Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch江戸法城寺派は但馬国の法城寺国光を始祖とし、江戸に於いて江戸石堂派と姻戚関係を結ぶなどして権勢を拡大して、寛文・延宝期を中心に大いに活躍し繁栄しました。 法城寺一派は貞国は、正弘・正照・国正・正則・正次などの名工を輩出しており、本刀の如く、地刃ともに明るく冴え、傑出した出来栄えを示した優品を残しており、また、虎徹一門と深い交流があったと窺え、作風は虎徹に近い物があり、同派の作の多くが虎徹の偽物造りに用いられたと言われます。 この脇指は兵庫県下の旧家より買い付けましたうぶ品で、拵も切羽の一枚に至るまで完全なるオリジナルで貴重であり、板目鍛えに地沸が付いた精美なる地鉄は見事の一言に尽き、匂口一際明るく冴えた小沸本位の中直刃仕立ての刃文には、浅い互ノ目が見られ、冴え冴えとした出来口を誇る名品です。 古研ぎ身につき、化粧直し或いは再研磨の工賃を考慮した価格を御呈示させていただきました。虎徹に劣らぬ法城寺派屈指の良脇指を、是非この機会に御入手下さい。
Certificate reading — 銘 但馬国法城寺橘正則
NihontoWatchOffered by Toushin
As written by the shop
Soshu-den · Tajima · around 1661-1673
1 piece on the market now
Where Hojoji Hashi Masanori 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.
Soshu-den · Tajima
19 pieces on the market now
The Hojoji name (法城寺) begins as a place in Tajima province, where, the published sources relate, the Nanbokucho naginata master Kunimitsu lived at that spot and so took the place for his name, the man and the locality becoming one. The Meikan records a first generation of this Kunimitsu working in the Joji era (1362-68) and a second at Oei, the koto root from which the line descends. The old genealogies count this Tajima Kunimitsu among the three great pupils of Soshu Sadamune[[c:1]], a claim the NBTHK reports only to set aside as wanting plausibility and unwarranted[[c:2]], the texts finding the influence of Bizen work rather the stronger. From this Tajima stock an Edo branch carried the name into the shinto period, where it grew, in the words of the published sources, into the largest body of swordsmiths active in Edo through the Kanbun and Enpo years. Its founder was Omi no Kami Hojoji Tachibana Masahiro, named the head of the group and its most accomplished hand, and after him followed Tajima no Kami Sadakuni, Higo no Kami Yoshitsugu, Echizen no Kami Masateru, and Kunimasa, with Kawachi no Kami Nagakuni filed by common opinion within the same lineage, the whole bearing the Soshu-derived idiom out of Tajima and into a productive Edo workshop of many capable smiths. Two manners separate the koto root from the Edo branch, and the members describe each in its own vocabulary. The Tajima Kunimitsu survives almost wholly as mumei attribution: flamboyant choji-midare that can at first sight be mistaken for Bizen Ichimonji, settled against Bizen by the markedly stronger nie of ji and ha, chikei entering a large-patterned standing forging, and kinsuji and sunagashi worked incessantly through the ha, the build that of the long converted naginata with thin kasane and a large kissaki, the boshi often ending yakizume from the filing of the mune. The Edo smiths share a different and unified hand.
Over a tightly forged ko-itame, at times mixed with mokume, the ji-nie lies dust-fine and chikei enter, and the temper resolves into two registers across the branch: a suguha base, deep in nioi with ko-nie gathering, in which Masahiro, Sadakuni, Masateru, and Nagakuni excel, the nioiguchi bright and nijuba mixing in places; and a gunome hand, most conspicuous in Yoshitsugu, whose connected gunome run into a rosary-bead juzu-ba over ko-notare. Through nearly every Edo blade the sunagashi and kinsuji run, and the boshi turns back straight into ko-maru. The divergences are of degree: Sadakuni falls a small margin short of Masahiro in the clarity of the jihada and the strength of the nioiguchi; Nagakuni links his gunome into broader midare; Masateru keys his chu-suguha to a chrysanthemum crest cut above the signature. To kantei Hojoji Edo work, the published sources direct the eye to the deep nioi and bright nioiguchi over a tight, chikei-laden ko-itame, the sunagashi and kinsuji that keep the quiet suguha from reading flat, and the long thick-chisel signatures cut on the sashi-omote; the resemblance the judges draw runs upward to Nagasone Kotetsu and Kazusa no Suke Kaneshige, the Edo masters of the nie-laden temper, whose level the best work of Masahiro, Yoshitsugu, and Nagakuni is said to approach, the Kotetsu group and the Hojoji line held to stand in a fairly close relationship through the shared Yamano testing house. For the koto Kunimitsu the tells are the well-covered ji-nie with weak utsuri and the ko-nie of the ha, the points that part his work from the Bizen it resembles. The standing of the members ranges with their tier: Kunimitsu is the school's apex, graded Jo-jo saku, his blades vouched for across centuries by Honami attribution inscriptions and his finest tracing to the Akimoto and Maeda houses, with the tea master Kobori Enshu among his owners; Masahiro and the Edo hands are graded Jo saku, attainable signed shinto names whose blades carry their pedigree in the gold-inlaid Yamano cutting-test inscriptions rather than in named daimyo provenance. Yoshitsugu's Satsuma service for the Shimazu house left its trace on the later Kagoshima smiths, and a signed Hojoji blade, above all one bearing a documented test-cut, comes to the market only from time to time, rewarding patience. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunimitsu國光 | 1345-1350 | 22 |
| Masahiro正弘 | 1658-1671 | 22 |
| Sadakuni貞國 | 1658-1673 | 8 |
| Yoshitsugu吉次 | 1661-1673 | 7 |
| Masateru正照 | 1684-1688 | 5 |
The Edo period (1615 to 1868)
Edo was the sword’s age of connoisseurship: the Hon’ami appraisers, the shogunal register of famous blades of 1719, and a thriving literature turned the sword into an object of study even as it ceased to be drawn in war.
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 siteAs a rule we do not accept returns, except when we have sent a different item from the one ordered or when there is a significant discrepancy between the description and the item. If you wish to return an item, please contact us within 3 days of its arrival and then send it back.
¥671,000