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About the maker

Naoe Shizu Kanetomo兼友

Kanetomo of Naoe Shizu is recorded in the published sources as one of the disciples of the first-generation Kaneuji, the Shizu master Mino received from the Soshu tradition and counted among the Ten Disciples of Masamune. The lineage took its name from a move: Kaneuji and his pupils, Kanetomo among them, worked first at Shizu in Mino and then relocated within the province to Naoe, where they forged, and the smiths of that group came to be called Naoe Shizu. The NBTHK places Kanetomo among the representative artisans of the line, naming him *Naoe Shizu wo daihyo suru toko no hitori*, one of the smiths who represent Naoe Shizu. The name itself ran across several generations from the early Nanbokucho period into the Muromachi, and the reference works accordingly list more than one Kanetomo, around the Oan era and again around Oei. The smith on record here is the Nanbokucho master whose typical production the published record dates to the Enbun and Joji eras of the mid fourteenth century, whose mumei tanto and o-suriage katana carry the Naoe Shizu manner at its most characteristic. His hand is read from the few signed pieces and then carried onto the unsigned majority. The defining axis is a rounded *gunome* combined with *notare* or a small *ko-notare*, tempered in *ko-nie-deki*, the manner the published sources single out as the one in which Kanetomo is most proficient among the Naoe Shizu smiths. The round-headed *gunome* link together in sequence, and this linking of the *gunome* is the feature the papers return to when they tie an unsigned blade back to his signed work. *Sunagashi* runs frequently through the *ha*, often in concert with *kinsuji*, the streaming nie-lines and bright lightning-lines that on the more intense pieces give the temper a somewhat vigorous *dekiguchi*; on the calmer signed pieces the same elements are held in a quieter register. *Ashi* enter the temper, *nie* gathers in places, and the *nioiguchi* is deep, brightening at the best examples into something clear and lucid. The *boshi* answers the *ha*: *midare-komi* or *notare-komi* turning back in a *ko-maru*, the point frequently swept into *hakikake*. The *jigane* is the Mino translation of the Shizu-Soshu manner. He forges an *itame* mixed with *mokume*, the grain flowing in places and at times standing a little, over which a thick *ji-nie* settles and *chikei* enter well, the dark grain-lines threading the steel. On the finest tanto this forging is what the published sources praise above all, judging the *kitae* superior and the *ji* and *ha* alike thickly covered with *nie*. The reflection a Bizen smith would carry as a midare-utsuri is absent here, the *jigane* speaking instead through the depth of its *ji-nie* and the run of its *chikei*. The rule across his work is the open, well-forged Naoe *jigane*, sometimes tending to *hada-dachi* on the wider Nanbokucho tanto, the steel clear and the activity legible. The published record draws two registers within the typical manner and separates a third away from it. The signed register is the scarce spine of his oeuvre, for almost all of his surviving work is mumei and is attributed to him by resemblance to those signed pieces; the sources stress that signed examples are extremely valuable, *yumei wa sukoburu kicho*. The anchor they cite again and again is a signed tanto designated an Important Art Object, in which the forging is *itame* mixed with *mokume* flowing in places and the temper a rounded *gunome* with *ko-notare*, becoming partially linked, executed in *ko-nie-deki* and conveying a calm and elegant air; every mumei attribution the papers affirm is measured against it. Set apart from this is a single signed katana that the NBTHK reads away from the customary Naoe Shizu workmanship: its well-forged *jigane* is tempered in *suguha* with a whitish *shirake* tone, and the papers judge it from the workmanship of the *jiba* and the manner of the inscription to be early Muromachi, reading it toward the Zensada line, *Zenjo-ha no sakufu*, rather than the later Sue-Seki, and surmising that a smith of the Zenjo school may have borne the name Kanetomo in that period. It is a reminder that the name spans several lineages, and that a *suguha* Kanetomo with *shirake* is a different hand from the *nie-deki gunome* master. Within the Mino tradition Kanetomo stands directly below Kaneuji, the smith who carried the Soshu manner of Masamune into the province. His foundation is that manner translated into Mino steel, milder and more workmanlike than Kaneuji's own: the *itame-mokume* *jigane* with thick *ji-nie* and *chikei*, the *nie-deki* temper of *gunome* and *notare* carrying *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*. The published sources separate his work both from the orthodox Soshu of his master above and from the Sue-Seki homonyms below, and they distinguish it within the school by its own characteristic tells rather than by borrowed comparison: the linking of round-headed *gunome*, the frequent *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, the bright deep *nioiguchi*, and a *boshi* of *ko-maru* with *hakikake*. Carving is rare among Naoe works, so that the *bo-hi* with *soe-bi*, the *futasuji-hi*, the *suken* and *gomabashi* that appear on a handful of his blades are noted as noteworthy, the published sources observing that *horimono wa mare*, such carvings on a Kanetomo are uncommon. Kanetomo is rated *Jo-jo saku* by Fujishiro for the quality of his workmanship. On record stand nine Juyo-Token blades together with two prewar Juyo-Bijutsuhin tanto, almost all of them mumei tanto and o-suriage katana, the signed pieces a small and prized minority. He has no National Treasure and no Important Cultural Property; the weight of his record sits in the Juyo tier and in those two Important Art Object tanto whose signatures anchor the attributions. Provenance is thin but real: one of the Jubi tanto descended through Naruse Yoshio of Aichi and is now held by the NBTHK, another passed through Kajimura Shigeru of Osaka, and a further blade is recorded with Atsuta Jingu. A privately held Naoe Shizu Kanetomo, signed above all, comes to the market only from time to time and with patience; the mumei tanto and katana appear more often than the rare signed pieces, but a Kanetomo of any kind is a Nanbokucho work of standing, not a routine acquisition. The published sources reserve their highest words for the small tanto in which the *kinsuji*, *nie-suji* and *sunagashi* run from base to tip with power despite the scale, and the bright, clear *nioiguchi* and the tight, unrelaxed grain combine into what they call *shoyo subeki yuhin*, an excellent piece worthy of high praise.

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