This is a rare signed Tachi by Sukekane of the Ko-Bizen school, dating to the early Kamakura period. It features a graceful tachi-sugata with a deep koshi-zori and a small kissaki. The blade comes with a Tokubetsu Hozon certificate from the NBTHK and a Kenshin Koshirae from the Edo period.
Certificate reading — 銘 助口造
NihontoWatchmei · Ko-Bizen · Genryaku (1184-1185) · nagasa 73cm · sori 2.1cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 1184-1185
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 1%
1 piece on the market now
Sukekane is a Ko-Bizen swordsmith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period, his name one of the school's enduring puzzles. Two Jūyō-Bijutsuhin tachi designated in 1935, one signed in six characters "Bizen no Kuni Sukekane saku" and held by the Matsudaira house, the other a small-signature blade from the Sakai house, fix him in the historical record; the published sources note that the name Sukekane is found among both the Ko-Bizen group and the Fukuoka Ichimonji line, and that there were likely three or four smiths who shared it. The man profiled here is the Ko-Bizen one, the archaic hand. The published commentary draws the distinction plainly: of the two Sukekane, "the former is an archaic, classical small-midare of nie-based workmanship, whereas the latter forges flamboyant chōji-based midare in which a sense of technical artifice is felt"[[c:1]]. His is the quiet side of the divide.
His characteristic temper is a suguha-toned small midare. Over it run ko-chōji, ko-gunome and ko-notare, with ashi and yō entering well, the work nie-based, with sunagashi and fine kinsuji coursing through and, on a recurring group, nijūba and even sanjūba running intermittently along the upper edge. This is not the regular clove-flower of the Ichimonji smiths but the calm, antique line the published sources call the manner of old Bizen, where "flamboyant midare is uncommon"[[c:2]] and "a suguha-toned base with shallow notare predominates"[[c:3]]. The bōshi answers the edge below it, running straight to a ko-maru or finishing in a yakizume-like sweep with hakikake, sometimes with yubashiri drifting at the turn.
The jigane is the constant. He forges a well-packed itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing a little, with ji-nie and chikei entering frequently, and a clear midare-utsuri rising in the ji. On the finest of them the reflection thickens into the patchy jifu-utsuri of old Bizen steel. Over that jigane the nioiguchi is bright and clear, and the ha carries thick ko-nie. The published sources prize exactly this antique flavor, calling one Tokubetsu-Jūyō tachi a work of "old-scented workmanship characteristic of Ko-Bizen"[[c:4]], the ji and ha carrying a savory depth of taste.
Within his own record the work divides into two registers of one hand. The typical Sukekane is a slender tachi, ubu where it survives so or shortened yet keeping a high koshizori with funbari, the point a compact ko-kissaki, the temper a calm suguha-toned ko-midare. On his outstanding signed tachi the line opens out: a broad suguha into which chōji, gunome and angular elements are set, flowering into a brilliant midare that the judges single out, one such piece called "a particularly outstanding achievement" that strikingly manifests the features of Ko-Bizen. The signature is its own scholarly question. The published commentary records small, intermediate and large hands, and notes that while the convention treats small signatures as Ko-Bizen and large ones as Ichimonji, some Ichimonji works carry small signatures too, so that "a distinction based on the signature alone is not necessarily easy"[[c:5]].
What sets the Ko-Bizen Sukekane apart from his Ichimonji namesake is exactly this nie-based restraint. His bright midare-utsuri, his suguha-toned small midare with its nijūba and deep nie, and the archaic, slightly drooping tachi shape with its ko-kissaki are read as Ko-Bizen, while the flamboyant chōji and the air of technical display belong to the other hand. On the ō-suriage mumei katana and wakizashi attributed to him, the published sources affirm the appraisal from the period and the Ko-Bizen workmanship rather than from any single personal tell, accepting the traditional attribution where the jigane and hamon are markedly archaic in tone. His blades stand at the root of the Bizen line, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka.
For the collector he is a rare early name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work near the top of its scale. He has no National Treasure of his own Ko-Bizen hand; his record runs instead through the Important Cultural Property rank and the prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin, with two blades in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō and twenty-two in the Jūyō. Because his extant works are so few, the published sources call his best signed tachi documentary material of very high value for understanding him at all. His blades carry distinguished provenance, transmitted in the domain era through the Satake house of Akita, the Tokugawa and Matsudaira families, the Sakai house of Tadakatsu, the Ikeda of Inshū, and bearing in one case the gold-inlaid ownership name of Takeda Genshinren. Most are long held, not traded; only the Jūyō and Tokubetsu-Jūyō tier ever moves, and even then a signed Ko-Bizen Sukekane comes to light only seldom. A privately held example, of recorded whereabouts, is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how Bizen began.
Where Sukekane stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Kamakura was Bizen’s summit. Tradition places Ichimonji smiths among Go-Toba’s goban kaji, Mitsutada founded the Osafune line at mid-century, and orders flowed from the court and the warrior government alike. No province holds more National Treasure blades.
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.
NBTHK official siteFor one-of-a-kind items such as swords, sword fittings, and antiques, please contact us about a return within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back within 8 days. Refunds are issued the same day the returned item arrives.
This is a rare signed Tachi by Sukekane of the Ko-Bizen school, dating to the early Kamakura period. It features a graceful tachi-sugata with a deep koshi-zori and a small kissaki. The blade comes with a Tokubetsu Hozon certificate from the NBTHK and a Kenshin Koshirae from the Edo period.
Certificate reading — 銘 助口造
NihontoWatchmei · Ko-Bizen · Genryaku (1184-1185) · nagasa 73cm · sori 2.1cm
Ko-Bizen (Bizen) · Bizen · around 1184-1185
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 1%
1 piece on the market now
Sukekane is a Ko-Bizen swordsmith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period, his name one of the school's enduring puzzles. Two Jūyō-Bijutsuhin tachi designated in 1935, one signed in six characters "Bizen no Kuni Sukekane saku" and held by the Matsudaira house, the other a small-signature blade from the Sakai house, fix him in the historical record; the published sources note that the name Sukekane is found among both the Ko-Bizen group and the Fukuoka Ichimonji line, and that there were likely three or four smiths who shared it. The man profiled here is the Ko-Bizen one, the archaic hand. The published commentary draws the distinction plainly: of the two Sukekane, "the former is an archaic, classical small-midare of nie-based workmanship, whereas the latter forges flamboyant chōji-based midare in which a sense of technical artifice is felt"[[c:1]]. His is the quiet side of the divide.
His characteristic temper is a suguha-toned small midare. Over it run ko-chōji, ko-gunome and ko-notare, with ashi and yō entering well, the work nie-based, with sunagashi and fine kinsuji coursing through and, on a recurring group, nijūba and even sanjūba running intermittently along the upper edge. This is not the regular clove-flower of the Ichimonji smiths but the calm, antique line the published sources call the manner of old Bizen, where "flamboyant midare is uncommon"[[c:2]] and "a suguha-toned base with shallow notare predominates"[[c:3]]. The bōshi answers the edge below it, running straight to a ko-maru or finishing in a yakizume-like sweep with hakikake, sometimes with yubashiri drifting at the turn.
The jigane is the constant. He forges a well-packed itame mixed with mokume, the grain standing a little, with ji-nie and chikei entering frequently, and a clear midare-utsuri rising in the ji. On the finest of them the reflection thickens into the patchy jifu-utsuri of old Bizen steel. Over that jigane the nioiguchi is bright and clear, and the ha carries thick ko-nie. The published sources prize exactly this antique flavor, calling one Tokubetsu-Jūyō tachi a work of "old-scented workmanship characteristic of Ko-Bizen"[[c:4]], the ji and ha carrying a savory depth of taste.
Within his own record the work divides into two registers of one hand. The typical Sukekane is a slender tachi, ubu where it survives so or shortened yet keeping a high koshizori with funbari, the point a compact ko-kissaki, the temper a calm suguha-toned ko-midare. On his outstanding signed tachi the line opens out: a broad suguha into which chōji, gunome and angular elements are set, flowering into a brilliant midare that the judges single out, one such piece called "a particularly outstanding achievement" that strikingly manifests the features of Ko-Bizen. The signature is its own scholarly question. The published commentary records small, intermediate and large hands, and notes that while the convention treats small signatures as Ko-Bizen and large ones as Ichimonji, some Ichimonji works carry small signatures too, so that "a distinction based on the signature alone is not necessarily easy"[[c:5]].
What sets the Ko-Bizen Sukekane apart from his Ichimonji namesake is exactly this nie-based restraint. His bright midare-utsuri, his suguha-toned small midare with its nijūba and deep nie, and the archaic, slightly drooping tachi shape with its ko-kissaki are read as Ko-Bizen, while the flamboyant chōji and the air of technical display belong to the other hand. On the ō-suriage mumei katana and wakizashi attributed to him, the published sources affirm the appraisal from the period and the Ko-Bizen workmanship rather than from any single personal tell, accepting the traditional attribution where the jigane and hamon are markedly archaic in tone. His blades stand at the root of the Bizen line, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka.
For the collector he is a rare early name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work near the top of its scale. He has no National Treasure of his own Ko-Bizen hand; his record runs instead through the Important Cultural Property rank and the prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin, with two blades in the Tokubetsu-Jūyō and twenty-two in the Jūyō. Because his extant works are so few, the published sources call his best signed tachi documentary material of very high value for understanding him at all. His blades carry distinguished provenance, transmitted in the domain era through the Satake house of Akita, the Tokugawa and Matsudaira families, the Sakai house of Tadakatsu, the Ikeda of Inshū, and bearing in one case the gold-inlaid ownership name of Takeda Genshinren. Most are long held, not traded; only the Jūyō and Tokubetsu-Jūyō tier ever moves, and even then a signed Ko-Bizen Sukekane comes to light only seldom. A privately held example, of recorded whereabouts, is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how Bizen began.
Where Sukekane stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Bizen-den · Bizen
4 pieces on the market now
Ko-Bizen (古備前) is the oldest stratum of the Bizen tradition, the work of the smiths who forged in Bizen province from the late Heian period, around the Eien era, into the early and middle Kamakura. The published sources trace the line to a founding Tomonari and to Masatsune, the two counted from old as the twin pillars (sōheki) of the group, and they are careful to read each of the great names as a name-line rather than a single man: surviving tachi signed Tomonari carry Katei-era dates of the early Kamakura, the Masatsune name is transmitted across three generations or more, and the Kanehira and Sukehira signatures fall into distinct chisel hands. Beside the pillars stand the three Bizen Sanpei, Kanehira, Sukehira and Takahira, and a wider field of hands, Nobufusa, Naritaka, Yukihide, Sukekane, Yoshikane and the smiths of the Masatsune house such as Tsunemitsu, Toshitsune and Tochika. From this root, before the school's great flowering at Fukuoka, the whole Bizen tradition descends. Several of these names recur in the early Ichimonji line of the same province, so that the appraisal of any one of them begins by separating the archaic Ko-Bizen hand from its later namesake. The shared vocabulary is consistent enough that the school is read as a single manner held across many hands. The sugata is the slender tachi of the age: shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, high koshizori with pronounced funbari, the curvature settling toward a small ko-kissaki. The forging is an itame mixed with mokume, the grain often standing a little (hada-dachi), with ji-nie adhering, chikei woven through, and over it the speckled jifu-utsuri or a midare-utsuri of old Bizen steel.
The temper is the quietest reading of Bizen: a suguha tone undulating shallowly into ko-midare, into which ko-chōji and ko-gunome enter, ko-nie adhering thickly, ashi and yō working in the ha, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight to a calm ko-maru, at times to yakizume with hakikake, and a yakiotoshi dropped above the machi is an archaic touch met across the group. Within that norm the early masters keep their individuality. The sources separate Tomonari and Masatsune by saying the first is marked by the excellence of his sugata and the second by the excellence of his kitae; Yoshikane is known by a hada that stands more than his fellows and a nioiguchi that sinks; Yukihide leans his midare in the reverse (saka) direction; Naritaka crowds the edge with uchinoke and a doubled nijūba; and Kageyasu sets angular gunome and chōji further forward than the pillars, the manner the earliest Ichimonji would inherit. A collector seeks Ko-Bizen as the source of the Bizen line, and the kantei turns on restraint rather than display. Against the later Fukuoka Ichimonji, whose flamboyant ō-chōji stand under a brilliant midare-utsuri, Ko-Bizen keeps its ko-midare quiet and its nie archaic; against the Osafune line of Nagamitsu, which is nioi-based and utsuri-bearing, the Ko-Bizen edge is nie-deki, a distinction the published record makes the whole ground for separating Junkei from the man he was long mistaken for. The standing of the best members is fixed by the weight of designation behind their names: Tomonari, Masatsune, Kanehira and Nobufusa are graded Sai-jo saku by Fujishiro, and the school's summit is the Ō-Kanehira, the broadest and most powerful tachi old Bizen produced, a National Treasure long held as the patrimony of the Ikeda house and now in the Tokyo National Museum. The signature works carry provenance through the first houses of the realm, the Imperial Household, the Tokugawa shogunal family, and the Ikeda, Maeda, Date, Shimazu and Satake daimyo, with the Nobufusa tachi given by Ieyasu to Sakai Tadatsugu and the Naritaka blade transmitted as the wearing sword of Nasu no Yoichi. Because so much of the corpus is held as heritage and the signed early hands are scarce, a signed Ko-Bizen tachi reaching open hands is among the rarer encounters the field affords, a document of how the Bizen tradition began. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Tomonari友成 | 987-989 | 33 |
| Masatsune正恒 | 987-989 | 66 |
| Kanehira包平 | 1151-1200 | 28 |
| Kageyasu景安 | 1222-1224 | 27 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1150-1220 | 46 |
Kamakura was Bizen’s summit. Tradition places Ichimonji smiths among Go-Toba’s goban kaji, Mitsutada founded the Osafune line at mid-century, and orders flowed from the court and the warrior government alike. No province holds more National Treasure blades.
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.
NBTHK official siteFor one-of-a-kind items such as swords, sword fittings, and antiques, please contact us about a return within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back within 8 days. Refunds are issued the same day the returned item arrives.
