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About the school

Kiyomaro School清麿派

The Kiyomaro school gathered in the workshops of Yotsuya in Edo around the middle of the nineteenth century, its founder Yamaura Kiyomaro (清麿) born in Bunka 10 (1813) at Akaiwa village in the Komoro district of Shinano, the second son of the country gentry-warrior Yamaura Nobukaze. He learned forging first under the Ueda-domain smith Kawamura Toshitaka, signing his early blades Masayuki, went up to Edo in Tenpo 6 (1835) under the patronage of the military scholar Kubota Kiyone, and in the autumn of Koka 3 (1846) settled at Iga-cho in Yotsuya and changed his signature to Kiyomaro; he died by his own hand at forty-two in Kaei 7 (1854). Around him moved his elder brother Yamaura Masao (真雄/正雄), who took the same instruction from Toshitaka and walked the same course from *choji* into *Soshu-den*, and the pupils who entered the Yotsuya forge in its final years: Kurihara Nobuhide (信秀), a mirror-maker from Sanjo in Echigo whom the published sources place nearest the master's hand; Saito Kiyondo (清人) of Dewa, who afterward settled his teacher's sword debts and carried the manner into early Meiji; and the wider circle of associates and patrons through which the line passed. The shared vocabulary of the school is a powerful Soshu-revival manner. Over an *itame* that flows and stands a little, well packed and at times opening into *mokume* and *o-itame*, the smiths lay thick *ji-nie* with frequent *chikei*, the steel clear and without *utsuri*, for this is a late hand reaching back five centuries to Sagami rather than a Bizen revival. The temper is an *o-midare* or *gunome-midare* mixed with *ko-notare*, the *ashi* and *yo* entering, the *nie* thick and gathering coarse in clusters of *ara-nie*, with long *kinsuji* and streaming *sunagashi* running through nearly every blade; the *boshi* answers in a *midare-komi* turning pointed with *hakikake*. A Bizen-leaning side survives from the early years in the residual *choji* that shades into the mature work. Within this common ground the hands diverge. Kiyomaro's is read as the overwhelming one, his *Soshu-den* reaching the upper transmission with the Shizu vein as his forte of fortes, the NBTHK calling his work 「覇気に満ちている」, filled with commanding spirit. Masao's grounded forging is candidly weighed against his brother's, the texts noting that his *chikei*, *sunagashi*, and *kinsuji* run fewer and the quality does not reach Kiyomaro's level. Nobuhide is named the closest approach to the master and is alone in the school for his carving, a mirror-maker's hand that set *kurikara*, dragons, and *bonji* into blades the others left plain. Kiyondo holds the round-headed *gunome-midare* at full strength and adds a manner of his own, a bright *suguha* aligned with the Yamato tradition that Kiyomaro never worked. To *kantei* the school, read first the imposing shape particular to the Yamaura line: a wide body with little taper, the *sori* toward the point, a *chu-kissaki* extended or run to an *o-kissaki* whose *fukura* is allowed to wither for a sharp impression, often a *shobu-zukuri* or *kanmuri-otoshi* wakizashi. Read then the *nie*, thick in *ji* and *ha*, the *chikei* and the conspicuous *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* that mark the force of the steel rather than any borrowed pattern. Carving narrows the field to Nobuhide; a Yamato *suguha* narrows it to Kiyondo. Kiyomaro stands at the head of the line, ranked by the published sources as high as Kotetsu and named without question the leading master among the *shinshinto*, the smith called the Yotsuya Masamune (四谷正宗). His extant work is scarce and closely held, passing through documented hands such as the Iwasaki family and the Seikado Bunko, and reaches the market only from time to time and at the very top of it. The pupils and the elder brother offer the more attainable face of the circle, signed and dated blades that come to a collector with patience; a signed example of any of these hands is a document of the moment when Soshu was reborn in Edo.

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