This is a katana attributed to Sakon Kunihiro, a smith from Chikuzen province active during the Nanbokucho period. The blade features a gunome hamon with a vibrant nie-deki, and a mokume-itame hada. It comes with a Higo-style uchigatana koshirae and a shirasaya with a sayagaki by Hon'ami Koson (Kanzan).
NihontoWatchmumei · Sa · Shohei (1346-1370) · nagasa 64.2cm · sori 1.2cm
Chikuzen Samonji (Sa school) · Chikuzen · around 1346-1370
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 21%
1 piece on the market now
A small hira-zukuri tantō, signed Kunihiro saku and dated Shōhei 12 (1357), is the fixed point of his record: from it the published sources read the span of his activity, for signed work by his hand is otherwise scarce. Kunihiro worked in the Chikuzen Sa school, the Samonji line of the Nanbokuchō period, and is transmitted as a son of Yoshihiro or, by another account, of Sadayuki. The published sources place him among the leading hands carried on from Ō-Sa, in a school that, as they put it, emerged in the early Nanbokuchō and cast off the older traditional Kyūshū manner to establish a style in which the steel and temper are 'bright and clear, refined in workmanship'[[c:1]]. Within that school Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi all inherited the master's manner; Kunihiro is the one to whom the boldest, highest-tempered work was assigned.
His characteristic hand is a large-patterned irregular temper led by undulation. The published sources name two manners in his work and describe the first as 'a somewhat large-patterned midareba with notare as the main theme'[[c:2]], into which he sets gunome, ko-gunome, ko-notare and ha with a pointed tendency, the whole tempered high and flamboyant. The nioi is deep and the nie attaches thickly and unevenly, with coarse nie gathering in places; fine kinsuji and sunagashi spill into the ji and run freely, and yubashiri-like tobiyaki appears frequently. It is the showiest of the Sa-group manners, and the reason it is his: the Hon'ami house, judging Sa-group blades, tended to assign the name Kunihiro to those examples showing 'the most vigorously unsettled midare'[[c:3]].
The jigane is the constant beneath both manners. It is a standing itame mixed with mokume and a flowing grain, thick in ji-nie with bold chikei entering frequently, the steel carrying a somewhat blackish cast. This is the Sōshū-derived jigane of the Sa school, open and active, not the bright tight ko-itame and utsuri of Bizen; where the forging tightens on his smaller signed pieces the ji-nie grows fine and the steel brightens. Over it the bōshi of the prime work runs into midare-komi, thrusts up and ends pointed, with vigorous hakikake and a long return, while the quieter pieces run straight to a small round. His second manner, named alongside the first, is a suguha-toned temper mixed with gunome, calmer and seen chiefly on the hira-zukuri tantō and the sun-nobi wakizashi.
Most of his surviving record is not signed at all. The Sa school's long Nanbokuchō tachi were shortened in later centuries into katana, and the great majority of blades that carry his name today are ō-suriage mumei, wide in body with little taper, shallow in sori and large in the kissaki, the grand high-Nanbokuchō shape. On these the published sources affirm the Sa school from every point and judge the manner 'most fittingly compared to Kunihiro within the school'[[c:4]], precisely because the tempering is high and large in scale, the nie variable, the internal activity abundant and the yubashiri-like tobiyaki well marked. The signed tantō dated Shōhei 12 anchors the chronology; one signed tachi survives, published in the Kōzan Oshigata, and is held to be of high documentary value for the study of the whole line.
What sets him apart is named within his own school rather than against another. The hands of the Sa smiths are so closely matched that individual attribution is difficult, and the published commentary is candid about it: the attribution to Kunihiro rests on the boldness and scale of the workmanship, not on a single personal tell. He is distinguished from his schoolmates by carrying the most flamboyant, highest-tempered midare of the group, his bold yubashiri and pointed, thrusting bōshi the marks the judges look to. The same commentary is honest about his standing within the line, granting that his technique 'falls far short of Ō-Sa'[[c:5]]; yet on his best small work the refined, bright ji and ha are found to share 'a continuous affinity with Ō-Sa'[[c:6]], the kinship that places him among the school's leading hands.
For the collector Kunihiro is a scarce Nanbokuchō name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record reaches the Important Cultural Property rank in two signed tantō preserved at shrines, one at Kotohira-gū in Kagawa and one at Shinonome Jinja in Ehime, both heritage held in religious keeping. Beyond these, the documented blades run through the higher modern tiers, four at Tokubetsu Jūyō and the rest at Jūyō, with roughly fifty designated works on record in all. Their provenance reaches into the daimyō houses, a katana once held by the Tokugawa shogunal family and a blade transmitted in the Hisamatsu Matsudaira house, with examples now in the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Iwate Prefectural Museum. Signed work is exceptionally rare and the dated tantō a document in itself; of the shortened mumei katana, only a small number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a Sa Kunihiro comes to a private collector only seldom, and a signed example rarer still, a tangible record of how the Sa school carried its bright, bold manner into the height of the Nanbokuchō.
Where Kunihiro stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Soshu-den · Chikuzen
Phase: Sue-Sa末左· 1338–1450
11 pieces on the market now
When the single character 左 passed from the founder's hand to those of his pupils and sons, the Sa workshop of Chikuzen entered the chapter the sword books gather under the name Sue-Sa. The NBTHK names the line repeatedly: Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu, Sadayoshi, with Kōan and Sadakuni read among them, each said to have taken up the master's manner. The succession is also a dispersal. Yasuyoshi, called a son of O-Sa, carried the style north from Chikuzen into Chōshū (Nagato), where his descendants and the smith Akikuni continued it; Hiroyasu, transmitted as a son of Yukihiro, is recorded as moving later to Aki. The dated work places this phase from the early Nanbokuchō years through Shōhei and Eiwa and on into the Ōei era of early Muromachi, by which point the Chōshū Yasuyoshi name had clearly passed to a second-generation hand whose pieces the judges separate by signature and workmanship from those of the first. The inherited idiom is the Sōshū-den manner the founder brought from Sagami, read now at a generational remove. The ground stays itame mixed with ko-itame and mokume, the grain standing (hada-dachi), carrying thick ji-nie and frequent chikei, over which the smiths temper a notare or suguha base mixed with gunome, ko-gunome, and pointed (togari) elements, with ashi and yō entering, deep nioi, thick ko-nie, and fine kinsuji and sunagashi drawn through. The bōshi thrusts up (tsukiage) to a pointed tip with hakikake and a long return, the one trait the setsumei hold to across the whole line. Against the founder, the register shifts.
Where O-Sa stands for bright, clear ji-nie, the Sue-Sa setsumei more often note a steel of darker, blackish cast and a nioiguchi tending toward shizumi (subdued). The pattern standardizes: signed work survives chiefly as tantō, and the judges remark that a strongly distinct individuality is hard to isolate among them. A Bizen lean enters at the edges, the setsumei reading in Yasuyoshi a nioi-dominant temper with bō-utsuri near the ha that mingles a Bizen character, and noting faint utsuri in several Hiroyasu blades. A collector reads Sue-Sa against the apex through the same two anchors the school is judged by, ground and point, but inverted in emphasis. Because brilliance no longer settles the matter, gunome prominence becomes the working key: the Hon'ami house long appraised the most vigorously midare blades of the "Sa ichirui" to Kunihiro, and the conspicuous-gunome mumei katana repeatedly fall to Hiroyasu, while the pointed, brushed bōshi with its long kaeri keeps the attribution within the line. The named masters anchor the phase, Kunihiro for the boldest large-pattern midare enlivened by yubashiri and tobiyaki, Yasuyoshi for the Bizen-tinged Chōshū work, Sadakuni recorded as a son of Kunihiro whose few surviving tantō approach the founder's hand, Kōan and Hiroyasu reaching across into Ōei. The provenance threads through the great houses the setsumei cite: the signed Yoshihiro tachi from the Bizen Ikeda family, a Sadakuni tantō held by the Mōri, Hiroyasu blades transmitted in the Kuroda, Takasu Matsudaira, and Hisamatsu houses, several carrying Hon'ami Kōchū and Kōon origami. For the student of Sōshū-den, Sue-Sa is the Sagami manner held one step past its Chikuzen height, transmitted, divided across provinces, and carried into the Muromachi age. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Sa左 | 1334-1338 | 73 |
| Yasuyoshi安吉 | 1346-1370 | 45 |
| Kunihiro國弘 | 1346-1370 | 48 |
| Yoshisada吉貞 | 1345-1359 | 48 |
| Hiroyasu弘安 | 1346-1370 | 24 |
Sōshū in the Nanbokuchō period
Kamakura fell in 1333, but the school’s greatest era followed: Sadamune working at his teacher’s standard, Hiromitsu and Akihiro spilling hitatsura over the whole blade, and the Sōshū manner spreading with the armies until it became, for a time, a national style.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official site¥1,650,000
This is a katana attributed to Sakon Kunihiro, a smith from Chikuzen province active during the Nanbokucho period. The blade features a gunome hamon with a vibrant nie-deki, and a mokume-itame hada. It comes with a Higo-style uchigatana koshirae and a shirasaya with a sayagaki by Hon'ami Koson (Kanzan).
NihontoWatchmumei · Sa · Shohei (1346-1370) · nagasa 64.2cm · sori 1.2cm
Chikuzen Samonji (Sa school) · Chikuzen · around 1346-1370
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 21%
1 piece on the market now
A small hira-zukuri tantō, signed Kunihiro saku and dated Shōhei 12 (1357), is the fixed point of his record: from it the published sources read the span of his activity, for signed work by his hand is otherwise scarce. Kunihiro worked in the Chikuzen Sa school, the Samonji line of the Nanbokuchō period, and is transmitted as a son of Yoshihiro or, by another account, of Sadayuki. The published sources place him among the leading hands carried on from Ō-Sa, in a school that, as they put it, emerged in the early Nanbokuchō and cast off the older traditional Kyūshū manner to establish a style in which the steel and temper are 'bright and clear, refined in workmanship'[[c:1]]. Within that school Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu and Sadayoshi all inherited the master's manner; Kunihiro is the one to whom the boldest, highest-tempered work was assigned.
His characteristic hand is a large-patterned irregular temper led by undulation. The published sources name two manners in his work and describe the first as 'a somewhat large-patterned midareba with notare as the main theme'[[c:2]], into which he sets gunome, ko-gunome, ko-notare and ha with a pointed tendency, the whole tempered high and flamboyant. The nioi is deep and the nie attaches thickly and unevenly, with coarse nie gathering in places; fine kinsuji and sunagashi spill into the ji and run freely, and yubashiri-like tobiyaki appears frequently. It is the showiest of the Sa-group manners, and the reason it is his: the Hon'ami house, judging Sa-group blades, tended to assign the name Kunihiro to those examples showing 'the most vigorously unsettled midare'[[c:3]].
The jigane is the constant beneath both manners. It is a standing itame mixed with mokume and a flowing grain, thick in ji-nie with bold chikei entering frequently, the steel carrying a somewhat blackish cast. This is the Sōshū-derived jigane of the Sa school, open and active, not the bright tight ko-itame and utsuri of Bizen; where the forging tightens on his smaller signed pieces the ji-nie grows fine and the steel brightens. Over it the bōshi of the prime work runs into midare-komi, thrusts up and ends pointed, with vigorous hakikake and a long return, while the quieter pieces run straight to a small round. His second manner, named alongside the first, is a suguha-toned temper mixed with gunome, calmer and seen chiefly on the hira-zukuri tantō and the sun-nobi wakizashi.
Most of his surviving record is not signed at all. The Sa school's long Nanbokuchō tachi were shortened in later centuries into katana, and the great majority of blades that carry his name today are ō-suriage mumei, wide in body with little taper, shallow in sori and large in the kissaki, the grand high-Nanbokuchō shape. On these the published sources affirm the Sa school from every point and judge the manner 'most fittingly compared to Kunihiro within the school'[[c:4]], precisely because the tempering is high and large in scale, the nie variable, the internal activity abundant and the yubashiri-like tobiyaki well marked. The signed tantō dated Shōhei 12 anchors the chronology; one signed tachi survives, published in the Kōzan Oshigata, and is held to be of high documentary value for the study of the whole line.
What sets him apart is named within his own school rather than against another. The hands of the Sa smiths are so closely matched that individual attribution is difficult, and the published commentary is candid about it: the attribution to Kunihiro rests on the boldness and scale of the workmanship, not on a single personal tell. He is distinguished from his schoolmates by carrying the most flamboyant, highest-tempered midare of the group, his bold yubashiri and pointed, thrusting bōshi the marks the judges look to. The same commentary is honest about his standing within the line, granting that his technique 'falls far short of Ō-Sa'[[c:5]]; yet on his best small work the refined, bright ji and ha are found to share 'a continuous affinity with Ō-Sa'[[c:6]], the kinship that places him among the school's leading hands.
For the collector Kunihiro is a scarce Nanbokuchō name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record reaches the Important Cultural Property rank in two signed tantō preserved at shrines, one at Kotohira-gū in Kagawa and one at Shinonome Jinja in Ehime, both heritage held in religious keeping. Beyond these, the documented blades run through the higher modern tiers, four at Tokubetsu Jūyō and the rest at Jūyō, with roughly fifty designated works on record in all. Their provenance reaches into the daimyō houses, a katana once held by the Tokugawa shogunal family and a blade transmitted in the Hisamatsu Matsudaira house, with examples now in the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Iwate Prefectural Museum. Signed work is exceptionally rare and the dated tantō a document in itself; of the shortened mumei katana, only a small number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a Sa Kunihiro comes to a private collector only seldom, and a signed example rarer still, a tangible record of how the Sa school carried its bright, bold manner into the height of the Nanbokuchō.
Where Kunihiro stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Years he was demonstrably active, proven by signed-and-dated blades
Soshu-den · Chikuzen
Phase: Sue-Sa末左· 1338–1450
11 pieces on the market now
When the single character 左 passed from the founder's hand to those of his pupils and sons, the Sa workshop of Chikuzen entered the chapter the sword books gather under the name Sue-Sa. The NBTHK names the line repeatedly: Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu, Sadayoshi, with Kōan and Sadakuni read among them, each said to have taken up the master's manner. The succession is also a dispersal. Yasuyoshi, called a son of O-Sa, carried the style north from Chikuzen into Chōshū (Nagato), where his descendants and the smith Akikuni continued it; Hiroyasu, transmitted as a son of Yukihiro, is recorded as moving later to Aki. The dated work places this phase from the early Nanbokuchō years through Shōhei and Eiwa and on into the Ōei era of early Muromachi, by which point the Chōshū Yasuyoshi name had clearly passed to a second-generation hand whose pieces the judges separate by signature and workmanship from those of the first. The inherited idiom is the Sōshū-den manner the founder brought from Sagami, read now at a generational remove. The ground stays itame mixed with ko-itame and mokume, the grain standing (hada-dachi), carrying thick ji-nie and frequent chikei, over which the smiths temper a notare or suguha base mixed with gunome, ko-gunome, and pointed (togari) elements, with ashi and yō entering, deep nioi, thick ko-nie, and fine kinsuji and sunagashi drawn through. The bōshi thrusts up (tsukiage) to a pointed tip with hakikake and a long return, the one trait the setsumei hold to across the whole line. Against the founder, the register shifts.
Where O-Sa stands for bright, clear ji-nie, the Sue-Sa setsumei more often note a steel of darker, blackish cast and a nioiguchi tending toward shizumi (subdued). The pattern standardizes: signed work survives chiefly as tantō, and the judges remark that a strongly distinct individuality is hard to isolate among them. A Bizen lean enters at the edges, the setsumei reading in Yasuyoshi a nioi-dominant temper with bō-utsuri near the ha that mingles a Bizen character, and noting faint utsuri in several Hiroyasu blades. A collector reads Sue-Sa against the apex through the same two anchors the school is judged by, ground and point, but inverted in emphasis. Because brilliance no longer settles the matter, gunome prominence becomes the working key: the Hon'ami house long appraised the most vigorously midare blades of the "Sa ichirui" to Kunihiro, and the conspicuous-gunome mumei katana repeatedly fall to Hiroyasu, while the pointed, brushed bōshi with its long kaeri keeps the attribution within the line. The named masters anchor the phase, Kunihiro for the boldest large-pattern midare enlivened by yubashiri and tobiyaki, Yasuyoshi for the Bizen-tinged Chōshū work, Sadakuni recorded as a son of Kunihiro whose few surviving tantō approach the founder's hand, Kōan and Hiroyasu reaching across into Ōei. The provenance threads through the great houses the setsumei cite: the signed Yoshihiro tachi from the Bizen Ikeda family, a Sadakuni tantō held by the Mōri, Hiroyasu blades transmitted in the Kuroda, Takasu Matsudaira, and Hisamatsu houses, several carrying Hon'ami Kōchū and Kōon origami. For the student of Sōshū-den, Sue-Sa is the Sagami manner held one step past its Chikuzen height, transmitted, divided across provinces, and carried into the Muromachi age. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Sa左 | 1334-1338 | 73 |
| Yasuyoshi安吉 | 1346-1370 | 45 |
| Kunihiro國弘 | 1346-1370 | 48 |
| Yoshisada吉貞 | 1345-1359 | 48 |
| Hiroyasu弘安 | 1346-1370 | 24 |
Sōshū in the Nanbokuchō period
Kamakura fell in 1333, but the school’s greatest era followed: Sadamune working at his teacher’s standard, Hiromitsu and Akihiro spilling hitatsura over the whole blade, and the Sōshū manner spreading with the armies until it became, for a time, a national style.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
NBTHK official site¥1,650,000
