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 is a wakizashi by Masashige, a renowned student of Muramasa from the late Muromachi period. The blade exhibits a well-forged ko-itame hada with some flowing grain, and a gunome-midare hamon with strong nie and active kinsuji and sunagashi. It is a masterpiece showing the typical characteristics of the Sengo school, with a refined and orderly workmanship akin to his master Muramasa.
NihontoWatchmei · Sengo · Muromachi · nagasa 30.6cm · sori 0.4cm
Sengo (Ise) · Ise · around 1521-1528
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 23%
1 piece on the market now
Masashige worked in Kuwana, in Ise Province, where the published sources record him together with Masazane as a disciple of the first-generation Muramasa, the founder of the Sengo line: "Masashige, together with Masazane, was a disciple of the first-generation Muramasa."[[c:1]] The school reckoning runs from a first generation active around Eisho, the name reaching three generations, and Masashige is filed by tradition within that frame as a pupil of the shodai. He leaves no dated blade, so his place is read from style and the manner of signing, and the published commentary takes those works that fall in the Eisho to Tenbun span as the earliest. His standard work is the late-Muromachi hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi, wide in mihaba and slightly elongated; the few katana are shinogi-zukuri with a high saki-zori. He is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, and unlike the great Kamakura masters whose names survive mostly on suriage attributions, every one of his designated blades carries his signature.
His hand is the Sengo manner turned more open and more strongly in nie. The forging is itame mixed with masame and a flowing tendency, and it stands: the published commentary returns, blade after blade, to the observation that as a whole many of his works show a more conspicuously standing grain (hada-dachi) than Muramasa's, and that compared with the master his ji and ha are the stronger in nie. The temper takes a ko-notare base into which gunome, large and bold o-gunome, box-shaped and arrow-nock yahazu teeth are mixed, the patterns on omote and ura tending to align; ashi and yo enter, the nie attaches thickly, and sunagashi runs frequently. Over a ko-notare base the bold o-gunome is markedly his, and it is the bones of his more flamboyant midare. The boshi runs midare-komi to a ko-maru, often swept with hakikake and pointed on one face. He is set apart from his master not by a single trick but by the proportion of these features: the same midare worked larger, the same nie carried further, the same grain allowed to stand.
The jigane is where the school is read. Over a standing itame, often mixed with mokume and flowing grain, the ji-nie gathers thickly and chikei enters, so that the surface reads as the more active of the two Sengo hands. The published commentary is consistent that his is the more openly standing grain, writing of the line that "compared with Muramasa his ji and ha are the stronger in nie." The temper is a midareba over a shallow undulating base, bright and clear at its best, with deep nioi and well-adhering nie; kinsuji thread through it and sunagashi sweeps heavily, at times the nie breaking up out of the habuchi. The boshi is the most variable element, frequently tempered deep into an ichimai-like return, midare-komi, the point constricting and turning back in a rounded form, swept long down the mune. Carving is occasional: one wakizashi carries a grass-script kurikara on the omote and bonji with gomabashi and a lotus pedestal on the ura.
Within one Sengo manner the published descriptions read his work in two registers. The first is his standard, orderly hand, the hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi in ko-notare and gunome, which the commentary calls his typical workmanship; of one such tanto, brought to a calm character in small, even ko-nie without roughness or crumbling nie, it writes that it "reveals a creative domain closely akin to that of his master Muramasa."[[c:3]] The second is the wild register that the judges plainly prize: yahazu and angular squared-off teeth enter the midare, the nie thicken and break up, sunagashi runs heavily, and tobiyaki with mune-yaki build toward a hitatsura-like effect, the boshi burning deep and thrusting up. Of one such wakizashi the commentary writes that it is finished "as a bold piece rich in rustic spirit," and of another, "open-hearted in feeling and filled with commanding vigor."[[c:4]] A tanto that fully exploits this manner is said to "fully demonstrate this smith's true strengths."[[c:5]] The mei is a thick-chisel two-character signature, sometimes a three-character Masashige-saku, cut on the omote toward the mune; one tanto reads its signature Kin Masashige.
His distinction from Muramasa is the spine of the school's kantei, and the published commentary names it precisely. He shares with the master the distinctive tanago-bara, the fish-belly swelling of the nakago, so that on form alone the two run close; the earliest of his signed katana, the commentary observes, is the oldest in date among the works of the name[[c:6]] and "at first glance appears to be a masterwork by Muramasa." The point that parts them is the nakago-mune. Where Muramasa's is cut angular, Masashige's rounds out fleshily, and the judges name this the principal point of appreciation, returning to one phrase across his designations: "whereas Muramasa's nakago-mune is angular, the distinctly rounded, fleshy mune is the point of interest."[[c:7]] To the same end the jigane stands more openly and the nie carry further than the master's. He works alongside Masazane in the same mould, the two named together as the famous pupils of the shodai; within that mould the rounded mune, the standing grain and the stronger nie are his.
Masashige is among the more attainable of the celebrated names, and his record is honest about why. Twelve of his blades hold the Juyo rank, every one of them signed and ubu, and none has risen to the higher designated tiers; his Toko Taikan valuation sits in the middle of the field. None of the designated blades carries a recorded daimyo provenance, so the school's reputation rather than a chain of famous owners is what is preserved in them. The corpus is geographically scattered, the recorded holders private collectors across Japan and one in the United States, and the swords themselves the usual Sengo tanto and ko-wakizashi, the hira-zukuri sunnobi blade of late Muromachi. Of the twelve, two sit in the tradeable Juyo tier of recorded whereabouts; a signed, ubu Sengo Masashige is therefore not beyond a serious collector's reach, coming to market from time to time and standing as a faithful witness to the school of Muramasa, its rounded mune and its standing, nie-laden steel telling the pupil from the master.
Where Masashige 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.
Soshu-den · Ise
5 pieces on the market now
Kuwana, in Ise Province, gave the Sengo line its base, and from there the Muramasa (村正) name carried the work of late-Muromachi Ise into the Sengoku decades. The oldest extant date in the whole line is Bunki 1 (1501), carried by a katana signed "Seshu Kuwana-ju Uemon-no-jo Fujiwara Muramasa saku"[[c:1]]; from that anchor the prevailing scheme reads the Bunki pieces as the first generation, the Tenbun as the second, and the Tensho as the third, with the second master held the most skillful and most prolific of the three. The published sources set aside the popular tale that the founder studied under Masamune, calling it an unfounded tradition; the line begins instead near the close of the Muromachi period. Its hand shares common features with Mino, Shimada, and Sue-Soshu, and resembles Heianjo Nagayoshi of Kyoto so closely that the judges presume some relationship between the two, while a likeness to the Shimada smiths and to the Sue-Seki Kanesada is noted as a thing that can confuse a first reading. From the workshop issued the disciples Masashige (正重) and Masazane (正眞), filed by tradition as students of the shodai, who carried the manner forward alongside the Muramasa name itself. The feature the commentary names again and again as the school's own is the matched temper: the hamon on omote and ura align to one mirror-image pattern (omote-ura soroi), and the valleys of the midare press in toward the cutting edge. To this the masters add box-shaped elements (hako-midare), a gunome and notare base mixed with compound gunome, togariba, and yamagata figures, the nioiguchi drawn tight with patchy ko-nie in mura, and sunagashi running frequently; the boshi runs midare-komi or sugu to a ko-maru, often swept with hakikake. The forms that carry it are the wide hira-zukuri tanto and sunnobi ko-wakizashi with mitsu-mune, and the short, strongly saki-zori uchigatana; the jigane is itame tending to stand, mixed with flowing and masame-inclined grain, the steel dark at times and showing the whitish shirake cast the descriptions repeatedly note. Beneath sits the tanago-bara nakago, the fish-belly swelling that grows pronounced from the second generation, cut with a thick-chisel two-character mei.
The successors diverge by proportion rather than trick: Masashige opens the same vocabulary out, his grain standing more openly and his o-gunome and nie carried further; Masazane draws it in, holding box teeth low at the koshimoto under a calm suguha, his jihada closing tighter than his fellow pupil's. Beside the flamboyant rule each smith keeps a quiet register, tanto in suguha aimed at the Rai manner, and an occasional reach toward hitatsura with tobiyaki and muneyaki, never the rule of the work. To kantei the school, the matched faces are the first tell: the aligned omote and ura, the box figures, the valleys pressing to the edge, the tight nioiguchi with its patchy nie, and the tanago-bara nakago under the thick mei part Muramasa from the Mino, Shimada, and Heianjo hands it otherwise resembles. Within the line the nakago-mune decides: cut angular on Muramasa, it rounds out fleshily on Masashige, while Masazane is told from Masashige by his tighter steel. The Sengo reputation for cutting sharpness, with the midare valleys driven toward the ha, drew the Tokugawa legend that the blades brought calamity on the house; the sources handle it as recorded fact, noting that from the Edo period many signatures were effaced for fear of the name, so that signed katana in particular grew comparatively rare, and that one of Masazane's katana was cut "Yamashiro Province Masazane" as a deliberate screen for a daimyo recipient. Provenance runs through private and daimyo hands rather than institutional holdings: a first-generation wakizashi transmitted as a possession of Oda Nobunaga, a Masazane descended in the Mizuno and Tosa Yamauchi houses, a Lotus Sutra katana held in the Nabeshima line. The Nichiren devotion read off some blades, the title Myoho-renge-kyo cut into the steel, ties the work to its Ise region. A signed, ubu Sengo blade of secure date and matched temper comes to notice only from time to time, the legend that thinned the signatures adding to the call for those that remain. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Muramasa村正 | 1521-1528 | 41 |
| Muramasa村正 | 1501-1521 | 17 |
| Masashige正重 | 1521-1528 | 12 |
| Masazane正眞 | 1501-1504 | 4 |
| Koretsuna維綱 | 1532-1573 | 1 |
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 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 wakizashi by Masashige, a renowned student of Muramasa from the late Muromachi period. The blade exhibits a well-forged ko-itame hada with some flowing grain, and a gunome-midare hamon with strong nie and active kinsuji and sunagashi. It is a masterpiece showing the typical characteristics of the Sengo school, with a refined and orderly workmanship akin to his master Muramasa.
NihontoWatchmei · Sengo · Muromachi · nagasa 30.6cm · sori 0.4cm
Sengo (Ise) · Ise · around 1521-1528
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 23%
1 piece on the market now
Masashige worked in Kuwana, in Ise Province, where the published sources record him together with Masazane as a disciple of the first-generation Muramasa, the founder of the Sengo line: "Masashige, together with Masazane, was a disciple of the first-generation Muramasa."[[c:1]] The school reckoning runs from a first generation active around Eisho, the name reaching three generations, and Masashige is filed by tradition within that frame as a pupil of the shodai. He leaves no dated blade, so his place is read from style and the manner of signing, and the published commentary takes those works that fall in the Eisho to Tenbun span as the earliest. His standard work is the late-Muromachi hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi, wide in mihaba and slightly elongated; the few katana are shinogi-zukuri with a high saki-zori. He is Jo-jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, and unlike the great Kamakura masters whose names survive mostly on suriage attributions, every one of his designated blades carries his signature.
His hand is the Sengo manner turned more open and more strongly in nie. The forging is itame mixed with masame and a flowing tendency, and it stands: the published commentary returns, blade after blade, to the observation that as a whole many of his works show a more conspicuously standing grain (hada-dachi) than Muramasa's, and that compared with the master his ji and ha are the stronger in nie. The temper takes a ko-notare base into which gunome, large and bold o-gunome, box-shaped and arrow-nock yahazu teeth are mixed, the patterns on omote and ura tending to align; ashi and yo enter, the nie attaches thickly, and sunagashi runs frequently. Over a ko-notare base the bold o-gunome is markedly his, and it is the bones of his more flamboyant midare. The boshi runs midare-komi to a ko-maru, often swept with hakikake and pointed on one face. He is set apart from his master not by a single trick but by the proportion of these features: the same midare worked larger, the same nie carried further, the same grain allowed to stand.
The jigane is where the school is read. Over a standing itame, often mixed with mokume and flowing grain, the ji-nie gathers thickly and chikei enters, so that the surface reads as the more active of the two Sengo hands. The published commentary is consistent that his is the more openly standing grain, writing of the line that "compared with Muramasa his ji and ha are the stronger in nie." The temper is a midareba over a shallow undulating base, bright and clear at its best, with deep nioi and well-adhering nie; kinsuji thread through it and sunagashi sweeps heavily, at times the nie breaking up out of the habuchi. The boshi is the most variable element, frequently tempered deep into an ichimai-like return, midare-komi, the point constricting and turning back in a rounded form, swept long down the mune. Carving is occasional: one wakizashi carries a grass-script kurikara on the omote and bonji with gomabashi and a lotus pedestal on the ura.
Within one Sengo manner the published descriptions read his work in two registers. The first is his standard, orderly hand, the hira-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi in ko-notare and gunome, which the commentary calls his typical workmanship; of one such tanto, brought to a calm character in small, even ko-nie without roughness or crumbling nie, it writes that it "reveals a creative domain closely akin to that of his master Muramasa."[[c:3]] The second is the wild register that the judges plainly prize: yahazu and angular squared-off teeth enter the midare, the nie thicken and break up, sunagashi runs heavily, and tobiyaki with mune-yaki build toward a hitatsura-like effect, the boshi burning deep and thrusting up. Of one such wakizashi the commentary writes that it is finished "as a bold piece rich in rustic spirit," and of another, "open-hearted in feeling and filled with commanding vigor."[[c:4]] A tanto that fully exploits this manner is said to "fully demonstrate this smith's true strengths."[[c:5]] The mei is a thick-chisel two-character signature, sometimes a three-character Masashige-saku, cut on the omote toward the mune; one tanto reads its signature Kin Masashige.
His distinction from Muramasa is the spine of the school's kantei, and the published commentary names it precisely. He shares with the master the distinctive tanago-bara, the fish-belly swelling of the nakago, so that on form alone the two run close; the earliest of his signed katana, the commentary observes, is the oldest in date among the works of the name[[c:6]] and "at first glance appears to be a masterwork by Muramasa." The point that parts them is the nakago-mune. Where Muramasa's is cut angular, Masashige's rounds out fleshily, and the judges name this the principal point of appreciation, returning to one phrase across his designations: "whereas Muramasa's nakago-mune is angular, the distinctly rounded, fleshy mune is the point of interest."[[c:7]] To the same end the jigane stands more openly and the nie carry further than the master's. He works alongside Masazane in the same mould, the two named together as the famous pupils of the shodai; within that mould the rounded mune, the standing grain and the stronger nie are his.
Masashige is among the more attainable of the celebrated names, and his record is honest about why. Twelve of his blades hold the Juyo rank, every one of them signed and ubu, and none has risen to the higher designated tiers; his Toko Taikan valuation sits in the middle of the field. None of the designated blades carries a recorded daimyo provenance, so the school's reputation rather than a chain of famous owners is what is preserved in them. The corpus is geographically scattered, the recorded holders private collectors across Japan and one in the United States, and the swords themselves the usual Sengo tanto and ko-wakizashi, the hira-zukuri sunnobi blade of late Muromachi. Of the twelve, two sit in the tradeable Juyo tier of recorded whereabouts; a signed, ubu Sengo Masashige is therefore not beyond a serious collector's reach, coming to market from time to time and standing as a faithful witness to the school of Muramasa, its rounded mune and its standing, nie-laden steel telling the pupil from the master.
Where Masashige 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.
Soshu-den · Ise
5 pieces on the market now
Kuwana, in Ise Province, gave the Sengo line its base, and from there the Muramasa (村正) name carried the work of late-Muromachi Ise into the Sengoku decades. The oldest extant date in the whole line is Bunki 1 (1501), carried by a katana signed "Seshu Kuwana-ju Uemon-no-jo Fujiwara Muramasa saku"[[c:1]]; from that anchor the prevailing scheme reads the Bunki pieces as the first generation, the Tenbun as the second, and the Tensho as the third, with the second master held the most skillful and most prolific of the three. The published sources set aside the popular tale that the founder studied under Masamune, calling it an unfounded tradition; the line begins instead near the close of the Muromachi period. Its hand shares common features with Mino, Shimada, and Sue-Soshu, and resembles Heianjo Nagayoshi of Kyoto so closely that the judges presume some relationship between the two, while a likeness to the Shimada smiths and to the Sue-Seki Kanesada is noted as a thing that can confuse a first reading. From the workshop issued the disciples Masashige (正重) and Masazane (正眞), filed by tradition as students of the shodai, who carried the manner forward alongside the Muramasa name itself. The feature the commentary names again and again as the school's own is the matched temper: the hamon on omote and ura align to one mirror-image pattern (omote-ura soroi), and the valleys of the midare press in toward the cutting edge. To this the masters add box-shaped elements (hako-midare), a gunome and notare base mixed with compound gunome, togariba, and yamagata figures, the nioiguchi drawn tight with patchy ko-nie in mura, and sunagashi running frequently; the boshi runs midare-komi or sugu to a ko-maru, often swept with hakikake. The forms that carry it are the wide hira-zukuri tanto and sunnobi ko-wakizashi with mitsu-mune, and the short, strongly saki-zori uchigatana; the jigane is itame tending to stand, mixed with flowing and masame-inclined grain, the steel dark at times and showing the whitish shirake cast the descriptions repeatedly note. Beneath sits the tanago-bara nakago, the fish-belly swelling that grows pronounced from the second generation, cut with a thick-chisel two-character mei.
The successors diverge by proportion rather than trick: Masashige opens the same vocabulary out, his grain standing more openly and his o-gunome and nie carried further; Masazane draws it in, holding box teeth low at the koshimoto under a calm suguha, his jihada closing tighter than his fellow pupil's. Beside the flamboyant rule each smith keeps a quiet register, tanto in suguha aimed at the Rai manner, and an occasional reach toward hitatsura with tobiyaki and muneyaki, never the rule of the work. To kantei the school, the matched faces are the first tell: the aligned omote and ura, the box figures, the valleys pressing to the edge, the tight nioiguchi with its patchy nie, and the tanago-bara nakago under the thick mei part Muramasa from the Mino, Shimada, and Heianjo hands it otherwise resembles. Within the line the nakago-mune decides: cut angular on Muramasa, it rounds out fleshily on Masashige, while Masazane is told from Masashige by his tighter steel. The Sengo reputation for cutting sharpness, with the midare valleys driven toward the ha, drew the Tokugawa legend that the blades brought calamity on the house; the sources handle it as recorded fact, noting that from the Edo period many signatures were effaced for fear of the name, so that signed katana in particular grew comparatively rare, and that one of Masazane's katana was cut "Yamashiro Province Masazane" as a deliberate screen for a daimyo recipient. Provenance runs through private and daimyo hands rather than institutional holdings: a first-generation wakizashi transmitted as a possession of Oda Nobunaga, a Masazane descended in the Mizuno and Tosa Yamauchi houses, a Lotus Sutra katana held in the Nabeshima line. The Nichiren devotion read off some blades, the title Myoho-renge-kyo cut into the steel, ties the work to its Ise region. A signed, ubu Sengo blade of secure date and matched temper comes to notice only from time to time, the legend that thinned the signatures adding to the call for those that remain. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Muramasa村正 | 1521-1528 | 41 |
| Muramasa村正 | 1501-1521 | 17 |
| Masashige正重 | 1521-1528 | 12 |
| Masazane正眞 | 1501-1504 | 4 |
| Koretsuna維綱 | 1532-1573 | 1 |
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 siteCustomer-initiated returns accepted within two days of arrival; return shipping paid by customer and fees non-refundable. Returns/refunds unavailable for overseas deliveries.
