Kunimune of Hōki is one of the standing puzzles of the old Hōki school, a smith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period whose work is bound up at every turn with the problem of telling him from his far more famous namesake. The published sources are candid about how little is settled. No fixed account of him survives, and no blade among the few that remain records Hōki as his place of residence, so that he is known almost entirely from the workmanship and the cut of his signature. One tradition passes him down as a pupil of the Bizen smith Saburō Kunimune who later moved to Hōki, but the published commentary on his extant signed tachi finds this hard to sustain: examined together, the surviving blades show none of Saburō's manner, run more archaic in tone, and may even precede him, so that the NBTHK reads him not as a Bizen offshoot but as a smith who, in their words, 'inherited the line of the Yasutsuna group'[[c:1]]. He stands, in other words, beside Sadatsuna and the other early Hōki hands rather than among the Bizen chōji-makers, and the constant refrain of his designation entries is that his work is 'distinct from Bizen Saburō Kunimune'[[c:2]].
What the judges actually name as his hand is a nie-laden, archaic temper rather than the bright chōji of Bizen. Over the body of his signed and shortened tachi he tempers a suguha-based ko-midare, broken with gunome and a shallow notare tone, the ashi entering well and the nie gathering thickly within the edge, and through it run insistent sunagashi and kinsuji, with the nioiguchi clouding to urumi in places. This nie-rich, restless edge is the tell the published sources lean on to separate him from the calmer, nioi-built chōji of the Bizen Kunimune. The bōshi answers the hamon: a midare-komi or straight sweep that brushes into hakikake and finishes in a yakizume tone, rich in nie at the point.
The jigane is the other half of the picture, and it is the more rustic for being old Hōki. The forging is itame with the grain standing, at times flowing, ji-nie well applied and patches of jifu intermingled, the steel inclining to a dark, iron-like color. It is the kind of jigane the published sources warn can be mistaken for contemporaneous old Bizen, told apart by its standing grain, its darkish tone and the soft, clouded edge over it. On the finer pieces, where the forging tightens, a faint midare-utsuri rises, and on one shortened katana the close ko-itame with a masa tendency takes on a whitish reflection instead. Throughout, the manner is read as archaic and 'of high antiquarian fragrance'[[c:3]], no later than the early Kamakura.
His small record divides into two registers. The mainstream face, carried on most of the signed and suriage tachi, is the rustic Hōki manner just described: standing itame, darkish steel, a clouded suguha-based ko-midare full of sunagashi and kinsuji. The second face is a small group of finer signed tachi, two of them at the Tokubetsu Jūyō rank, where the forging packs into a dense ko-itame with chikei, the temper brightens into ko-chōji, and the upper half of the edge breaks into a banded double- and triple-temper, a nijūba and sanjūba effect. This banding is the feature the published sources single out as 'reminiscent of Sadatsuna of the same lineage'[[c:4]], and it is the clearest internal link tying Hōki Kunimune into the Yasutsuna group. Across both registers he cuts a bold, archaic two-character signature near the tip of the tang with a thick chisel; the judges find its strokes 'rounder than the Bizen Kunimune's, with a somewhat different movement of the chisel'[[c:5]], and note that he never signs the fuller Hōki no Kuni Kunimune.
What sets him apart, then, is precisely what the comparison with Bizen brings out. His extant signed tachi 'show no manner of Saburō Kunimune and are more archaic', and so are referred back to the Hōki line; his nie-rich edge, his sunagashi and kinsuji, and the nijūba and sanjūba of his best pieces are the affirmative evidence, not a borrowed Bizen flamboyance. The published sources fold his work into the body of Hōki blades they describe as sharing 'a manner common to old Hōki work'[[c:6]]. Their dating is not settled: most entries place him in the late Heian to early Kamakura period, while one gives his time as about the Einin era. He is, in short, a quiet, archaic Hōki hand carrying the Yasutsuna inheritance forward, valued as much for what he documents about that line as for any single brilliant trait.
For the collector he is a rare early name with a thin but real record. He has no National Treasures, but two signed tachi are Important Cultural Properties. Beyond them his standing rests on the designated tiers, where five of his blades fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō ranks, two of them at the higher level and three at Jūyō. One of the Jūyō, a shortened katana, bears a gold-inlaid Hakushū Kunimune signature. Two further signed tachi were certified Jūyō Bijutsuhin, one in 1941 and recorded in Nihon no Meitō, the other in 1949 and recorded in the Nihontō Taikan. Of the first, the published commentary notes that the style of the character 宗 and the movement of the chisel differ clearly from Saburō Kunimune; of the second, that its ko-midare in nie is mixed with chōji, with ashi, yō and sunagashi. Provenance, where it is recorded at all, runs through old houses and a shrine: a blade transmitted in the Yamana and Ikeda families, and the well-known examples the published sources name at 'Kunōzan Tōshōgū'[[c:7]] and in the Ii family. These two are the Important Cultural Properties, the Ii family blade now in the Hikone Castle Museum. Surviving works are few, and the commentary calls them precious as documentary material for so rare a smith. A signed Hōki Kunimune is not a blade that comes to market often; when one of recorded whereabouts does change hands it is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a document of how the Yasutsuna line ran on into the Kamakura period.
