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 保存刀剣 鑑定書 外装 : 拵付白鞘入 刃長 : 6寸7分 反り : 内反り 目釘穴 : 2個 元幅・元重 : 21.0mm・4.9mm Period : Late Muromachi Country : Sagami Paper : NBTHK Hozon Paper Fittings : Koshirae+Shirasaya Length : 20.4cm Curve : Uchizori Hole : 2 Bottom Width,Thickness : 21.0mm・4.9mm 相州住広正は広光から続く名工で、南北朝から室町末期にかけて数代続いた刀工です。 本作は平造り、三ツ棟の小ぶりな短刀で、相州物の典型的な皆焼刃に、総体的に飛び焼きが入り、地刃よく沸付き、帽子の返り早く、深く焼き下げ、地鉄は板目に杢目混じり、地沸よく付き、地景交じり、地刃共に明るく、変化に富んだ華やかな出来で、この時代の相州物の典型作と言える作品です。 画像ではかなりヒケが目立っていますが、実際手に取ってみると地刃の明るさでヒケはこれほど感じられません。拵を追加いたしました。
Certificate reading — 銘 相州住広正
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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.
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