$8,667

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About the maker

Enju Kuniyoshi國吉

Kuniyoshi worked at Kumafu in the Kikuchi district of Higo Province from the very end of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokuchō, the leading hand named first among the smiths of the Enju school. The published sources trace the line to Enju Tarō Kunimura, recorded as a son of Senjūin Hiromura of Yamato and as a maternal grandson of Rai Kuniyuki of Kyōto, and they place Kuniyoshi beside Kunitoki, Kuniyasu, Kunitomo, Kunisuke, Kuninobu and Kunitsuna as one of the representative makers of the group, transmitted as either a son or a younger brother of the founder. From that double descent the school took its character, and the judges describe its work as one that *generally resembles the Rai school of Yamashiro* (概ね山城の来派に類似する), refined in suguha yet carrying a Yamato cast inherited through the Senjūin side. Because the individual differences among Enju smiths are slight, his many shortened and unsigned blades are affirmed from era and school as much as from any personal mannerism. His characteristic hand is a quiet straight temper laid over a flowing steel. The temper is a hoso- or chū-suguha into which small gunome and ko-ashi enter, the habuchi fraying into *hotsure*, with fine *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* and ko-nie adhering, the nioiguchi most often tight. Within that calm line two activities are the tells the judges return to: *kuichigai-ba*, the broken-edge effect, and above all a doubled *nijūba* running along the edge and into the bōshi. Of one signed and shortened tachi the published sources write that the way *the nijūba in particular stands out clearly manifests the school's characteristic traits* (殊に二重刃が目立ってかかっている様には、此の派の特色が顕著にあらわれている). The bōshi runs straight to a small round, at times to a larger *ō-maru* with a shallow turnback, occasionally finishing *yakizume* or with *hakikake*. The *jigane* is where the school is read first. Over an itame, often a closely packed ko-itame, the grain flows toward the edge into *masame*, with *ji-nie*, *chikei* entering, areas of *jifu*, and a whitish *shirake-utsuri* standing clearly across the surface. This cooler, mistier reflection, paired with the conspicuous masame, is what the published sources name as the principal point separating Enju from the tighter Rai jigane from which it descends. The same record is candid about the cost of that descent: compared with true Rai the ji and ha run somewhat weaker, the steel can look whitish and thin, the suguha quiet and the nioiguchi subdued. Kuniyoshi is the smith in whom that baseline is most often surpassed rather than merely met. His record divides cleanly by form. The body of it is the slender tachi, usually shortened and several reduced to katana, on which the suguha and shirake-utsuri appear in their representative state. Against these stand the *sun-nobi* hira-zukuri tantō, somewhat wide and thick in the kasane, their ko-itame mixing mokume and flowing masame, the suguha here taking on a shallow *notare* with a deeper nioi, and carrying the school's Buddhist carving, a *bonji* above a *suken* on the omote and a *katana-bi* with accompanying groove on the reverse. The signatures are bold two-character mei, and the judges read them by a single calligraphic tell: within the enclosure of the character *kuni* the right-hand element is cut in an ear-shaped form, so that *the cutting of the right half inside the kuni enclosure in an ear shape is the inscriptional point of this school* (国構の中の右半分を耳形に鍛るのが此の派の銘振りの見どころ), a manner they say does not become confused with other schools and which separates him from the Awataguchi Kuniyoshi who shares his name. What distinguishes Kuniyoshi within his own school is brightness. The published sources single out his signed Tokubetsu Jūyō katana for escaping the Enju weaknesses entirely, lacking the whitish thinness of the jigane and the subdued nioiguchi, and presenting instead a ji and ha that are *bright and clear in both, the most refined example among works of the school* (地刃共に明るく冴えており、同派の中では垢抜けした出来映えのもの). Where the school is read for masame, shirake-utsuri and a quiet line, his finest work keeps those marks while raising their clarity, the nijūba sharp and the steel well refined. The name continued through several generations into the Muromachi period, a Hishū Kikuchi-signed wakizashi read as a later Eitoku-era hand, so the shodai is set apart from his namesakes by date and by the quality of his make. Fujishiro records no grade for him, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work at four hundred and fifty. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through two blades at Tokubetsu Jūyō and nineteen at Jūyō, with an Important Art Object and works appraised in gold inlay, gold powder and red lacquer as well as signed and unsigned. The provenance roll is unusually grand for a Higo provincial: two tantō were transmitted in the Owari Tokugawa family with Hon'ami Kōon origami, one selected into that house's highest "jin" rank; one shortened tachi passed through the Tokugawa shogunal house; a court mounting with its blade descended in the Ichijō regent family; and a blade is recorded at the Ise Shrine. Of one unsigned tantō the published sources say it is *a rare piece, sound in both ji and ha, firmly attributable to Kuniyoshi* (地刃ともに健全な国吉極めの稀な一品). With twenty-one blades across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers and almost none held outside private and institutional collections, a signed Enju Kuniyoshi comes to market only seldom; when one does, it is the rare chance to hold the leading hand of the Higo school, the Rai manner carried south and made bright.

Samurai Museum

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