NihontoWatch本太刀は佐藤寒山先生の鞘書には美濃鍛冶の祖であるところの金重でありましたが、保存刀剣の審査では備前の大宮となっています。本刀は御覧の様に元は2尺6寸以上あった南北朝期延文貞治型の大太刀をすり上げた元身幅広く先身幅も広い切っ先の延びた豪壮な姿を現し、地金は板目肌に鍛え地沸が良く付き地には地景を多く現し、古い為に鍛えの大肌も出ていますがそれも時代の古さのご愛敬です。彫は棒樋を掻き流し太い堂々とした樋が素晴らしく立派です。棟には4か所の小さな敵の刃を受けた受け傷が残り古来この様な傷は戦に勝ち抜けた傷で特に「誉の傷」と呼ばれ有れば強靭さの証拠として3割以上の高値が付けられました。刃紋は匂いに小沸の付いた変化の有る互の目乱れ刃に地には小さな飛び焼きも焼き、刃中金筋や砂流しを多く現し素晴らしく覇気有る刀です。美濃鍛冶の祖金重ですと太刀の現存作がほとんど無いのと刀自体がややあか抜けないところが有る為に、本刀は素晴らしくあか抜けた刀の為に備前の一流鍛冶の一人である大宮盛景の大摺り上げの刀で良いのでしょう。製作された時代は南北朝期の貞治頃（136２年）（658年前）のとても古い名刀です。本刀の様な姿を写したのが慶長新刀と言われる京堀川国廣一派であり、幕末の巨匠源清麿が写しています。南北朝期の素晴らしい働きのある大宮と極められた盛景の名刀を是非お楽しみ下さい。特別に格安にて御提供いたします。
NihontoWatchOmiya School大宮派
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Bizen-den · Bizen
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The Omiya school (大宮) of Bizen traces its name and its blood to Kyoto, not to the Bizen heartland where it eventually settled. The published sources follow the line back to a remote ancestor, Kunimori, who is said to have left Inokuma Omiya in Yamashiro province and moved into Bizen during the Kamakura period, around the Bun'o years. With him the group carried a Yamashiro sensibility into the province of choji, and that transplanted origin remains the key to everything the school later became. Works by the earliest Omiya hands, Kunimori and Sukemori, survive in extremely small numbers, so the line first comes clearly into view at the close of the Kamakura period and then flowers through the height of the Nanbokucho era. Several names recur across these generations, among them Morishige, whose name passed down successive smiths from the late Kamakura into the Muromachi period; but the figure who left by far the largest body of work, and the highest reputation[[c:1]], is Morikage, who worked at Osafune and cut long, dated signatures such as Bishu Osafune Morikage across the Oan, Joji, Eiwa and Kakei years. What binds these smiths into a recognizable group is a particular blend, a temper that reads as Soden-Bizen yet is built differently from the clove-flower of mainstream Osafune. The jigane is the constant beneath the range: a standing itame mixed with mokume, the grain tending to open, with fine ji-nie, chikei entering, patches of jifu in the steel, and a Bizen midare-utsuri that rises on signed and mumei blades alike. Upon that ground the school sets a midare in which gunome, choji and an angular, pointed tendency intermingle, with ashi and yo entering well, nioi deepening to ko-nie, and fine sunagashi and kinsuji running through the ha. The recurring tells are a Yamashiro-tinged ji carrying that strong nie, and a boshi running midare-komi to a small round or a pointed turnback with hakikake. Within this shared vocabulary the hands diverge.
Morikage tends to a ko-notare base with somewhat angular crests and a subdued, shizumi nioiguchi rather than a showy temper, while his range stretches from that quiet register to a suguha the commentary likens to Aoe and the Unrui smiths[[c:2]]. Morishige favors a bold, opened-waist gunome, the koshi-hiraki pattern mixed with choji into flamboyant undulations. The breadth itself is a school trait, the published sources describing the Omiya saku-iki as wide, taking in notare-dominant work, florid choji-gunome midare, angular gunome, and the Aoe-manner suguha at its quiet edge. To kantei an Omiya blade is to read this fusion of Yamashiro-den refinement and Bizen-den flamboyance, then to separate it from its larger Osafune neighbors. The bright midare-utsuri and the nie-strong ji hold the school apart from Kanemitsu, whose temper undulates more broadly, and from the box-shaped large midare of Chogi, though the kinship to Chogi is real and acknowledged in the commentary, which places Morikage's workmanship beside it[[c:3]]. The school is often overshadowed by those two names, which makes the distinguishing read the more useful: the standing itame with its utsuri, the angular pointed elements, and the comparatively restrained nioiguchi. Morikage stands at the front rank of Nanbokucho Soden-Bizen and carries a Jo-jo saku grade in Fujishiro; his provenance runs through the daimyo houses, the Nabeshima of Hizen, the Uesugi, the Date and the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira, with a piece recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection. A modern scholarly question hangs over the name itself, the published sources recording a theory, now widely entertained, that the long-signature Morikage may belong to an Osafune collateral line connected to Chikakage and Yoshikage, and that the smiths who cut bold, large two-character signatures may be the true Omiya hands; the matter is left open. By the late Muromachi the distinctive Omiya traits fade, the Shinkuro generation of Morishige showing no difference from the general Sue-Bizen type, evidence that the subsidiary line was at last absorbed into the dominant Osafune school, a trajectory that gives the group its documentary value for the study of how Bizen's lesser lineages were drawn into the mainstream. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Morikage盛景 | 1356-1390 | 93 |
| Morikage盛景 | 1299-1302 | 6 |
| Norifusa則房 | 1199-1201 | 0 |
| Tsugumori次盛 | 1278-1288 | 0 |
| Tomomori友盛 | 1156-1159 | 0 |
Bizen in the Nanbokuchō period
Sixty years of war between two courts drove blades long and broad, and Osafune met the demand: Kanemitsu and Chōgi led forges serving the provincial warriors who did the fighting, while Sōshū influence arrived with the armies to create Sōden-Bizen.
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