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About the school

Kozori School古曽利派

The Kozori (小反り) form a loose body of Bizen smiths who worked at and around Osafune in the closing decades of the Nanbokucho period and on into early Muromachi, and the NBTHK defines them less by descent than by exclusion: they are the late-Osafune hands who fall outside the specific lineages of Kanemitsu, Chogi, Motoshige and the Omiya group, gathered under one name as a convenience. The reading of the name itself has been explained in several ways, and the published sources are candid that it resists a clean definition; the prevailing sense is the *ko-sori*, the slight or shallow reverse-curvature of the blades, the shape running to a deep *koshizori* with marked *funbari* and a small point in the older pieces and growing heavy in the *kasane* toward Oei. The body has no single founder. Smiths such as Moromitsu (師光), recorded as the father of the Oei master Morimitsu, anchor the group through dated *tachi*; Iesuke and Iemori carry Hatakeda blood; Nariie descends from Kagehide; Morisuke, Shigeyoshi, Tsunehiro, Hidemitsu, Motomasa and others fill out the periphery, several of whose lines run several generations and whose precise generation-by-generation reading the institution leaves to further study. Across these hands runs a shared vocabulary, and the recurring word for it is scale. The *jigane* is the constant: an *itame* mixed with *mokume* and *nagare*, the grain standing a little (*hada-tachi*), fine *ji-nie* attaching, dark *chikei*-toned and at times *jifu*-like passages crossing the steel, and over it the *midare-utsuri* (sometimes a *bo-utsuri* or straight *sugu-utsuri*) that places the group squarely in the *Bizen-den*. The temper is *nioi*-based with *ko-nie*, built on a shallow *ko-notare* into which the smiths set *ko-gunome* running connected and threaded, pointed *togariba*, angular squared elements, open-waisted *koshi-biraki gunome* and modest *choji*, the whole kept small and crowded (*kozumu*), with *ko-ashi* and *yo* entering and fine *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* playing through. The *boshi* answers in *midare-komi*, pointing or settling to a *ko-maru* with *hakikake*. Within the shared idiom each hand has its tell: Moromitsu tempers the most subdued, low-lying *midare*; Nariie's *gunome* crowds where Kanemitsu's opens; Hidemitsu and Hidemitsu of the Koreha branch lean to a reverse-slanting *saka-gakari* and *saka-ashi* near the Aoe manner, and turn now and then to a quiet *chu-suguha*; Tsunehiro favours a *kataochi*-like *gunome*; Iesuke and Iemori, working into Oei, open the valleys toward the early-Muromachi pattern. A collector seeks Kozori for legibility rather than flourish. Many of the best survivors are *ubu*, signed and dated *tachi*, and that dated file (Joji, Oan, Eiwa, Shitoku, Eitoku, Meitoku into Oei) gives the late history of Osafune a year-by-year spine, prized as reference material for the period; the names also map a province pulled between the Northern and Southern courts, Morisuke's Joji dates reading as Northern Court alignment. To *kantei* the group is to read it against its neighbours: the small, crowded, *nioi*-toned *midare* and the standing *itame* with *kawarigane* *chikei* separate it from the bolder, more uniform *gunome* of the Kanemitsu mainline of the Nanbokucho height, while the open *koshi-biraki* valleys and the heavier, *sakizori* late *sugata* point forward to and distinguish it from the more decorative Oei-Bizen of Morimitsu and Yasumitsu (a threshold several Kozori blades, in NBTHK phrasing, already anticipate). Among the members the institution ranks Moromitsu and Nariie high (Nariie held equal to the Kanemitsu pupil Masamitsu), Iesuke beside the leading Oei names, and Hidemitsu the leading hand of the Koreha branch. Provenance, though thinly recorded for some, reaches real houses: blades descend through the Kuroda, Kaga Maeda, Shonai Sakai and Hojo families, with examples in the Hayashibara Museum and the national museums, and the occasional Imperial line. A signed, dated Kozori blade comes to hand only from time to time, a quiet, datable window onto Osafune as it closed its Nanbokucho age.

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