The divided-courts war impoverished the court society that had sustained Kyōto’s most refined work. With the last Rai masters the classic line effectively closed, while Hasebe and Nobukuni carried the new Sōshū manner into the capital.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatchThis blade is attributed to Den Rai Kunitsyugu (伝来国次), a renowned swordsmith who was active during the early Nambokucho period (around early 14th century) in Yamashiro province (today’s Kyoto prefecture). He belonged to Rai school, a representative school of Yamashiro blades founded by Rai Kuniyuki (来国行). The swordsmiths of this school preceded their names with the character “Rai” (来). Rai Kunitsugu is said to have been an apprentice of Rai Kunitoshi (来国俊) or a cousin of Rai Kunimitsu (来国光), both of whom are renowned swordsmiths throughout Samurai history. Later, Kunitsugu moved to Kamakura, an area located in today’s Kanagawa prefecture, and learned the excellent craftsmanship from Masamune, who is arguably one of the most famous swordsmiths in Japan and said to be the actual founder of Soshu Den tradition. Kunitsugu was one of the top ten apprentices of Masamune, also known as Masamune Jittetsu (正宗十哲). And Kunitsugu became a master craftsman known as “Kamakura Rai” (鎌倉来). The most significant characteristic of Kunitsugu’s style is the strong influence of Soshu Den. Kunitsugu’s craftsmanship has been regarded as excellent and he is listed as Koto Saijo–saku (grandmaster swordsmith of Koto blades). Soshu Den Swordsmiths residing in Soshu province (Today’s Kanagawa prefecture) used a particular sword-forging tradition called Soshu Den. And, Shimada school also used this tradition to forge blades. Shoshu Den was born in the middle of the Kamakura period (mid 13th century). Back then, the Yamato and Yamashiro traditions were highly developed, and there were a few renowned swordsmiths from those regions. However, the sword-forging practice was in its infancy in the Kanto area, where the Soshu region was located. At the beginning of the Kamakura government, which was established in 1185, the first Shogun, Minamoto Yoritomo, prioritized making a lot of rules to have its political stability. And he couldn’t afford to hire swordsmiths within the same region or train them. Therefore, the Kamakura government originally ordered weapons to the swordsmiths in the other areas, such as Yamato and Yamashiro. But, since the government was established, the demand for weapons increased exponentially in the government, and they had to figure out how to meet those demands from Samurai who served Kamakura shogunate. Then, the 5th head of the Shogun, Hojo Tokiyori, invited two renowned swordsmiths from other parts of Japan. They were Awataguchi Kunitsuna from Yamashiro province and Bizen Saburo Kunimune from Bizen province. And the 7th-gen Shogun Koreyasu Shino also invited Fukuoka Ichimonji Sukezane from Bizen province. It is said that those three swordsmiths played an essential role in creating the Soshu Den and making the foundation of the Soshu Den. Also another famous figure in the Soshu den is Intou Kunimitsu, an adopted son of Awataguchi Knitsuna. And Kunimitsu passed his excellent craftsmanship to Yukimitsu, his apprentice. And Masamune, one of the most famous swordsmiths in Japanese history, was an apprentice of Yukimitsu. And Masamune was the one that brought Shoshuden to nationwide fame. The tradition Masamune completed became an example of other swordsmiths who learned Soshu Den. Also, Soshu Den influenced many renowned swordsmiths during the Koto- Shinto era. One of examples is Inoue Shinkai from Osaka and Suishinshi Masahide from Edo. It is appraised as a Tokubetsu Hozon Token (特別保存刀剣) issued by NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Touken Hozon Kyokai:日本美術刀剣保存協会). *Please keep in mind that there are a couple of Kitae Kizu on the blade. Fuchi-Kashira On the Fuchi part, a dragon (龍, Ryu) flying through clouds is depicted. The combination of a dragon and clouds, called the Unryu Zu (雲龍図), is a classical and common motif. Initially, dragons were imaginary creatures found in ancient foreign traditions or myths. Furthermore, it is regarded as a symbolic beast of auspicious signs. Its body is likened to nine animals: antlers are deer, the head is a camel, eyes are demons, the neck is a snake, the belly is the Mizuchi (蛟, a mythical animal in Japan that looks like a snake and has a horn and four legs), scales are fish, claws are falcons, palms are tigers and ears are cows. It was thought that the dragon would reign at the top of all animals because of its odd-looking appearance. About the cloud pattern, clouds bring blessed rain and snow, and their movements significantly affect the day’s weather. Due to its supernatural power, a theory says that gods, spirits, and dragons dwell in the clouds. In Japan, there is a belief that worships dragons as water gods. Since rice cultivation has flourished in this country, people always treat water as an essential resource. It might be one of the reasons why the combination of dragon and clouds motifs is often seen even in sword mountings. We imagine some people wished for a plentiful harvest in the Unryu theme. From such a religious aspect, we could infer that dragon designs were familiar to people. Tsuka and Menuki The motif of this Menuki is also a dragon. Besides the description about a dragon as mentioned above, the dragon pattern was used for emperors’ clothing in ancient China so that people strictly defined its shape or even the number of nails. On the other hand, the dragon pattern does not have detailed rules to represent classes in Japan. However, still, it maintains its meaning as the all-purpose auspicious pattern. Tsuba and Habaki Hana ikada (花筏, flower raft) is the theme of this Tsuba. Originally, the flower raft pattern represents the scattered petals of cherry blossoms floating on the surface of the water and flowing together like a raft. And it became a popular classic and elegant pattern from the Azuchi Momoyama period (1573-). The elegant appearance is still popular today, especially when the cherry blossoms have fallen, and the surface of the river turns to be pink with petals. This Tsuba depicts cherry petals and a raft more directly. Cherry blossom is one of the seasonal things of spring, and it has been loved for a long time in Japan. Its pattern is designed not only for sword mountings but also for Kimono (着物, traditional Japanese costume) or furnishings. One theory says that the god of grain exists in cherry blossoms. Therefore, this flower pattern has been treated as the symbol of a plentiful harvest. In ancient times, people held a traditional custom under cherry blossom trees to pray for a bumper year. It is said that this is the origin of the cherry blossom viewing picnic today. Saya Various autumn plants (秋草, Akikusa), such as Kiku (菊, chrysanthemum) and Kikyou (桔梗, Japanese bellflower), are beautifully depicted with the Makie (蒔絵) technique on this scabbard. The Makie is a typical Japanese lacquer art technique developed uniquely in Japan for about 1,200 years. Firstly, it needs to draw a picture with lacquer on the surface with a thin brush. Next, sprinkle the gold powder from above to show the pattern before the lacquer hardens. This technique makes a gorgeous and elegant look to works. Kiku is one of the flowers that symbolizes fall, and people appreciate it very much since ancient times. It is said that this flower was used as a medicine for obtaining a long life in China a long time ago, and it was brought to Japan with this thought in the Nara period (648-781). As its petals form radially, the chrysanthemum has been likened to the sun. That is why this flower pattern is treated as the symbol of perpetual youth and longevity or good health. “Kiku no Gomon (菊の御紋)” is a kind of chrysanthemum pattern, and it has been used as the crest of the Emperor and the royal family in Japan so that it is well-known as a noble pattern. Kikyou, depicted in the lower right side on the inside of the box, is a small star-shaped flower. It is said its root has medicinal efficacy. The Kikyou pattern has often been used as a motif of Tanka (短歌, a kind of traditional Japanese poem) and pictures since the Heian period (794-1185). Its name was initially “Kichikou,” and it changed to “Kikyou” with time. It is said this flower was used for fortune-telling in the old days. This action is called Kikkyou-wo Uranau (吉凶を占う) in Japanese. The word Kikkyou (吉凶, good or bad omen) was associated with this flower’s name. “Kichikou” was compared to the word “Kichi Kou (吉更),” which means further good fortune. That is why this flower pattern is treated as a good omen design. Authentication Paper They authenticated the blade on February 21st in the 6th year of Reiwa (2024). They appraised it as Tokubetsu Hozon Touken, the blade especially worth preserving for Japanese society.
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Rai (Yamashiro) · Yamashiro · around 1311-1327
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 5%
2 pieces on the market now
On the tanto recorded in the Meibutsu-cho as the Torikai Kunitsugu (鳥養国次), the NBTHK writes that the work of Rai Kunitsugu shows "the strongest nie of ji and ha within the whole Rai school"[[c:1]], and that single judgment carries the essence of the smith. The published sources place him at the very end of the Kamakura period, his activity reaching into the first years of Nanbokucho, where he stands beside Rai Kunimitsu, his slight senior, as one of the two masters who bring the Rai mainline to its close. His genealogy is unsettled across the published record: the usual account makes him a pupil of Rai Kunitoshi, one account a cousin of Rai Kunimitsu, others the son of Kunitoshi or Kunimitsu's younger brother. From of old he has been counted among the Ten Brilliant Pupils of Masamune (正宗十哲) and carries the name "Kamakura-Rai"[[c:2]], a name the published sources explain by the manner of the work itself.
That manner is a hamon the earlier Rai never showed: a midare-dominant temper of notare mixed with gunome, the nie thick and bright, kinsuji and sunagashi sweeping through the ha, yubashiri drifting along the habuchi. The kitae sets thick ji-nie over itame and weaves in frequent chikei, in places standing slightly. The recurring verdict of the published sources is that this is a workmanship "strongly shaped by the influence of Soshu-den"[[c:3]], and the comment of Honma recorded against another of his Juyo Bijutsuhin tanto holds the same line, that within the Rai school the nie of his ji and ha is conspicuously strong. Even an absence points the same way: compared with general Rai work, his ji shows fewer of the soft rai-hada patches typical of the school. The boshi of this register runs midare-komi or with a pointed tendency, often swept with hakikake.
Beneath the Soshu color the jigane stays Rai. The forging in his finest pieces is a packed ko-itame, the ji-nie fine and thick, chikei entering finely, and a pale nie-utsuri rising over the ji, the anchors that keep the work Kyoto. His most numerous surviving class is the wide osuriage mumei katana, often in a deep wa-zori with the chu-kissaki extended. On these blades a suguha-toned base mixes ko-gunome and ko-choji; ashi and yo enter long, thick and without pause; the nie sits deep into the ha, kinsuji and sunagashi run, and nijuba-like yubashiri plays at the edge. The deciding point is stated outright in the published sources: where the ji and ha are unusually bright and the nie strong, "if one fixes on the point that the nie-ashi stand out within the ha, an attribution to Rai Kunitsugu is judged proper"[[c:4]]. One Juyo katana is described as reading "just as though the midare he tempers on his tanto had been rendered on a long blade"[[c:5]].
His signed work is nearly all tanto and ko-wakizashi; the published sources repeat that surviving tachi are scarce, and that ken and yari survive only in the rarest examples. The tanto are signed below the mekugi-ana at the center of the nakago with a large, thick-chiseled three-character mei, while the slender signed tachi with high koshizori carry an elongated, finely chiseled, smaller signature that the NBTHK reads as his early hand, valued for showing the change of his manner over time. A minority of works keeps the older Rai style unaltered, a quiet suguha with ko-choji, the nie at ordinary strength; the tanto handed down in the Uesugi house is called "a calm register that holds faithfully to the Rai tradition"[[c:6]], and such work is noted as extremely rare for him. Dated pieces are nearly absent: the ken of Karyaku 2 (1327) is his earliest surviving date, worked, as with other smiths of the period, in Yamato-den; a tanto of Shokei 1 (1332) also survives, and Gentoku dates are known only from the old sword albums. On the tradition that he studied under Masamune the NBTHK itself is careful: since Kunimitsu too at times shows the same nie-strong manner, it writes, to affirm the pupil legend from the style alone would be "premature"[[c:7]].
The comparison that fixes his place is drawn against Rai Kunimitsu. Kunimitsu also left midare work beside his traditional suguha, but in his case, the published sources observe, the suguha far outnumber the midare, and "Kunitsugu is the opposite"[[c:8]]. One Juyo text goes further, judging that he carries the nie even beyond the nie-emphasized midareba of his senior, a manner the earlier Rai never had. Among the forebears of the line, Kuniyuki, Niji Kunitoshi, Rai Kunitoshi and Kunimitsu, he is the one who retains the least of the traditional Kyoto style, which is exactly why the old Masamune-pupil account drew attention. The judges also leave him room: various atypical pieces (変り出来) are acknowledged within his work, and his few signed tachi differ among themselves. With Kunimitsu he carries the Rai mainline to its close in early Nanbokucho, and the Kamakura-Rai name marks his position as the school's Soshu-facing edge.
Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. One of his blades is a National Treasure and four are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony preserved wholly outside the market; beneath them stand fifteen Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty-nine Juyo, fifty-four blades in those two tiers, out of sixty-five designated works on record, twenty-four of them signed against thirty-five unsigned. The Torikai Kunitsugu itself was certified Juyo Bijutsuhin in 1933. The provenance roll is of the first rank: the published sources single out the famous tachi handed down in the former shogunal house and in the Maeda house; another tachi, recorded in the Tokugawa Jikki, was presented by the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi to Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu in Genroku 15 (1702); a katana passed from Matsudaira Nobuyasu, Ieyasu's eldest son, to his retainer Hiraiwa Chikayoshi; and tanto descended in the Uesugi, Asano, Okubo, Nabeshima and Ikoma houses and in the Yamauchi of Tosa, whose blade went to the shogunal house as a memorial gift in Kyoho 5 (1720). Of recorded whereabouts today, examples rest in the Tokyo National Museum, the Sano Art Museum and the Hikone Castle Museum. For the collector the picture is that of a major Rai master whose designated works are held far more often than they move: a mumei katana or wakizashi of the Juyo tier appears from time to time, a signed tanto only rarely, and a piece of the order of the Torikai Kunitsugu can only be awaited as an event.
Where Kunitsugu stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
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Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
30 pieces on the market now
A calm, lustrous steel is the first thing the connoisseur's eye is meant to settle on with the Rai school: a finely forged ko-itame (小板目) worked until it is dense and refined, over which the ji-nie lies thickly in minute particles, fine chikei (地景) enter, and a nie-utsuri rises in the ji. This bright, refined jihada, the surface the trade reads as Rai-hada when its softer, looser patches intrude, is the constant beneath every manner the house produced. The school took shape in Kyoto in the mid-Kamakura period around the workshop of Rai Kuniyuki (來國行), the de facto founder of the line, whose chronology is reckoned from the Koan 1 (1278) tachi of his transmitted son. From Kuniyuki the Yamashiro-den tradition of late Kamakura was built, carried by Niji Kunitoshi, the two-character 國俊, traditionally his son and the nearest of the house to his hand; by the three-character Rai Kunitoshi, the first to crown his name with the character Rai, a practice all who followed took from him; and onward through Rai Kunimitsu (來國光), Rai Kunitsugu (來國次) and the lesser names Kunizane, Tomokuni, Kunihide and Mitsukane into the early Nanbokucho period. Whether the two Kunitoshi are one smith or two remains the classic open question of the school, argued from a span of dated work running about forty years from Koan 1 to Genko 1 (1321). What unites the house is a temper of restraint and activity at once, its life carried in the nie rather than in the height of the pattern. Against Kuniyuki's wide, suguha-toned ha and against the refined chu- or hoso-suguha of the three-character line, the smiths mix ko-choji, ko-gunome and small midare; ashi and yo enter densely, often as the Kyoto-style kyo-sakaashi (京逆足) that slants back toward the nakago, the opposite of the Bizen direction; the nioiguchi runs deep and bright, ko-nie attaches thickly, and kinsuji and sunagashi move through the body of the ha. The boshi is the school's most misjudged trait: a ko-maru drawn out by hakikake, the brushed nie of the point continuing the work of the ji below, often falling into midare-komi with a pointing tip. Muneyaki along the back recurs often enough that the records name it a habit of the Rai hand, and carving in the groove, suken or gomabashi with an added side hi, is a practice the texts call peculiar to Rai work. The strength of the nie within the ha, the utsuri rising as a nie-utsuri, and the kyo-sakaashi are precisely the marks that part Niji Kunitoshi's choji-dominant midare, which the old books said resembles the Bizen Ichimonji, from the Ichimonji itself.
Where the early masters keep this calm Kyoto register, the late line bends toward Soshu-den: Kunitsugu, counted among the Ten Brilliant Pupils of Masamune and named Kamakura-Rai, shows the strongest nie of ji and ha in the whole school, a notare mixed with gunome the earlier Rai never had. For a collector the house style is the recognition tool. An unsigned, o-suriage katana settles to Rai when the packed ko-itame, the fine nie over it, the standing utsuri and the kyo-sakaashi read together; the named smith is then fixed by degree. Niji Kunitoshi and the three-character Kunitoshi, both graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, anchor the canon, the latter unusually approachable because his signed work is abundant and roughly half of it tanto, late Yamashiro work in its purest form. Kunimitsu, the most prolific and most versatile of the house, gives the impression of surpassing his father in force; Kunitsugu, graded Jo-jo saku, is the Soshu-facing edge whose signed tachi are scarce. Mitsukane, the Chudo Rai who withdrew to forge on Mt. Hiei, stands apart as the strong pole, his ji-nie laid thicker than Kunitoshi's or Kunimitsu's and likened upward to Awataguchi Yoshimitsu; the smaller Kunizane, Tomokuni and Kunihide carry the jigane a step into the Nanbokucho. The provenance roll is of the first rank, with blades worn by Ieyasu and held beside the Honjo Masamune, meibutsu such as the Aizen Kunitoshi, the Torikai Kunitsugu and the Midare-Mitsukane, and descent through the Owari and Kishu Tokugawa, the Maeda, Uesugi and Shimazu houses. Much sits locked as National Treasure and patrimony, yet the Juyo tier of the major names, and the whole record of the minor hands, remains a goal a serious collector can actually reach. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunitoshi國俊 | 1278-1288 | 99 |
| Kuniyuki國行 | 1259-1260 | 126 |
| Kunimitsu國光 | 1326-1351 | 262 |
| Kunitsugu國次 | 1311-1327 | 65 |
| Kunitoshi國俊 | 1288-1319 | 193 |
Yamashiro in the Nanbokuchō period
The divided-courts war impoverished the court society that had sustained Kyōto’s most refined work. With the last Rai masters the classic line effectively closed, while Hasebe and Nobukuni carried the new Sōshū manner into the capital.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
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