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About the maker

Sa Yoshisada吉貞

A wakizashi by Yoshisada dated Shōhei 13 (1358), cut on the reverse "ninth month, day" and on the face with the orderer's name "Shu Nagamasa," is the documentary anchor of his career: from it the published sources accept that he was a direct disciple of Ō-Sa, and fix his working years in the middle of the fourteenth century. Yoshisada is a smith of the Sa, or Samonji, school of Chikuzen, one of the *Sa-ichirui* who carried the school's manner forward in the Nanbokuchō period beside Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshihiro, Kunihiro and Hiroyasu. He is traditionally held to be "a son of Ō-Sa" (大左の子と伝え), or at least a member of his immediate circle, and he signs simply "Yoshisada" or "Yoshisada saku," a piece additionally cut "Chikushū jū" not being encountered. His hand is read first through what the published sources allow him as his one personal characteristic. They observe that the smiths of the Sa group show comparatively few individual tells, and then single Yoshisada out: "even within the Sa group his *hamon* becomes a small-patterned design, and in this lies his stylistic individuality" (左一類の中でも刃文が小模様となる点に吉貞の作風上の個性が窺え). That small-scale *midare* is the through-line of his work. Among signed pieces two manners are drawn. One is a calm, shallowly undulating *notare* on a *suguha* base; the other is a *gunome* temper that resembles his schoolmate Yasuyoshi but is worked, in the judges' words, "a little smaller and more compactly than his" (安吉に似てそれよりも少しく小ずむ). In both the *nie* adheres well, with fine *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through, the activity carried in *ko-ashi* and *yō* rather than in tall clusters, and the *bōshi* rising with a thrusting tendency to a pointed return. The *jigane* is the Sōshū-derived steel the whole Sa line shares, and it is the constant beneath both his manners. Over a standing *itame* mixed with *mokume* and a flowing *nagare-hada*, the grain a little open, he lays thick *ji-nie* and well-entered *chikei*, the steel at times taking a darkish cast; on several blades a whitish *shirake*-style *utsuri* drifts in the ji. Against that *jigane* the temper stays comparatively small in scale. Where his quieter pieces run a gentle *notare*, deep in *nioi* and bright, his more active pieces gather the *gunome* into the compact pattern the sources name, with occasional coarser *nie* and, near the *monouchi*, *nie-suji* and *yubashiri*-like *tobiyaki* lending a varied scenery. The two faces of his record sit side by side. The signed work is chiefly *wakizashi* and *tantō*: the Tokubetsu Jūyō *tantō* transmitted in the Mito Tokugawa house, *hira-zukuri* and wide, with strong *nie* in both *ji* and *ha* and a bright, clear *nioiguchi*, which the published sources call "an especially outstanding piece by this smith" (同工の出色の出来); the dated Shōhei 13 *wakizashi* bearing the orderer's name; and the Mononobe Yoshisada *tachi*, which tempers the *koshimoto* high into a brighter, livelier *midare* and shows how far the same hand could open. The other face is the *ō-suriage mumei* *katana* appraised as his, wide and powerful, several with an extended or large *kissaki*, a *ko-nie gunome-midare* with some *chōji* feeling over the standing itame, a *bō-hi* carved through; the judges note that even these unsigned attributions tend to the same small-patterned *hamon*, so the body of his oeuvre is read through that small *midare* rather than through any single signed tell. One such *katana* carries a gold-inlay attribution to Yoshisada by Hon'ami Mitsunori. What sets Yoshisada apart within the Sa group is precisely that small-patterned temper. Where Yasuyoshi's *gunome* stands fuller, Yoshisada's is drawn smaller and more compact; where the line as a whole is read as showing few individual features, his compact *midare*, bright *nioiguchi* and pointed, thrusting *bōshi* recur from blade to blade as his own. He belongs to the generation that held the Sa school together after Ō-Sa, neither the founder's brilliance nor a late epigone, but a sound and recognizable hand whose individuality the NBTHK locates in scale rather than in flamboyance. For the collector he is a documented but uncommon Nanbokuchō name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through four Tokubetsu Jūyō and forty-three Jūyō blades, with two *ō-suriage* *katana* holding the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, one of them the Hon'ami Mitsunori gold-inlay piece now in the Seikadō Bunko. His blades carry distinguished provenance: the Mito Tokugawa house, with pieces traced to Tokugawa Ieyasu and Yorifusa, the Mōri family, the Bizen Ikeda family, and the Shimazu and Satake houses, with examples on deposit at the Kyoto National Museum and held in the Seikadō Bunko. The signed work is genuinely scarce, and "surviving examples in *tachi* form are exceedingly rare" (太刀の作例は稀有); most of what survives is held rather than traded, but a Jūyō-tier *mumei* attribution or, less often, a signed *wakizashi* or *tantō* comes to light from time to time, and a privately held Yoshisada is a rewarding thing for a collector to encounter, a clear document of how the Sa school read in the hands that carried it after its master.

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