeded most fully. Mitsuhira's record on the official rolls is concentrated and high in quality rather than large: of his designated works ten stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, the single Tokubetsu Juyo being the Shoho 3 katana with its gold-inlaid three-body cutting test, the rest Juyo. His designations rise no higher than these, and his blades enter the records signed, every one of them, so that his oeuvre is an open book read off the long mei rather than a body of mumei attributions. Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo saku, the upper-superior grade. The provenance recorded on these blades is thin, with no daimyo house or museum named in their own data, and what survives of him is held quietly in private and public hands. For the collector this is a smith encountered from time to time rather than freely: a designated Edo Ishido katana of his comes to market only now and again, a landmark when one does, prized as the high point of the school's Ichimonji revival and recognized at sight by the bright choji-midare standing over its old-Bizen utsuri.

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