This is a Juyo Token designated tachi attributed to Masatsune, a master smith representing the Ko-Bizen school. The blade features a well-forged ko-itame hada with fine ji-nie and chi-kei, and a bright, clear suguha hamon with ko-midare and ko-gunome at the base. Its exceptional health from the monouchi to the boshi is particularly noteworthy, suggesting it was likely used as a gunto during wartime.
NihontoWatchmumei · Ko-Bizen · Heian · nagasa 68cm · sori 1.4cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 987-989
Fujishiro Sai-jo saku
The published sources place Masatsune, together with Tomonari, as "a representative smith of Ko-Bizen workmanship"[[c:1]], the two together counted as the twin pillars of the group. The NBTHK records that since old times it has been transmitted that there were three generations bearing the name, or possibly even more, their activity spanning from the end of the Heian period through the Kamakura period, so that "Masatsune" denotes a name-line rather than a single man. Of that line the same notes return to one judgment: among the Ko-Bizen makers his "signed works survive in the greatest number"[[c:2]], and moreover, across that body, the workmanship "has no unevenness"[[c:3]] in quality.
The characterization the sources weigh most carefully is the comparison with Tomonari. In the conventional assessment, the NBTHK writes, Tomonari excels in the elegance of the tachi form, exhibiting a graceful, feminine refinement (taoyame-buri), and somewhat surpasses Masatsune in the archaic flavor of the hamon; yet in the meticulousness and excellence of the jitetsu the judgment goes to Masatsune. In the hardened edge too, the same notes say, Masatsune tends to display a greater technical sophistication, so that works which are "more urbane and refined"[[c:4]] are often found among his production. The sources mark the signatures as well: where Tomonari occasionally cuts a long inscription such as "Bizen no Kuni Tomonari," Masatsune "confines himself always to a two-character signature"[[c:5]], and one seldom encounters bo-hi or other carvings on his work.
The single feature the published descriptions return to as his clearest tell is utsuri. While Tomonari's utsuri, the same notes observe, is comparatively inconspicuous, in Masatsune's work it can be seen with considerable clarity; the sources write of one tachi that the jifu-utsuri "rises with striking clarity"[[c:6]]. His forging is described as a well-worked itame mixed with mokume, with ji-nie adhering well, fine chikei entering, and the mottled jifu of old Bizen steel woven through, over which the midare-utsuri or jifu-utsuri stands up distinctly. This, the NBTHK records, is the quality for which his kitae is well regarded, shown "without the slightest looseness."
On that jigane the published sources describe a temper based on suguha, mixing ko-midare, ko-choji, and at times ko-gunome; ashi and yo enter well, ko-nie adheres thickly, kinsuji and sunagashi appear in places, and the nioiguchi is bright and clear. The boshi, the notes say, tends to run straight and turn back roundly in ko-maru, often hardened more deeply than Tomonari's. Read together, the sources call this an "archaic yet highly dignified"[[c:7]] manner of workmanship that clearly expresses the distinctive charm of Ko-Bizen, old in feeling and deep in flavor; where the choji stand out more than usual, they note, the temper takes on a fresher and more decorative character. As to form, the descriptions record a slender tachi-sugata with deep curvature and marked koshizori, mostly suriage today yet keeping the classical figure of its age.
The published record reaches its plain measure in the designations behind his name. He is Sai-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading. The consolidated body of his work numbers five blades that are National Treasures and fifteen that are Important Cultural Properties, with twelve Tokubetsu Juyo and twenty-two Juyo beyond them; thirty-four of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers together. Almost all survive signed in the two characters that the sources make a point of recognition, twenty-one signed against a single unsigned attribution among the works tallied here, and no dated piece comes down, as is usual for the Ko-Bizen period, so the hand is placed by style rather than by an inscribed year.
The provenance recorded against his blades runs through houses that held the country: the Imperial Family, the Owari Tokugawa Family, the Maeda Family, the Date Family, the Ikeda Family, the Shimazu Family, the Soma Family, and a sword once held by the Shogun Tsunayoshi. The finest are kept now in the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, the Hayashibara Museum of Art, the Kurokawa Research Institute, and the Hikone Castle Museum, with further pieces at the Kyushu National Museum and Ise Jingu. Because the name-line was prolific, a signed Masatsune does on occasion reach a serious collector, a touchstone of the earliest signed Bizen.
Where Masatsune 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.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Bizen in the Heian period
The Bizen tradition begins where iron sand, charcoal forests, and the Inland Sea shipping lanes met. By the late Heian period the Ko-Bizen smiths were forging tachi for court nobles and the rising warrior houses, and both sides of the Genpei War carried Bizen steel.
A blade of top-grade workmanship and condition, formally judged to rank with a nationally recognized Important Art Object (Jūyō Bijutsuhin). Awarded only at the NBTHK’s competitive annual examination.
Of Japan’s roughly 2.5 million registered swords, only 12,307 (about 1 in 203) have ever attained Jūyō.
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 siteCustomer-initiated returns accepted within two days of arrival; return shipping paid by customer and fees non-refundable. Returns/refunds unavailable for overseas deliveries.
This is a Juyo Token designated tachi attributed to Masatsune, a master smith representing the Ko-Bizen school. The blade features a well-forged ko-itame hada with fine ji-nie and chi-kei, and a bright, clear suguha hamon with ko-midare and ko-gunome at the base. Its exceptional health from the monouchi to the boshi is particularly noteworthy, suggesting it was likely used as a gunto during wartime.
NihontoWatchmumei · Ko-Bizen · Heian · nagasa 68cm · sori 1.4cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 987-989
Fujishiro Sai-jo saku
The published sources place Masatsune, together with Tomonari, as "a representative smith of Ko-Bizen workmanship"[[c:1]], the two together counted as the twin pillars of the group. The NBTHK records that since old times it has been transmitted that there were three generations bearing the name, or possibly even more, their activity spanning from the end of the Heian period through the Kamakura period, so that "Masatsune" denotes a name-line rather than a single man. Of that line the same notes return to one judgment: among the Ko-Bizen makers his "signed works survive in the greatest number"[[c:2]], and moreover, across that body, the workmanship "has no unevenness"[[c:3]] in quality.
The characterization the sources weigh most carefully is the comparison with Tomonari. In the conventional assessment, the NBTHK writes, Tomonari excels in the elegance of the tachi form, exhibiting a graceful, feminine refinement (taoyame-buri), and somewhat surpasses Masatsune in the archaic flavor of the hamon; yet in the meticulousness and excellence of the jitetsu the judgment goes to Masatsune. In the hardened edge too, the same notes say, Masatsune tends to display a greater technical sophistication, so that works which are "more urbane and refined"[[c:4]] are often found among his production. The sources mark the signatures as well: where Tomonari occasionally cuts a long inscription such as "Bizen no Kuni Tomonari," Masatsune "confines himself always to a two-character signature"[[c:5]], and one seldom encounters bo-hi or other carvings on his work.
The single feature the published descriptions return to as his clearest tell is utsuri. While Tomonari's utsuri, the same notes observe, is comparatively inconspicuous, in Masatsune's work it can be seen with considerable clarity; the sources write of one tachi that the jifu-utsuri "rises with striking clarity"[[c:6]]. His forging is described as a well-worked itame mixed with mokume, with ji-nie adhering well, fine chikei entering, and the mottled jifu of old Bizen steel woven through, over which the midare-utsuri or jifu-utsuri stands up distinctly. This, the NBTHK records, is the quality for which his kitae is well regarded, shown "without the slightest looseness."
On that jigane the published sources describe a temper based on suguha, mixing ko-midare, ko-choji, and at times ko-gunome; ashi and yo enter well, ko-nie adheres thickly, kinsuji and sunagashi appear in places, and the nioiguchi is bright and clear. The boshi, the notes say, tends to run straight and turn back roundly in ko-maru, often hardened more deeply than Tomonari's. Read together, the sources call this an "archaic yet highly dignified"[[c:7]] manner of workmanship that clearly expresses the distinctive charm of Ko-Bizen, old in feeling and deep in flavor; where the choji stand out more than usual, they note, the temper takes on a fresher and more decorative character. As to form, the descriptions record a slender tachi-sugata with deep curvature and marked koshizori, mostly suriage today yet keeping the classical figure of its age.
The published record reaches its plain measure in the designations behind his name. He is Sai-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading. The consolidated body of his work numbers five blades that are National Treasures and fifteen that are Important Cultural Properties, with twelve Tokubetsu Juyo and twenty-two Juyo beyond them; thirty-four of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers together. Almost all survive signed in the two characters that the sources make a point of recognition, twenty-one signed against a single unsigned attribution among the works tallied here, and no dated piece comes down, as is usual for the Ko-Bizen period, so the hand is placed by style rather than by an inscribed year.
The provenance recorded against his blades runs through houses that held the country: the Imperial Family, the Owari Tokugawa Family, the Maeda Family, the Date Family, the Ikeda Family, the Shimazu Family, the Soma Family, and a sword once held by the Shogun Tsunayoshi. The finest are kept now in the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, the Hayashibara Museum of Art, the Kurokawa Research Institute, and the Hikone Castle Museum, with further pieces at the Kyushu National Museum and Ise Jingu. Because the name-line was prolific, a signed Masatsune does on occasion reach a serious collector, a touchstone of the earliest signed Bizen.
Where Masatsune 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.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Bizen in the Heian period
The Bizen tradition begins where iron sand, charcoal forests, and the Inland Sea shipping lanes met. By the late Heian period the Ko-Bizen smiths were forging tachi for court nobles and the rising warrior houses, and both sides of the Genpei War carried Bizen steel.
A blade of top-grade workmanship and condition, formally judged to rank with a nationally recognized Important Art Object (Jūyō Bijutsuhin). Awarded only at the NBTHK’s competitive annual examination.
Of Japan’s roughly 2.5 million registered swords, only 12,307 (about 1 in 203) have ever attained Jūyō.
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 siteCustomer-initiated returns accepted within two days of arrival; return shipping paid by customer and fees non-refundable. Returns/refunds unavailable for overseas deliveries.
