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Osafune Sukemitsu祐光

The earliest dated work that survives under Sukemitsu of Bizen Osafune is a tachi of Eikyo 9 (1437), an ubu, signed blade that displays the manner the published sources call Oei-Bizen, and which they pronounce an imposing, dignified piece (堂々としたものである). The latest is a katana of Kansho 3 (1462) that carries within its signature the common name and title Rokurozaemon no Jo. Between those two dates lies a span of twenty-five years and a stylistic crossing, for Sukemitsu worked the moment the published record names the move from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen. The Meikan lists seven smiths who signed this name, and the NBTHK, judging from the year inscriptions, reads the dated works gathered here as the shodai among them, the head of the Osafune family who fathered the brothers Ukyo no Suke Katsumitsu and Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu. His blades stand at the hinge of that descent, the Oei-Bizen manner of the early fifteenth century already turning toward the Sue-Bizen workmanship his sons would lead. The matter that distinguishes his work is a koshi-no-hiraita gunome, a gunome whose valleys open wide at the waist, mixed with a little choji and built into a varied midare. It is nioi-dominant with ko-nie attaching, fine kinsuji and sunagashi running within, the nioiguchi at its best bright. On the early Eikyo tachi the temper opens at the waist with pointed elements mixed in, slight sunagashi and kinsuji laid over it, and the boshi runs straight with hakikake to a pointed tip. On the mature dated pieces the same waist-open gunome takes in togari-ba and angular teeth, in places reminiscent of shima-ba, the whole still nioi-dominant with ko-nie and bright in the habuchi. The descent of his date is read off the temper itself: of the Kakitsu 3 (1443) wakizashi the published sources note that the amplitude of the midare is small and the choji inconspicuous (乱れの振幅が小さく丁子が目立たない), and in that quieting of the once-flamboyant Oei-Bizen clove pattern they read the period coming down. The waist-open temper is his constant, and its narrowing waves are his clock. Beneath the hamon lies an itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing in places, over which a clear bo-utsuri rises, the bar-shaped reflection of the Osafune steel. The ji-nie attaches somewhat thickly and chikei enter well; on the broader tachi the ji-nie grows fine and dustlike, a faint utsuri drifting above it. The boshi answers the temper, turning in midare-komi to a ko-maru on the agitated blades, running straight to a small round turnback or pointing and returning on the quieter ones. The sugata moves with his dates and forms: the early tachi slender with deep koshizori and a ko-kissaki in the Oei-Bizen stance, the mature tachi of standard width with a noticeable taper and a thick kasane, the wakizashi and tanto broad hira-zukuri pieces, elongated and thick. The carvings are a recurring pleasure of his work, a grass-script kurikara and bonji and a sutra text on one blade, twin grooves on another, and on a Bun'an 6 (1449) tanto the incised deity name Ichinomiya Daimyojin. The published sources call that tanto a piece in which Sukemitsu's working range is clearly shown (祐光の作域がよく示されている). The generations are the open question of his name, and the published sources resolve it by date. They observe that several generations of Sukemitsu have been pointed out and that the Meikan lists seven of the name, an earlier small-curvature Sukemitsu of around the Eiwa era among them; the dated blades, on the evidence of their year inscriptions, they assign to the first generation. His fatherhood of Katsumitsu and Munemitsu is fixed by a document blade outside the corpus, a Bunmei 9 tanto of Munemitsu inscribed as the work of Osafune Sukemitsu's second son, Sakyo no Jo Munemitsu, which the judges say clearly demonstrates the transitional workmanship as Bizen moved from Oei-Bizen into Sue-Bizen (応永備前から末備前へ移る過渡期の作風). His own dated pieces show that same hand mid-transition, the Eikyo tachi imposing and Oei-Bizen in flavor, the later wakizashi and tanto calmer in their dekiguchi, the construction and the ji-and-ha still carrying an Oei-Bizen character while the choji recedes and the waves narrow. The blades signed with the full Rokurozaemon no Jo title, of which the published sources say extant examples are extremely few (現存するものは頗る少), are the ones they treat as the touchstone of the shodai. Within the school he belongs to the Osafune main line at its mid-Muromachi turn, the generation between the Oei-Bizen of Morimitsu and Yasumitsu and the dense Sue-Bizen workshop his sons would run. His distinction is read not by borrowing a comparison but by his own grounded traits, the waist-open gunome with its subdued choji, the bo-utsuri over a standing itame, the bright nioiguchi and the pointed and angular teeth that mark the Sue-Bizen direction of his hand rather than the round clove of the older Bizen. The published sources value his blades as material as much as as swords: a wakizashi signed as made at Takehara in Settsu records the documented movement of Bizen smiths to other provinces in this period and is called valuable source material for the study of the late-Bizen smiths (末備前鍛冶研究の好資料). Through Katsumitsu and Munemitsu his line became the principal Osafune workshop of the late Muromachi, the names that would lead the school into the mass production of the Eisho and Tenmon eras. Fujishiro's rating is not recorded for him, and his designation record is modest in scale: seven works on record, all at the Juyo level, with a further blade preserved in the Imperial collection, and none of the higher tiers among them. That Imperial Koto blade descends in the Imperial Family and is held today in the Hayashibara Museum of Art, the one clear provenance to survive in his data. The blades are a body of mid-Muromachi Bizen tachi, wakizashi and tanto held in private and long-recorded hands, and one of recorded whereabouts appears from time to time rather than rarely, a more findable thing than a Kamakura tachi though not on that account common. The value of his work is partly documentary, for the dated, signed, ubu pieces let the Oei-Bizen to Sue-Bizen crossing be worked out blade by blade. A Bun'an 5 (1448) tachi bears on the ura a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription by the celebrated tester Yamano Kaemon-no-jo Nagahisa, evidence that his swords were proven as cutters generations after they left his forge. For a collector the Rokurozaemon no Jo Sukemitsu is the dated, knowable end of the Osafune name at its transition, a sword on which the period arc and the family question can be read in the hand, and on the best of which the working range of the smith is fully shown.

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