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About the maker

Chikuzen Sairen西蓮

Sairen is the late-Kamakura Chikuzen smith behind the long signature recorded in the Kōzan Oshigata, a Bunpō 1 (1317) tachi cut “Chikuzen no Kuni, Hakata Dangisho, Kuniyoshi Hōshi Sairen.” That single inscription resolves the man: Kuniyoshi was his lay name, Sairen the religious name he took on tonsure, and the Dangisho the Hakata administrative seat, thought to be the Chinzei Dangisho, established against the Mongol threat. The published sources transmit him as the son of Ryōsai and the father of Jitsua, and as the grandfather of Ō-Sa, so that he stands at the head of the line that would produce Samonji. His surviving signatures come in several forms, “Kuniyoshi,” “Dangisho Kuniyoshi,” “Sairen” and “Dangisho Sairen,” the record of a smith in the service of that office. His hand is the classical Kyūshū manner, and it is consistent enough that the judges name it plainly. The forging is an itame mixed with ō-itame and mokume that stands out and flows into nagare, at times leaning to masame, a large-pattern standing *jigane* rather than the tight ko-itame of Yamashiro work. Over it lie thick, fine *ji-nie* and *chikei*, and the steel takes on a blackish, iron tone, what the sources call kana-iro ni kuromi. On many blades a faint whitish *utsuri* rises, the muted shirake reflection of this dark steel rather than the bright midare-utsuri of Bizen. The temper is the second half of the tell: a low *suguha* or fine *suguha*, the habuchi fraying into *hotsure*, with *kuichigai-ba*, *uchinoke* and a *nijūba* tendency in the upper half, *ko-nie* adhering and *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* running through. The *nioiguchi* does not shine; it takes on an *urumi*, a moist and sometimes sinking quality. The published sources gather the whole into one formula, that his work “strictly preserves the manner of the Kyūshū classical group” (九州古典派の風を墨守した作域). The *jigane* is the constant from which everything else is read. Itame stands out and flows, *ji-nie* scatters densely, *chikei* enters, and the dark steel carries its faint shirake. That *jigane* is the manner he shares with Ryōsai and Jitsua, and on the broad o-suriage pieces a *mizukage* sometimes rises at the machi. Against it the *suguha* stays low and quiet, the edge fraying so that, as one entry puts it, “the hardened edge is a suguha that frays and the nioiguchi takes on an urumi quality” (焼刃は直刃がほつれて匂口がうるむ). One Jūyō katana reads the temper directly as a *suguha* in the manner of Yamato work, the urumi nioiguchi the trait shared with Kyūshū, and the *bōshi* runs straight or shallowly notare with *hakikake* to a *ko-maru*, or finishes as *yakizume*; on the long blades a *bō-hi*, at times with *soe-hi*, is carved through. Within that single hand the sources draw a second register. Beside the pieces whose nioiguchi is subdued and sparse stands a manner in which the temper becomes more *nie*-laden, *ko-nie* adhering well and the *nioi* deep, with *sunagashi*, *kinsuji* and at times *tobiyaki*, the nioiguchi turning bright. This is the manner the judges say most strongly suggests a connection with Samonji; of the signed Seikadō tantō they note that this latter type “strongly suggests the relationship with Sa” (後者は左との関係を多く思わせる). The same thought is put more famously on a Jūyō katana, where the commentary remarks that “one feels the very groundwork from which the prodigy Samonji would emerge is present in works such as Sairen’s” (天才児左文字が生まれ出るだけの礎地は西蓮の作に見られる). Most of his record, however, is *mumei*: of the blades on the official record roughly eight are signed and the great majority are o-suriage and given to him from era and school, several carrying Hon’ami appraisals in gold inlay, gold powder and red lacquer. What sets the Chikuzen Sairen apart is exactly what the sources name as his own. He is not a Bizen smith and shows none of the bright midare-utsuri of that province; his *jigane* is the dark, standing, flowing Kyūshū itame with its muted shirake, and his edge the urumi suguha, not a clear bright line. He is held apart from the later, brighter Sōshū-influenced Sa by the quietness of that suguha and the absence of flamboyance, even as the nie-laden register points forward to it. Where the broad o-suriage katana with extended kissaki invite a Nanbokuchō reading, one earlier Jūyō entry preferring that date on the wide body and large point, later commentary observes that extended-kissaki examples do occur even in late Kamakura, and so endorses Hon’ami Kōtoku’s Sairen appraisal as appropriate. He is, in the end, the quiet Chikuzen root that the line to Samonji grew from. For the collector he is a rare early Kyūshū name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, and the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, some forty-five designated works on record, of which only a handful are *ubu* and signed. The published commentary stresses how few those are, calling one signed ubu tachi a piece whose documentary value is exceptionally high, and naming a fine Tokubetsu Jūyō katana “an outstanding example among those attributed to Sairen” (西蓮極めの中でも傑出した出来映え). His blades are preserved in long-held collections and institutions grounded in their own provenance: the Seikadō Bunko holds the signed Seikadō tantō from the Wakasugi collection, and his work descends through daimyō houses, the Shimazu of Satsuma, including the Shigetomi Shimazu branch and a blade of Shimazu Yoshihiro, the Tokugawa shogunal house, and the Maeda. Only a small number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, and most of those are held rather than traded, so a signed Sairen comes to light only seldom and a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the great Chikuzen line that culminated in Samonji began.

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