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About the maker

Wakasa Fuyuhiro冬廣

Fuyuhiro worked at Obama in Wakasa Province through the Tenbun and Eiroku eras of the late Muromachi period, and the dated blade of Eiroku 11 (1568) fixes his activity firmly in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. He is the founder-figure of the Wakasa Fuyuhiro line, a provincial workshop carried into Wakasa by a smith trained in the Sagami tradition. The published sources record that he later studied under Tsunahiro of Sagami, *koshu Tsunahiro no mon ni mananda*, while a parallel account holds that he followed after Soshu Hirotsugu, *Soshu Hirotsugu no nochi to tsutaete iru*. Either way the descent is Soshu, and what reaches Wakasa with him is the late Soshu manner of the period, transplanted to a province better known for its harbor than its forges. All five of his designated blades carry the signature 冬広, cut in three characters on the omote toward the mune, and all are katana, so that his record on paper is unusually consistent. The hand that runs through that record is a standing, flowing *itame*. His jigane is forged in *itame* that tends to *hada-dachi*, the grain rising and opening rather than sinking into a tight surface, and it is repeatedly described as flowing, *itame nagare*, with *ji-nie* gathering across it. This standing, *nagare*-mixed jigane is the first thing his blades share, and it carries through both of the manners the sources draw apart. Against that jigane he tempers in two distinct registers. In the calmer of them the *hamon* is a broad *suguha-cho* into which small *gunome* are mixed, with *ko-ashi* and *yo* playing in the band and the *nioiguchi* drawn tight, *shimarigokoro*, with *ko-nie*. In the fuller register he opens the *yakiba* wide, a *gunome-midare* at times rising into an *o-notare* base with box-like *hako* forms, well filled with *nie*, threaded with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*, and bright along the *nioiguchi*. The two registers are exactly the duality the published sources name. His work, they write, includes pieces in the manner of late Soshu and others in a late Bizen flavor, *sue-Soshu mono no mono to, sue-Bizen fu no mono to ga ari*, and he produced both *suguha*-based workmanship and *midare* workmanship, and his skill is high. The Soshu side answers to the calm *suguha-cho* with its tight *nioiguchi* and quiet *ko-nie*; the Bizen-flavored side answers to the wide, *nie*-laden *midare* with its bright temper. The *boshi* follows the temper beneath it. Over the *suguha* it runs straight and turns back deeply, sometimes almost *ichimai*; over the *midare* it goes *midare-komi* and sweeps into *hakikake*, on one blade running out toward *yakizume*. The *ji* and *ha* are judged sound on blade after blade, and where his finest work is reached the sources call it outstanding among his oeuvre, one wide-*suguha* katana with *kurikara* and *bonji* named *doaku-chu no kesshutsu no ichi*, and a broad *o-notare* katana of bright *nioiguchi* and imposing shape named *doaku-chu no kessaku no ikkou*. A third register is his carving. Fuyuhiro was adept at *horimono*, and on his *suguha-cho* blades a *kusa*-no-*kurikara* dragon runs the omote while *bonji* and a pair of *goma-bashi* stand on the ura, with *bo-hi* closed by *kakudome* on the dated Bitchu piece. The published sources make a pointed judgment about these carvings: rather than being in a Soshu manner, they are closer to the work of Heianjo Nagayoshi and the like, *mushiro Heianjo Nagayoshi nado no saku ni chikai*, and they raise the possibility that some connection ran between the two hands. The remark places Fuyuhiro at a crossing of provincial traditions, his steel Soshu by descent but his chisel turned toward the Kyoto-tinged Heianjo workshop. His blades are *ubu* with the three-character signature where they survive uncut, though one of the five has been shortened, its long original tang relieved to *suriage* with the signature recut toward the *nakago-jiri*. The most discussed problem around his name is geographic. The published commentary records that, at nearly the same time, blades survive bearing residence signatures for Wakasa, Hoki, Izumo, Bizen and Bitchu, and that whether these are the work of one man or several remains open, *kore-ra ga donin ka ina ka kento no yochi ga aru*. The dated katana of Eiroku 11 is signed *Bicchu no kuni oite Matsuyama* and was made at Matsuyama in Bitchu, yet the workmanship in both *ji* and *ha* is good and of a piece with the Wakasa blades, which is precisely why the question is hard to close. The NBTHK does not resolve it; it groups the multi-province pieces under the name and flags the doubt. His place in the lineage is correspondingly that of a head: a Soshu-trained provincial who carried the late Soshu manner into Wakasa and gave his name to a line whose reach, on the evidence of the signatures, ran along the San'in and San'yo coasts. What sets his own blades apart within that group is grounded in their own description, the standing *itame-nagare* jigane and the bright *nie*-deki *midare*, not in any borrowed comparison. The connoisseurship around Fuyuhiro is the connoisseurship of a skilled provincial master rather than a celebrated one. The reference texts place him at *Jo-saku* in Fujishiro's ranking and at four hundred points in the *Toko Taikan*, the assessment of a competent and collectible smith well below the first rank of the age. He holds no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his designated record is five blades, all at the Juyo level, and none has yet risen to Tokubetsu Juyo. None of the five carries a recorded *denrai*, so no daimyo provenance attaches to his name in this corpus, and the holders on record are private collectors rather than museums or shrines. For a collector this makes him quietly attainable in a way the great Soshu and Bizen names are not. A signed, *ubu* Fuyuhiro katana of the suguha manner, or one of the broad bright *midare* with his *kurikara* and *bonji* intact, is the kind of late-Muromachi work that comes to market from time to time and rewards a patient eye, a healthy and capably made blade by the founder of the Wakasa Fuyuhiro line, carrying late Soshu steel and a Kyoto-leaning chisel into a single provincial hand.

Samurai Museum

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