In the Sengoku era the school served a second warrior court: the Later Hōjō at Odawara, whose patronage kept the Tsunahiro line forging hitatsura for the uchigatana age until the castle fell to Hideyoshi in 1590.
This antique wakizashi is signed by Kunishige and has been certified Hozon by the NBTHK. Forged during the late Muromachi period, it exhibits excellent sword-forging techniques from that era. The blade is accompanied by a shirasaya case and an NBTHK Hozon certificate.
NihontoWatchmei · Muromachi · nagasa 34cm · sori 0.2cm
Hasebe (Yamashiro) · Yamashiro · around 1334-1360
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 8%
1 piece on the market now
His National Treasure is the meibutsu Heshikiri Hasebe, the wakizashi long held by the Kuroda of Fukuoka, and the published sources reach for it when they want to fix his standing: among the unsigned works whose quality "compels assent to a direct connection with Masamune"[[c:1]], the Heshikiri stands first. Hasebe Kunishige is the head of the Hasebe school, the Soshu tradition carried out of Sagami and resettled in Kyoto, at Gojo-bomon Inokuma, and he is counted in the old reckoning among the Masamune-juttetsu. The published record now favours a route for the school in which its "home province was Yamato"[[c:2]], that it matured in Soshu, and that it settled last in the capital; the Yamato substrate is exactly what shows through the Soshu manner in his steel. With the Nobukuni school the Hasebe are named as the pair that represent the Yamashiro smiths of Nanbokucho, and within his own line Kunishige and Kuninobu, transmitted as his younger brother or his pupil, are the two representative hands.
The hand the published sources describe and then repeat almost word for word, text after text, is set against the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who worked the same flamboyant hitatsura in the same years. Soshu hitatsura takes choji and gunome as the base of its hamon, and its boshi "thrusts up and returns with a pointed tendency"[[c:3]]; Hasebe builds instead from notare mixed with gunome, and his boshi is "large and round"[[c:4]], the return burned far down so that it runs straight on into the muneyaki. That much is the surface of the kantei. Beneath it lies the single sharpest tell, which the texts name in nearly every entry: in the forging a masame strain "uncommon in Soshu shows conspicuously toward the edge side and the ridge side"[[c:5]], the Yamato grain surfacing where Sagami work shows none. To these the published sources add the very thin kasane of his construction as a habitual trait.
His jigane is itame, standing out across the surface, the ha-yori and mune-yori flowing into nagare and masame, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering; on the broadest pieces it carries a jifu-like tone. Over it the temper is notare mixed with gunome, ashi and yo entering, the nioiguchi deep, ko-nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi running frequently and long, until tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki worked over ji and mune carry the whole into hitatsura. The boshi runs midare-komi with hakikake, rounded, the return burned far down. The carvings are bonji and suken, gomabashi, and grooves cut near the mune. The form is the period itself: hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, wide in mihaba, thin in kasane, sunnobi with a shallow sori, which the published sources read as the very build of a Nanbokucho hira-zukuri wakizashi.
The work divides into four manners. The mainstream is the wide, thin, sunnobi hira-zukuri wakizashi and tanto with the full hitatsura just described. Beside it the texts expressly flag a quieter, rarer pole: his style "takes hitatsura as its type, but rarely"[[c:6]] one sees a suguha or a shallow large notare, the edge fraying into hotsure and nijuba, the tobiyaki only slight; of one such piece a published source remarks that the workmanship "at a glance suggests an upper-rank Soshu hand"[[c:7]], and notes that this is not uncommon for Kunishige. His tachi-length work survives almost wholly as o-suriage mumei katana, the attribution carried by a kinzogan-mei the texts read as the brush of Hon'ami Mitsutsune; on these the hamon is a florid gunome-midare with ko-notare and a choji-like element, the mune tempered overall. Last is the body of signed work: most pieces carry Hasebe Kunishige in five characters near the centre of the nakago, the kuni-gamae at times enclosing gyoku or o, and the differing signatures with the spread of dates lead the published sources to an old theory of several smiths of one name working as a succession of generations. Reliably signed tachi are the rarest of all; the texts call "surviving examples of signed tachi extremely few"[[c:8]], prizing the handful that remain, slender and older in tone, as study material.
What sets him apart is best read against the Sagami pair he worked beside, and it is his own grounded traits that draw the line. His notare-and-gunome hamon, his round boshi with its long return into the muneyaki, and above all the masame at the ha-yori and mune-yori separate him from the choji-and-gunome hitatsura and pointed boshi of Hiromitsu and Akihiro. The published sources read his quality high in the tradition: the kinzogan katana of the shogunal house they acclaim as "a superior piece attributed to this smith, overflowing with vigour"[[c:9]], and the rare tachi as showing the high-rank Soshu-den character at its best. The Heshikiri itself, an o-suriage blade whose original signature survives as a gaku-mei, is cited again and again as the work whose excellence confirms the Masamune connection, the foundation of his place among the juttetsu. His dated pieces begin at Bunwa 4 (1355), the reliably oldest, which the published sources call "the touchstone of Hasebe study"[[c:10]]; an older Jowa-dated tachi exists but is held still to need research, so the Bunwa 4 piece anchors the chronology, with later dates running through Enbun, Joji, Oan and into Eiwa.
He is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, with a Toko Taikan valuation of 1,000. The weight of designation behind his name is heavy: his one National Treasure, the Heshikiri Hasebe, sits above three Important Cultural Properties and Important Art Objects, and beneath them forty-seven blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. The National Treasure and the Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, preserved as heritage and never to trade; the institutional holders recorded against his name include Atsuta Jingu, the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums and the Tokugawa Art Museum. His o-suriage kinzogan katana descend in the Tokugawa shogunal house, recorded as shogunal transmissions. The denrai roll runs through the daimyo houses: a Juyo wakizashi was received by the founding lord Honda Yasutoshi "when Shogun Hidetada made his official visit to Zeze Castle on the fourteenth day of the ninth month of Genna 3"[[c:11]] and descended in the Honda house thereafter; a Jubi tanto of Enbun 2 passed in the Naruse house, lords of Inuyama; and the Heshikiri itself was long held by the Kuroda of Chikuzen. Several of his Juyo blades carry Hon'ami origami. What a private collector may realistically encounter is one of the wakizashi or tanto of the tradeable tier, and even those reach the market only from time to time; a signed Hasebe Kunishige is a landmark when one appears, and the National Treasure and the great daimyo pieces are held, not traded.
Where Kunishige 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Soshu-den · Yamashiro
4 pieces on the market now
The Hasebe school (長谷部) took its base in Kyoto, at Gojo-bomon Inokuma in Yamashiro, where it settled during the Nanbokucho period after a longer migration that the published sources now read as a movement out of Yamato, through maturation in Sagami, and at last into the capital. Its founder, Hasebe Kunishige, carried the Soshu-den learned in the orbit of Masamune, counted in the old reckoning among the Masamune-juttetsu, and his Yamato substrate shows through the Soshu manner in his steel. With the Nobukuni school, the Hasebe smiths are named as the pair that represent the Yamashiro workshops of the mid-Nanbokucho, and within the line itself Kunishige and his close successor Kuninobu (transmitted variously as younger brother or pupil) stand as the two principal hands, beside whom Kunihira, Munenobu and Shigenobu survive in a small body of signed work. The collective manner is set, blade after blade, against the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who worked the same flamboyant hitatsura in the same years. The forging is itame with the grain standing across the surface, tending toward nagare and masame toward both the edge side and the ridge side, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering, and on the broadest pieces a jifu-like tone; the masame strain near the ha-yori and mune-yori, uncommon in Sagami work, is the surest hallmark the school owns, the Yamato grain surfacing where the Soshu pair show none. Over this the temper builds from notare mixed with gunome rather than the Soshu base of choji and gunome, the nioiguchi deep, ko-nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi running frequently and long, until tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki worked over ji and mune carry the whole into full hitatsura. The boshi runs large and round, the return burned far down the mune as yakisage until it joins the muneyaki, a separation from the pointed, thrusting boshi of the Sagami pair. An extremely thin kasane is a habitual trait of the construction, and the carvings (bonji, suken, kurikara, gomabashi and grooves near the mune) recur throughout.
The recurring divergences are individual: Kunishige holds to the grounded mainstream and a quieter, rarer pole of suguha or shallow notare, while Kuninobu turns his gunome angular toward an arrow-nock (yahazu) shape and carries the richest carving in the group. To kantei a Hasebe blade, one reads first the form, which is the period itself: hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, wide in mihaba, thin in kasane, sun-nobi with a shallow sori, the build of a Nanbokucho hira-zukuri wakizashi or tanto carrying the full hitatsura over notare-gunome, the round long-returning boshi, and the diagnostic masame at edge and back. Tachi-length work is scarce across the line and survives largely as o-suriage mumei katana, the attribution carried by build or by kinzogan-mei; reliably signed tachi are the rarest of all, and signed Hasebe Kunishige in five characters near the centre of the nakago, the kuni-gamae at times enclosing gyoku or o, marks the bulk of the founder's surviving pieces. Kunishige is graded Jo-jo saku by Fujishiro and stands at the head of the tradition, his National Treasure the meibutsu Heshikiri Hasebe, an o-suriage wakizashi whose original signature survives as a gaku-mei, long held by the Kuroda of Chikuzen and cited again and again as the work whose quality confirms the Masamune connection. Other named works anchor the school: the Atsuta Kuninobu at Atsuta Jingu, the signed Karakashi tachi that descended in the Uesugi house among the swords selected by Uesugi Kagekatsu, and the o-suriage kinzogan katana of the Tokugawa shogunal house. The denrai roll runs through the daimyo families (Honda, Naruse, Owari Tokugawa, Ikeda), several pieces carry Hon'ami origami, and the kinzogan attributions are read as the brush of Hon'ami Mitsutsune. The patrimonial National Treasure and Important Cultural Properties are held by shrine and museum and do not trade; what a private collector may realistically encounter is one of the signed wakizashi or tanto of the tradeable tier, and even those appear only from time to time, a secure Hasebe a landmark when one does. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunishige國重 | 1334-1360 | 54 |
| Kuninobu國信 | 1334-1363 | 41 |
| Kunihira國平 | 1336-1364 | 3 |
| Nobuyuki信行 | 1394-1428 | 0 |
| Kunishige國重 | 1345-1350 | 2 |
Sōshū in the Muromachi period
In the Sengoku era the school served a second warrior court: the Later Hōjō at Odawara, whose patronage kept the Tsunahiro line forging hitatsura for the uchigatana age until the castle fell to Hideyoshi in 1590.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
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.
NBTHK official siteReturns/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.
This antique wakizashi is signed by Kunishige and has been certified Hozon by the NBTHK. Forged during the late Muromachi period, it exhibits excellent sword-forging techniques from that era. The blade is accompanied by a shirasaya case and an NBTHK Hozon certificate.
NihontoWatchmei · Muromachi · nagasa 34cm · sori 0.2cm
Hasebe (Yamashiro) · Yamashiro · around 1334-1360
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 8%
1 piece on the market now
His National Treasure is the meibutsu Heshikiri Hasebe, the wakizashi long held by the Kuroda of Fukuoka, and the published sources reach for it when they want to fix his standing: among the unsigned works whose quality "compels assent to a direct connection with Masamune"[[c:1]], the Heshikiri stands first. Hasebe Kunishige is the head of the Hasebe school, the Soshu tradition carried out of Sagami and resettled in Kyoto, at Gojo-bomon Inokuma, and he is counted in the old reckoning among the Masamune-juttetsu. The published record now favours a route for the school in which its "home province was Yamato"[[c:2]], that it matured in Soshu, and that it settled last in the capital; the Yamato substrate is exactly what shows through the Soshu manner in his steel. With the Nobukuni school the Hasebe are named as the pair that represent the Yamashiro smiths of Nanbokucho, and within his own line Kunishige and Kuninobu, transmitted as his younger brother or his pupil, are the two representative hands.
The hand the published sources describe and then repeat almost word for word, text after text, is set against the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who worked the same flamboyant hitatsura in the same years. Soshu hitatsura takes choji and gunome as the base of its hamon, and its boshi "thrusts up and returns with a pointed tendency"[[c:3]]; Hasebe builds instead from notare mixed with gunome, and his boshi is "large and round"[[c:4]], the return burned far down so that it runs straight on into the muneyaki. That much is the surface of the kantei. Beneath it lies the single sharpest tell, which the texts name in nearly every entry: in the forging a masame strain "uncommon in Soshu shows conspicuously toward the edge side and the ridge side"[[c:5]], the Yamato grain surfacing where Sagami work shows none. To these the published sources add the very thin kasane of his construction as a habitual trait.
His jigane is itame, standing out across the surface, the ha-yori and mune-yori flowing into nagare and masame, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering; on the broadest pieces it carries a jifu-like tone. Over it the temper is notare mixed with gunome, ashi and yo entering, the nioiguchi deep, ko-nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi running frequently and long, until tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki worked over ji and mune carry the whole into hitatsura. The boshi runs midare-komi with hakikake, rounded, the return burned far down. The carvings are bonji and suken, gomabashi, and grooves cut near the mune. The form is the period itself: hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, wide in mihaba, thin in kasane, sunnobi with a shallow sori, which the published sources read as the very build of a Nanbokucho hira-zukuri wakizashi.
The work divides into four manners. The mainstream is the wide, thin, sunnobi hira-zukuri wakizashi and tanto with the full hitatsura just described. Beside it the texts expressly flag a quieter, rarer pole: his style "takes hitatsura as its type, but rarely"[[c:6]] one sees a suguha or a shallow large notare, the edge fraying into hotsure and nijuba, the tobiyaki only slight; of one such piece a published source remarks that the workmanship "at a glance suggests an upper-rank Soshu hand"[[c:7]], and notes that this is not uncommon for Kunishige. His tachi-length work survives almost wholly as o-suriage mumei katana, the attribution carried by a kinzogan-mei the texts read as the brush of Hon'ami Mitsutsune; on these the hamon is a florid gunome-midare with ko-notare and a choji-like element, the mune tempered overall. Last is the body of signed work: most pieces carry Hasebe Kunishige in five characters near the centre of the nakago, the kuni-gamae at times enclosing gyoku or o, and the differing signatures with the spread of dates lead the published sources to an old theory of several smiths of one name working as a succession of generations. Reliably signed tachi are the rarest of all; the texts call "surviving examples of signed tachi extremely few"[[c:8]], prizing the handful that remain, slender and older in tone, as study material.
What sets him apart is best read against the Sagami pair he worked beside, and it is his own grounded traits that draw the line. His notare-and-gunome hamon, his round boshi with its long return into the muneyaki, and above all the masame at the ha-yori and mune-yori separate him from the choji-and-gunome hitatsura and pointed boshi of Hiromitsu and Akihiro. The published sources read his quality high in the tradition: the kinzogan katana of the shogunal house they acclaim as "a superior piece attributed to this smith, overflowing with vigour"[[c:9]], and the rare tachi as showing the high-rank Soshu-den character at its best. The Heshikiri itself, an o-suriage blade whose original signature survives as a gaku-mei, is cited again and again as the work whose excellence confirms the Masamune connection, the foundation of his place among the juttetsu. His dated pieces begin at Bunwa 4 (1355), the reliably oldest, which the published sources call "the touchstone of Hasebe study"[[c:10]]; an older Jowa-dated tachi exists but is held still to need research, so the Bunwa 4 piece anchors the chronology, with later dates running through Enbun, Joji, Oan and into Eiwa.
He is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, with a Toko Taikan valuation of 1,000. The weight of designation behind his name is heavy: his one National Treasure, the Heshikiri Hasebe, sits above three Important Cultural Properties and Important Art Objects, and beneath them forty-seven blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers. The National Treasure and the Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, preserved as heritage and never to trade; the institutional holders recorded against his name include Atsuta Jingu, the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums and the Tokugawa Art Museum. His o-suriage kinzogan katana descend in the Tokugawa shogunal house, recorded as shogunal transmissions. The denrai roll runs through the daimyo houses: a Juyo wakizashi was received by the founding lord Honda Yasutoshi "when Shogun Hidetada made his official visit to Zeze Castle on the fourteenth day of the ninth month of Genna 3"[[c:11]] and descended in the Honda house thereafter; a Jubi tanto of Enbun 2 passed in the Naruse house, lords of Inuyama; and the Heshikiri itself was long held by the Kuroda of Chikuzen. Several of his Juyo blades carry Hon'ami origami. What a private collector may realistically encounter is one of the wakizashi or tanto of the tradeable tier, and even those reach the market only from time to time; a signed Hasebe Kunishige is a landmark when one appears, and the National Treasure and the great daimyo pieces are held, not traded.
Where Kunishige 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.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Soshu-den · Yamashiro
4 pieces on the market now
The Hasebe school (長谷部) took its base in Kyoto, at Gojo-bomon Inokuma in Yamashiro, where it settled during the Nanbokucho period after a longer migration that the published sources now read as a movement out of Yamato, through maturation in Sagami, and at last into the capital. Its founder, Hasebe Kunishige, carried the Soshu-den learned in the orbit of Masamune, counted in the old reckoning among the Masamune-juttetsu, and his Yamato substrate shows through the Soshu manner in his steel. With the Nobukuni school, the Hasebe smiths are named as the pair that represent the Yamashiro workshops of the mid-Nanbokucho, and within the line itself Kunishige and his close successor Kuninobu (transmitted variously as younger brother or pupil) stand as the two principal hands, beside whom Kunihira, Munenobu and Shigenobu survive in a small body of signed work. The collective manner is set, blade after blade, against the Sagami smiths Hiromitsu and Akihiro, who worked the same flamboyant hitatsura in the same years. The forging is itame with the grain standing across the surface, tending toward nagare and masame toward both the edge side and the ridge side, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering, and on the broadest pieces a jifu-like tone; the masame strain near the ha-yori and mune-yori, uncommon in Sagami work, is the surest hallmark the school owns, the Yamato grain surfacing where the Soshu pair show none. Over this the temper builds from notare mixed with gunome rather than the Soshu base of choji and gunome, the nioiguchi deep, ko-nie thick, kinsuji and sunagashi running frequently and long, until tobiyaki, yubashiri and muneyaki worked over ji and mune carry the whole into full hitatsura. The boshi runs large and round, the return burned far down the mune as yakisage until it joins the muneyaki, a separation from the pointed, thrusting boshi of the Sagami pair. An extremely thin kasane is a habitual trait of the construction, and the carvings (bonji, suken, kurikara, gomabashi and grooves near the mune) recur throughout.
The recurring divergences are individual: Kunishige holds to the grounded mainstream and a quieter, rarer pole of suguha or shallow notare, while Kuninobu turns his gunome angular toward an arrow-nock (yahazu) shape and carries the richest carving in the group. To kantei a Hasebe blade, one reads first the form, which is the period itself: hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, wide in mihaba, thin in kasane, sun-nobi with a shallow sori, the build of a Nanbokucho hira-zukuri wakizashi or tanto carrying the full hitatsura over notare-gunome, the round long-returning boshi, and the diagnostic masame at edge and back. Tachi-length work is scarce across the line and survives largely as o-suriage mumei katana, the attribution carried by build or by kinzogan-mei; reliably signed tachi are the rarest of all, and signed Hasebe Kunishige in five characters near the centre of the nakago, the kuni-gamae at times enclosing gyoku or o, marks the bulk of the founder's surviving pieces. Kunishige is graded Jo-jo saku by Fujishiro and stands at the head of the tradition, his National Treasure the meibutsu Heshikiri Hasebe, an o-suriage wakizashi whose original signature survives as a gaku-mei, long held by the Kuroda of Chikuzen and cited again and again as the work whose quality confirms the Masamune connection. Other named works anchor the school: the Atsuta Kuninobu at Atsuta Jingu, the signed Karakashi tachi that descended in the Uesugi house among the swords selected by Uesugi Kagekatsu, and the o-suriage kinzogan katana of the Tokugawa shogunal house. The denrai roll runs through the daimyo families (Honda, Naruse, Owari Tokugawa, Ikeda), several pieces carry Hon'ami origami, and the kinzogan attributions are read as the brush of Hon'ami Mitsutsune. The patrimonial National Treasure and Important Cultural Properties are held by shrine and museum and do not trade; what a private collector may realistically encounter is one of the signed wakizashi or tanto of the tradeable tier, and even those appear only from time to time, a secure Hasebe a landmark when one does. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunishige國重 | 1334-1360 | 54 |
| Kuninobu國信 | 1334-1363 | 41 |
| Kunihira國平 | 1336-1364 | 3 |
| Nobuyuki信行 | 1394-1428 | 0 |
| Kunishige國重 | 1345-1350 | 2 |
Sōshū in the Muromachi period
In the Sengoku era the school served a second warrior court: the Later Hōjō at Odawara, whose patronage kept the Tsunahiro line forging hitatsura for the uchigatana age until the castle fell to Hideyoshi in 1590.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
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.
NBTHK official siteReturns/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.
