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Description

This antique Katana is signed by Tango no Kami Kanemichi, believed to be the second generation, who worked in Osaka during the early Edo period (1681-1688). It comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate for both the blade and its koshirae. The sword features a Yotsu-Mokkou-shaped Tsuba and a Fuchi-Kashira with subtle wave-like patterns, showcasing the craftsmanship of the Osaka Shinto era.

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Swords›Mishina›Kanemichi›Antique Japanese Sword Katana Signed by Kanemichi NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate
katanaTokubetsu Kichō
Mishina Kanemichi

Antique Japanese Sword Katana Signed by Kanemichi NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate

mei · Mishina · Edo · nagasa 64.5cm · sori 0.9cm

SOLD
Mishina Kanemichi — 1 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 2 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 3 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 4 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 5 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 6 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 7 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 8 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 9 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 10 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 11 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 12 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 13 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 14 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 15 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 16 of 16
1 / 16
1 / 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 1 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 2 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 3 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 4 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 5 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 6 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 7 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 8 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 9 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 10 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 11 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 12 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 13 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 14 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 15 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 16 of 16
Measurements & details
Smith
Mishina Kanemichi
Type
Katana
School
Mishina
Period
Around 1681–1704(Tenna)
Province
Settsu
Signature
Signed(100% of this smith's designated works are signed)
Measurements
Nagasa 64.5cmSori 0.9cm
Description

This antique Katana is signed by Tango no Kami Kanemichi, believed to be the second generation, who worked in Osaka during the early Edo period (1681-1688). It comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate for both the blade and its koshirae. The sword features a Yotsu-Mokkou-shaped Tsuba and a Fuchi-Kashira with subtle wave-like patterns, showcasing the craftsmanship of the Osaka Shinto era.

About the maker

Kanemichi

兼道

Mishina school, Osaka (Tango-no-kami Kanemichi line, second generation) · Settsu · around 1681-1704

Fujishiro Chu-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 76%

1 piece on the market now

›

A katana in the forty-first Jūyō session carries the date Genroku 14, the year 1701[[c:1]], cut on the reverse of the nakago beneath a bold five-character signature, Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, and it is one of the very few year-dated blades by which his active span can be fixed at all. This is the second-generation Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, called Kiheiji, who worked at Ōsaka about the Genroku and Hōei years and is recorded as having forged in Edo as well. The published sources transmit him as the son of the first Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, in the received account the second son of the Kyōto second-generation Tanba-no-kami Yoshimichi, and so a branch of the Mishina school that Kanemichi the Mino-Seki smith carried into Kyōto. The first Tango-no-kami, named Mishina Kihei and signing at first as Naomichi, settled in Ōsaka and was known for the sudare-ba and the chōji-tinged gunome that were the family specialty. His son took a deliberately different course, and that divergence is the spine of his identity on the blade.

Where the first generation tempered the sudare-ba and the chōji-laden gunome that the published sources call the house specialty, the second cast off the chōji and turned to a flamboyant tōran-style large gunome that mirrors the Ōsaka shintō fashion of his day. His most particular tell is constructive rather than decorative. Across the upper and lower halves of the ha he forges gunome in alternating linked sequences, two joined and then three joined, repeating one against the other so that the tōran gathers its variety from the pattern itself. Of one such blade the published sources write that 「互の目の二つ連れた刃と三つ連れた刃とが相互に交じる点に大きな特色が見られる」[[c:2]], that the great distinguishing feature lies precisely in this mutual mixing of two-joined and three-joined gunome, and of his matched daishō, on which the long and short blades reverse the order of the joined groups, that the variation shows 「彼の工夫の跡」, the trace of his own contrivance. Ashi enter thickly into this temper, the nioi runs deep, the nie lies thick and at times coarse, sunagashi and kinsuji play through it, tobiyaki appear with the mune tempered, and the nioiguchi stays bright.

The jigane beneath this showy temper is quiet and clean, the true Ōsaka steel. He forges a tightly gathered ko-itame in which the ji-nie settles dust-fine and chikei enter finely, the surface closing rather than standing, a jigane that distinguishes the second generation from the more standing itame of the older Mino-rooted Mishina work. Over it the temper opens always from a straight yakidashi at the machi, the Ōsaka shintō base from which both his manners rise, before it widens into the tōran. The bōshi answers the ha: it comes to a ko-maru, returns rather deeply, and brushes into hakikake, with a faint pointed tendency on the wider blades. The horimono, where present, are a plain bōhi run to a rounded finish with an accompanying soebi. The sugata is heavy and forceful in the Genroku taste, wide in the mihaba, thick in the kasane, with a sense of funbari, the curve deep and the kissaki extended, a build the published sources note recurs among smiths of the Jōkyō and Genroku years.

The published sources draw his work into two registers. The principal one is the tōran-style large gunome just described, the manner in which they find this smith's distinctive hand and which they tie directly to the contemporary Ōsaka taste. The second is quieter and, they are careful to note, one the first generation did not leave: a deep-nioi suguha. Here the straight yakidashi opens into a broadly tempered suguha base, shallowly notare, ashi entering vigorously, the nioi deep, the nie thick with some coarse grains, the upper half showing a two-stepped futasuji-fu effect, kinsuji and sunagashi running well. Of a blade in this register the published sources write that it 「真改風の作柄をあらわしている」[[c:3]], that it shows a workmanship in the manner of Shinkai, and the comparison is exact: it is the deep-nioi, thickly nie-laden straight temper of Inoue Shinkai, the great Ōsaka master, that this calmer face most nearly approaches. The two registers are not a chronology but a range, the same Ōsaka hand stated once as spectacle and once as restraint.

What places him is the careful distinction the published sources draw between the two generations, a distinction that is itself the kantei. The first Tango-no-kami cut a chrysanthemum crest and the character ichi below the machi on much of his work and leaned to the family sudare-ba and chōji-tinged gunome; the second carries neither crest nor character and turns instead to the deep-nioi suguha and the tōran-style large gunome that reflect the fashion of his time. His distinction is therefore best drawn by his own grounded traits rather than by his father's: the alternating joined-gunome tōran, the bright deep-nioi temper read as Shinkai's, the clean dust-fine ko-itame and the straight Ōsaka yakidashi set him apart within the Mishina line and within his own family, and of his large-gunome work the published sources say plainly that 「この工の特徴」, this smith's characteristic, is to be read in the very shape of those linked gunome. He stands as a competent and individual second generation, faithful to the Ōsaka idiom of his day while working a constructive variation that is recognizably his own.

Kanemichi is rated Chū-jō saku in the Fujishiro ranking, and seven of his blades hold the rank of Jūyō-Tōken, all of them signed, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them; his is the record of a sound and individual Ōsaka shintō master rather than a great national name. The body that survives in this designated tier is small and almost wholly signed, which for a shintō smith is itself a documentary virtue, the name fixed rather than appraised. One of his katana descends from the Aoyama house, the wardens of Ōsaka castle, and the published sources, calling it 「大坂城代青山家伝来の一口」[[c:4]], note that long blades of just this kind are repeatedly met among that house's old swords and were likely forged to its order, a thread of daimyō provenance that ties his work to the city he served. A matched daishō of his also survives, the published sources calling such a pair from the second generation extremely rare and of documentary value. For a collector his work sits among the more attainable of the Ōsaka shintō masters: most of his designated blades rest in the Jūyō tier rather than locked away as patrimony, and a signed, dated example such as the Genroku 14 katana, which fixes both the hand and the year, is the rarer and more desirable encounter, coming to light from time to time and rewarding patience.

Historical importance

Where Kanemichi 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.

随一
Foremost
屈指
Leading
有数
Major
著名
Notable

Select a lens to see how it's measured.

Designation record
5 designated works
Jūyō
5
1 work by Kanemichi on the market→
Kanemichi — full profileMishina school, Osaka (Tango-no-kami Kanemichi line, second generation) school

Dated Works

Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades

Active period
1701Editorial estimate: 1681–1704
1 of 5 designated works carry a date
About the school

Mishina

三品

Shinto · Yamashiro

62 pieces on the market now

›

The Mishina school (三品), one of the two dominant smithing groups of early Edo Kyoto beside the Horikawa, grew from the late-Mino workshop of Kanemichi of Seki, whose dated blades run through the Tenbun, Eiroku, and Tenshō eras. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century Kanemichi came up to the capital with his four sons and settled at Nishinotōin Ebisugawa, where the eldest, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, is recorded as having greatly raised the name of the line. Learn more →

14 recorded smiths118 designated works
Leading smiths
SmithEraDesignated
Kinmichi金道1596-161523
Yoshimichi吉道1596-161536
Masatoshi正俊1596-161531
Kanemichi兼道1681-17045
Yoshimichi吉道1661-16736
Explore the Mishina school →
Authenticity not guaranteed

This work carries older NBTHK “Kichō”-era papers, which the NBTHK no longer issues and now regards as unreliable. To confirm the attribution, submission to an official Japanese examination body (such as the NBTHK or NTHK) for modern certification could be considered.

Seller
S
Samurai Museum
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Returns/exchanges limited to defects caused by shipping (except willful misconduct or gross negligence by the company); customers must contact within 72 hours of receiving the product.

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Description

This antique Katana is signed by Tango no Kami Kanemichi, believed to be the second generation, who worked in Osaka during the early Edo period (1681-1688). It comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate for both the blade and its koshirae. The sword features a Yotsu-Mokkou-shaped Tsuba and a Fuchi-Kashira with subtle wave-like patterns, showcasing the craftsmanship of the Osaka Shinto era.

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Swords›Mishina›Kanemichi›Antique Japanese Sword Katana Signed by Kanemichi NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate
katanaTokubetsu Kichō
Mishina Kanemichi

Antique Japanese Sword Katana Signed by Kanemichi NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate

mei · Mishina · Edo · nagasa 64.5cm · sori 0.9cm

SOLD
Mishina Kanemichi — 1 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 2 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 3 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 4 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 5 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 6 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 7 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 8 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 9 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 10 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 11 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 12 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 13 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 14 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 15 of 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 16 of 16
1 / 16
1 / 16
Mishina Kanemichi — 1 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 2 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 3 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 4 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 5 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 6 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 7 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 8 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 9 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 10 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 11 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 12 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 13 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 14 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 15 of 16Mishina Kanemichi — 16 of 16
Measurements & details
Smith
Mishina Kanemichi
Type
Katana
School
Mishina
Period
Around 1681–1704(Tenna)
Province
Settsu
Signature
Signed(100% of this smith's designated works are signed)
Measurements
Nagasa 64.5cmSori 0.9cm
Description

This antique Katana is signed by Tango no Kami Kanemichi, believed to be the second generation, who worked in Osaka during the early Edo period (1681-1688). It comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Kicho Certificate for both the blade and its koshirae. The sword features a Yotsu-Mokkou-shaped Tsuba and a Fuchi-Kashira with subtle wave-like patterns, showcasing the craftsmanship of the Osaka Shinto era.

About the maker

Kanemichi

兼道

Mishina school, Osaka (Tango-no-kami Kanemichi line, second generation) · Settsu · around 1681-1704

Fujishiro Chu-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 76%

1 piece on the market now

›

A katana in the forty-first Jūyō session carries the date Genroku 14, the year 1701[[c:1]], cut on the reverse of the nakago beneath a bold five-character signature, Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, and it is one of the very few year-dated blades by which his active span can be fixed at all. This is the second-generation Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, called Kiheiji, who worked at Ōsaka about the Genroku and Hōei years and is recorded as having forged in Edo as well. The published sources transmit him as the son of the first Tango-no-kami Kanemichi, in the received account the second son of the Kyōto second-generation Tanba-no-kami Yoshimichi, and so a branch of the Mishina school that Kanemichi the Mino-Seki smith carried into Kyōto. The first Tango-no-kami, named Mishina Kihei and signing at first as Naomichi, settled in Ōsaka and was known for the sudare-ba and the chōji-tinged gunome that were the family specialty. His son took a deliberately different course, and that divergence is the spine of his identity on the blade.

Where the first generation tempered the sudare-ba and the chōji-laden gunome that the published sources call the house specialty, the second cast off the chōji and turned to a flamboyant tōran-style large gunome that mirrors the Ōsaka shintō fashion of his day. His most particular tell is constructive rather than decorative. Across the upper and lower halves of the ha he forges gunome in alternating linked sequences, two joined and then three joined, repeating one against the other so that the tōran gathers its variety from the pattern itself. Of one such blade the published sources write that 「互の目の二つ連れた刃と三つ連れた刃とが相互に交じる点に大きな特色が見られる」[[c:2]], that the great distinguishing feature lies precisely in this mutual mixing of two-joined and three-joined gunome, and of his matched daishō, on which the long and short blades reverse the order of the joined groups, that the variation shows 「彼の工夫の跡」, the trace of his own contrivance. Ashi enter thickly into this temper, the nioi runs deep, the nie lies thick and at times coarse, sunagashi and kinsuji play through it, tobiyaki appear with the mune tempered, and the nioiguchi stays bright.

The jigane beneath this showy temper is quiet and clean, the true Ōsaka steel. He forges a tightly gathered ko-itame in which the ji-nie settles dust-fine and chikei enter finely, the surface closing rather than standing, a jigane that distinguishes the second generation from the more standing itame of the older Mino-rooted Mishina work. Over it the temper opens always from a straight yakidashi at the machi, the Ōsaka shintō base from which both his manners rise, before it widens into the tōran. The bōshi answers the ha: it comes to a ko-maru, returns rather deeply, and brushes into hakikake, with a faint pointed tendency on the wider blades. The horimono, where present, are a plain bōhi run to a rounded finish with an accompanying soebi. The sugata is heavy and forceful in the Genroku taste, wide in the mihaba, thick in the kasane, with a sense of funbari, the curve deep and the kissaki extended, a build the published sources note recurs among smiths of the Jōkyō and Genroku years.

The published sources draw his work into two registers. The principal one is the tōran-style large gunome just described, the manner in which they find this smith's distinctive hand and which they tie directly to the contemporary Ōsaka taste. The second is quieter and, they are careful to note, one the first generation did not leave: a deep-nioi suguha. Here the straight yakidashi opens into a broadly tempered suguha base, shallowly notare, ashi entering vigorously, the nioi deep, the nie thick with some coarse grains, the upper half showing a two-stepped futasuji-fu effect, kinsuji and sunagashi running well. Of a blade in this register the published sources write that it 「真改風の作柄をあらわしている」[[c:3]], that it shows a workmanship in the manner of Shinkai, and the comparison is exact: it is the deep-nioi, thickly nie-laden straight temper of Inoue Shinkai, the great Ōsaka master, that this calmer face most nearly approaches. The two registers are not a chronology but a range, the same Ōsaka hand stated once as spectacle and once as restraint.

What places him is the careful distinction the published sources draw between the two generations, a distinction that is itself the kantei. The first Tango-no-kami cut a chrysanthemum crest and the character ichi below the machi on much of his work and leaned to the family sudare-ba and chōji-tinged gunome; the second carries neither crest nor character and turns instead to the deep-nioi suguha and the tōran-style large gunome that reflect the fashion of his time. His distinction is therefore best drawn by his own grounded traits rather than by his father's: the alternating joined-gunome tōran, the bright deep-nioi temper read as Shinkai's, the clean dust-fine ko-itame and the straight Ōsaka yakidashi set him apart within the Mishina line and within his own family, and of his large-gunome work the published sources say plainly that 「この工の特徴」, this smith's characteristic, is to be read in the very shape of those linked gunome. He stands as a competent and individual second generation, faithful to the Ōsaka idiom of his day while working a constructive variation that is recognizably his own.

Kanemichi is rated Chū-jō saku in the Fujishiro ranking, and seven of his blades hold the rank of Jūyō-Tōken, all of them signed, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them; his is the record of a sound and individual Ōsaka shintō master rather than a great national name. The body that survives in this designated tier is small and almost wholly signed, which for a shintō smith is itself a documentary virtue, the name fixed rather than appraised. One of his katana descends from the Aoyama house, the wardens of Ōsaka castle, and the published sources, calling it 「大坂城代青山家伝来の一口」[[c:4]], note that long blades of just this kind are repeatedly met among that house's old swords and were likely forged to its order, a thread of daimyō provenance that ties his work to the city he served. A matched daishō of his also survives, the published sources calling such a pair from the second generation extremely rare and of documentary value. For a collector his work sits among the more attainable of the Ōsaka shintō masters: most of his designated blades rest in the Jūyō tier rather than locked away as patrimony, and a signed, dated example such as the Genroku 14 katana, which fixes both the hand and the year, is the rarer and more desirable encounter, coming to light from time to time and rewarding patience.

Historical importance

Where Kanemichi 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.

随一
Foremost
屈指
Leading
有数
Major
著名
Notable

Select a lens to see how it's measured.

Designation record
5 designated works
Jūyō
5
1 work by Kanemichi on the market→
Kanemichi — full profileMishina school, Osaka (Tango-no-kami Kanemichi line, second generation) school

Dated Works

Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades

Active period
1701Editorial estimate: 1681–1704
1 of 5 designated works carry a date
About the school

Mishina

三品

Shinto · Yamashiro

62 pieces on the market now

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The Mishina school (三品), one of the two dominant smithing groups of early Edo Kyoto beside the Horikawa, grew from the late-Mino workshop of Kanemichi of Seki, whose dated blades run through the Tenbun, Eiroku, and Tenshō eras. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century Kanemichi came up to the capital with his four sons and settled at Nishinotōin Ebisugawa, where the eldest, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, is recorded as having greatly raised the name of the line. Learn more →

14 recorded smiths118 designated works
Leading smiths
SmithEraDesignated
Kinmichi金道1596-161523
Yoshimichi吉道1596-161536
Masatoshi正俊1596-161531
Kanemichi兼道1681-17045
Yoshimichi吉道1661-16736
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Authenticity not guaranteed

This work carries older NBTHK “Kichō”-era papers, which the NBTHK no longer issues and now regards as unreliable. To confirm the attribution, submission to an official Japanese examination body (such as the NBTHK or NTHK) for modern certification could be considered.

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