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.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch時代 : 室町末期 国 : 相模国 証書 : 財団法人日本美術刀剣保存協会 特別保存刀剣 鑑定書 外装 : 拵付白鞘入 刃長 : 1尺2寸4分弱 反り : 2分3厘 目釘穴 : 2個 元幅・元重 : 31.8mm・6.0mm Period : Late Muromachi Country : Sagami Paper : NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon Token Fittings : Koshirae+Shirasaya Length : 37.4cm(14.72inches) Curve : 0.7cm Hole : 2 Bottom Width,Thickness : 31.8mm・6.0mm 相州住綱廣は室町後期から江戸末期まで連綿と続いた相州鍛冶です。初代は山村姓で、初銘を正廣と切りましたが、その後小田原の北條氏綱に召出され、「綱」の一字を賜り綱廣と改銘したと言われています。綱廣の代別は難しいと言われていますが、藤代刀工辞典では初代が天文、二代が永禄、三代が文禄とされており、山村家系図および古文書によると天文七年(1538)から天文十年(1541)の間に初二代の代替があったとされています。三代綱広は山村宗右衛門と称し、鎌倉扇ケ谷に住し、後に津軽藩主の招きによりその地へ移り、大小300振りを鍛刀し、慶長11年(1606)に帰国したとあります。 本作は平造、三ツ棟、寸法に比して重ねやや薄く、総体的に反りつく体配です。表腰元に草の俱利伽羅龍、裏に梵字に爪の彫物があります。地鉄は板目に杢目、地沸つき、肌目大きくなる所多く、地鉄強く、地景しきりに入り、刃文腰元は直ぐ調に浅い小互の目を交え、飛焼入り、上半は皆焼となり、刃縁匂勝ちで、地刃の境は、はっきりしており、刃先に小沸よくつき、鍛えに沿って、砂流、金筋しきりに入り、帽子の帰りは中程まで続き、棟焼盛んに入る出来で、相州物の典型作と言えます。外装は鞘、柄共に2分印籠刻となり、縁頭は春分の図で、目貫は米俵・布袋・宝珠の図、小柄も稲穂・宝珠・打ち出の小槌図など縁起物が揃ったおめでたい図柄でまとまった小さ刀拵となっています。 2024大刀剣市カタログ掲載品
Certificate reading — 銘 相州住綱広
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Soshu-den · Sagami
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Within the province of Sagami, where Masamune and his successors had set the Soshu-den on its course, a late body of smiths carried that workmanship forward through the Muromachi period after the classic Nanbokucho masters had passed. These are the Sue-Soshu (末相州), the late Sagami line that took up the manner of Hiromitsu and Akihiro and worked it into the sixteenth century under the patronage of the Later Hojo of Odawara. The published sources draw a division within the group: one body of smiths remained at Kamakura while a separate circle lived at Odawara under the Hojo, the latter collectively called the Odawara-Soshu. The Tsunahiro line anchors the whole, its shodai transmitted as a descendant of Hiromasa who first signed Masahiro, summoned by Hojo Ujitsuna to Odawara and granted the character tsuna; the name then passed as a workshop title through several generations into the Edo period. Around it stand Tsunaie, a retained smith of the Hojo regarded among the more skilled of the late line; Fusamune, the Odawara smith whose carving carries a long reputation; the mid-Muromachi Hiromasa, transmitted as the third generation of his name; Masahiro, a Sagami lineage of four or five generations said to descend from a younger son of Masamune; and Hirotsugu of Kamakura, who also bears Tenbun-era inscriptions tying him to Suruga. The shared vocabulary of the school is read off temper, steel, and carving together. The jigane is an itame mixed with mokume and nagare-hada that tends to stand and open rather than gather tightly, ji-nie adhering across it with chikei entering, the Odawara hands (Fusamune above all) tightening this toward a packed ko-itame. Over that ground the smiths temper a gunome-midare into which choji, togariba, the arrow-notch yahazu tooth, and ko-notare enter, the ha widening as it rises; nie attaches with sunagashi and kinsuji, and tobiyaki with muneyaki are then carried across the ji until the whole becomes hitatsura, the full-temper manner the sources name as the inheritance from Hiromitsu and Akihiro.
The Odawara face leans angular and compound, gunome heads breaking into doubled and koshi-biraki structures over a tight, nioi-dominant nioiguchi, while the Kamakura face of Tsunahiro keeps the broader, yahazu-laced midare. Devotional carving recurs throughout, true and grass kurikara, bonji on a lotus rendai, sanko-ken and gomabashi in raised relief, and incised invocations such as Hachiman Daibosatsu. Set against the classic Soshu-den apex, the divergence is one of register rather than kind: where the Kamakura and Nanbokucho masters reached great depth of nie and clarity of steel, the late line works a flatter, more demonstrative hitatsura over a standing grain, the steel less deep and the nie less profound, the flamboyance of full temper standing in for the restrained command of the founders. For kantei, the Sue-Soshu blade announces itself by the Muromachi sugata (compact hira-zukuri tanto with uchizori, or sun-nobi wakizashi of wide mihaba with sakizori) carrying full hitatsura over an open, standing itame, with the dense devotional horimono the sources treat as a defining mark of Sagami work of the era; the absence of the deep, lucid nie and the midare-utsuri-free clarity of the Kamakura masters separates it from classic Soshu. The Odawara hand is told from the Kamakura hand by its tighter steel, its angular and koshi-biraki gunome, and Fusamune's exceptionally refined relief carving. Among the members, Tsunahiro is the first name of the group, the smith who closes the tradition, the published sources naming him well known and highly skilled within the group, with Tsunaie and Fusamune as the next most accomplished; Hiromasa and Masahiro furnish the dated, ubu-signed documents on which the divided generations are anchored. Provenance, where it survives, is real and distinguished: a Tsunahiro wakizashi bears the ownership inscription of the Hojo retainer Sakurai Daigaku and later passed to Okubo Ichio, while one of his blades is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection; most members, however, carry no recorded daimyo or temple history, their standing resting on the rarity of a signed late-Sagami blade and the carving and steel the sources praise on each. A signed Sue-Soshu work, seldom met yet not locked away as national patrimony, offers the student the Muromachi register of the Soshu-den read whole. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Fusamune總宗 | 1504-1521 | 5 |
| Tsunahiro綱廣 | 1532-1555 | 14 |
| Hiromasa廣正 | 1444-1456 | 4 |
| Tsunaie綱家 | 1532-1555 | 3 |
| Hirotsugu廣次 | 1492-1501 | 4 |
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.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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.
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