Shigezane is an Osafune swordsmith of the Motoshige line, working from the close of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho, whose earliest dated work is a slightly elongated tanto of Karyaku 2 (1327) and whose latest reaches Enbun 4 of the Nanbokucho, a documented span of thirty-three years. The published sources record him by old tradition as the younger brother, or in another account a pupil, of the first-generation Motoshige, and they place his hand squarely within the Soden-Bizen of the late Osafune workshop. His is not the brilliant clove-flower of the older Bizen; it is the quieter, more angular manner of the Motoshige group, read by the published commentary as close to Motoshige with the character of Aoe mixed in. Authenticated signed examples are exceedingly few, so much of what survives under his name is judged from the bearing of the blade and the structure of its temper rather than from a signature.
The feature that most distinguishes his work is the temper. Over a suguha-toned base he sets angular gunome, the squared shoulder that reads as Motoshige-line rather than the rounded clove of Fukuoka, joined by the kataochi-gunome that is the structural tell of the group, the asymmetric saw-tooth slanting toward the base. The line frequently leans saka-gakari, the elements inclining in reverse, and into it run ashi and yo with ko-nie gathering and fine sunagashi and kinsuji passing through. The nioiguchi tends to sink to a subdued shizumi, the calm, slightly dimmed temper that the published sources name again and again as the mark of the Motoshige hand. The boshi enters in midare-komi and turns back pointed, at times a ko-maru or a yakizume sweep.
The jigane keeps the attribution in Bizen even where the temper alone might read as Soden. He forges a standing itame, often run through with nagare-hada and mixed with mokume and patches of jifu, the ji-nie thick and chikei entering, the grain a little raised. Across it rises a clear midare-utsuri, the bright reflection of old Bizen steel, sometimes a fainter bo-utsuri along the edge. The steel on his finest pieces takes a bluish-black tonality with a cold clarity, the nioiguchi bright and the activity within the ha abundant, with places where coarse nie glitters strongly.
His record divides into three registers. The mainstream is the suguha-toned, angular-gunome work that the published sources read as close to Motoshige, the manner that anchors his many o-suriage mumei attributions. Against it stands a rare exception, the ubu signed tachi dated Enbun 3, of which the commentary remarks that the workmanship 'is not in a Motoshige-like manner'[[c:1]], opening instead into a frank choji-midare with pointed gunome at the monouchi. The third register is the body of his surviving work, the greatly shortened mumei katana, several originally large tachi exceeding three shaku, wide in body and shallow in sori in the Nanbokucho mode. As with Motoshige, the published sources propose a first and a second generation across his dated span, the bold two-character signature taken for the first and the smaller signature cut 'Saemon-no-jo Shigezane'[[c:2]] for the second, a question still left for further study.
What sets him apart within the late Osafune is exactly what the judges name. His angular gunome and kataochi-gunome, his saka-gakari temper and subdued nioiguchi, and the bright midare-utsuri over his standing itame place him with Motoshige and apart from the rounder, showier Bizen of Fukuoka and Yoshioka, while the published sources read into his forging a manner that incorporates the character of Aoe, the workmanship they call 'a hand with Aoe character mixed in'[[c:3]]. On a mumei katana judged to him the commentary allows that views of 'Unrui or Chikakage'[[c:4]] are possible, the panel narrowing it to Shigezane only on close reading of the whole taihai together with the detail of ji and ha, the clear midare-utsuri leaving no doubt of Bizen.
For the collector Shigezane is a scarce signed name. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku, and his record runs not through National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, of which he has none, but through a single Tokubetsu Juyo and many Juyo, forty-five blades across the two tiers. The value of his best pieces lies in their documentary weight: the Tokubetsu Juyo katana with its folded-back long signature, called 'a representative work of this smith'[[c:5]]; the Karyaku 2 tanto, the earliest of his dated works and a foothold for his study; and a naginata preserved in its original form, 'a precious example that survives as a naginata without having been reshaped into a sword'[[c:6]]. Of recorded whereabouts a few are held in public collections, among them the Hayashibara Museum of Art and the Bizen Osafune Sword Museum, and the denrai of his blades passes through daimyo and old houses, the Matsudaira family with Matsudaira Ukon-no-suke Terusada and the Takasaki domain, and the Niwa family on to Tokugawa Yoshinobu. A signed Shigezane comes to light only seldom, and a privately held example, especially an ubu or dated one, is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Motoshige hand carried Bizen into the Nanbokucho.
