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About the maker

Sa Akikuni顯國

Akikuni is the Nagato continuation of the Samonji line. The published sources place him among the later disciples of Sa Yasuyoshi, taken on after Yasuyoshi carried the Sa name out of Chikuzen and into Chochu, and the reference works on signatures add that he was the son of Chochu Yasuyoshi. The same works caution that the name is not quite a single man: they list six smiths who bore it, beginning with a smith of the Bunwa era in the line of Sa Yasuyoshi and including the Oei-period hand described as the son of Chochu Yasuyoshi, so that Chochu Akikuni is best read as a name handed down through the Nagato workshop. Among his extant dated works the earliest are of the Oei era, with later examples reaching into the Bunan years, which sets him in the early Muromachi period carrying a provincial, late reading of the Soshu manner the Sa line had taken up. The published sources state his temper in a single sentence of connoisseurship, that his work includes both blades in suguha and blades in which nie develops strongly and a linked gunome-midare is formed (彼の作風には直刃のものと、沸づいて互の目乱れが連れたものがある). The latter is the manner they call representative. On his tachi dated Oei 31 the gunome-midare runs linked, with ashi entering and the nie adhering, and on the signed wakizashi the same temper carries small notare, a deep nioi, with sunagashi and kinsuji drawn through. The suguha manner appears in its fuller form on his broadest katana, a chu-suguha base bearing a slight notare with gunome and ko-gunome, ko-ashi and yo entering, the ko-nie uneven in places with slight hotsure and small yubashiri, kinsuji and sunagashi present, the nioiguchi tending to sink. The boshi answers the temper face by face: straight into a ko-maru with a long return finely swept in hakikake on the suguha piece, midare-komi turning back with a pointed tendency on the mumei katana, and on the Oei 31 tachi yaki-kuzure on one face with a straight o-maru on the other. The jigane is itame, often standing, mixed with mokume and nagare-hada, with thick ji-nie and fine chikei-like lines of steel. On his broadest katana a faint shirake-utsuri stands and the steel carries a slightly blackish cast, the marks of a peripheral late-Sa forge rather than the bright Chikuzen ji. Bo-hi are carved on both faces, at times with companion grooves running partway up the blade. Of that broadest katana the published sources write that there is a rustic character to the workmanship which, with the large kissaki, conveys a vigorous, commanding spirit (総じて作域に野趣があり、大鋒の形状と相俟って、覇気が感ぜられる), and they note that large-scale blades of this kind are scarce within his oeuvre, its imposing form resembling that of an orikaeshi-mei katana by the same smith certified before the war as an Important Art Object. The signature itself is part of the kantei. Signed works are comparatively few, the standard mei cut in five characters as Chochu-ju Akikuni (長州住顕国), and among the Oei-dated examples some add the title Saemon no Jo (左衛門尉) while others state the place of residence as Chochu Setozaki junin (長州瀬戸崎住人). One katana carries the mei folded over on a shortened tang, an orikaeshi-mei (折返銘), the omote groove carried through into the folded portion. Because the reference works gather several Akikuni under the one name, a date and a place-name in the inscription do as much to anchor a piece as the manner of the temper. His tachi of Oei 31 is valued by the published sources for exactly this reason, the representative example of his connected gunome-midare in which his characteristic features are readily seen, both ji and ha well executed, the Oei date itself prized as documentary material (この太刀はその後者の代表的な作で、彼の特色がよく見られ、地刃の出来がよく、応永年紀は資料的に貴重である). The lineage to Sa Yasuyoshi is the axis on which his attributions turn, and the published sources argue it from both sides. On a mumei katana shaped like a shortened Nanbokucho tachi they concede that the workmanship does not connect directly to Yasuyoshi's own style, yet accept the handed-down attribution all the same (安吉に直結する作風ではないが所伝を認めることができる). On the signed wakizashi they read the positive case, finding in both the jihada and the hamon a current of workmanship descending from Yasuyoshi (地刃に安吉からの流れが窺える). Taken together the two readings place Akikuni at the provincial far end of the Sa tradition, carrying the Samonji manner into Nagato and into the early Muromachi period with a coarser, more nie-driven character than the Chikuzen source. Akikuni is a smith of the standing the collector meets through his designated blades rather than his name. Fujishiro grades him Jo saku, and his record on the books is four works at the Juyo level, none raised to the higher designations, a profile that fits a fine provincial hand of the Sa descent. Provenance, where it survives, is fitting to that reading: his work descended in the great houses of his own province, the Ouchi of Suo and Nagato and the Mori who succeeded them, a transmission that reads like the local history of the blade. Recorded ownership beyond that is thin, as it usually is for a smith of this rank, and no museum holding can be claimed from the record. A signed and dated Akikuni is not a blade that comes often to market, and when one does it is met as the work of a well-documented branch smith of the Sa line, a vigorous early-Muromachi piece carrying the Samonji descent into Nagato, valuable to the student of the school for the directness with which it shows a country forge working in the old tradition.

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