NihontoWatchNihontoWatchOffered by Toushin
This piece has sold
Settsu (Osaka), the Mishina school, the Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi name-line · Settsu · around 1661-1673
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 31%
5 pieces on the market now
Yoshimichi is the most celebrated name of the Mishina school, the Kyoto-rooted shinto line founded by a son of Kanemichi of Seki. The first-generation Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi and his brothers Iga no Kami Kinmichi and Etchu no Kami Masatoshi are named together in the published sources as masters of the Sanpin lineage, the three smiths who carried Mishina work to the front rank of the early Edo period. This record gathers the Osaka branch of that name. At its center stands the shodai Osaka Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi, born in Keicho 3 and styled Sanpin Kin'emon, the second son of the Kyoto shodai who moved to Osaka and became the founder of the Osaka-Tanba line. A katana the published record assigns to a second-generation Yoshimichi, whose paper opens on the Kyoto shodai's biography, is recorded under the Kyoto second generation. Where the elder Kinmichi and the younger Masatoshi worked diversely, Yoshimichi held to one signature manner, and it is that manner the school is remembered by.
That manner is the sudare-ba, the bamboo-blind temper. Layered sunagashi and kinsuji are drawn through a notare and gunome midare until the temper stripes into parallel bands like the slats of a hanging reed blind, and the published sources call it the school's hallmark, the Osaka-Tanba line handling it more often and more skilfully than any other style. On a wide, slightly elongated, thick-kasane hira-zukuri wakizashi of Keicho-shinto shape, the shodai opens the temper with a long straight yakidashi at the koshimoto and then widens the yakihaba above it, building over a ko-notare base mixed with gunome into a flamboyant large midare. Long, vigorous yubashiri run through it, the sunagashi layers in double and triple bands until it stripes into the sudare-ba, ashi enter, strong nie gathers and clumps unevenly, long kinsuji appear in places, and muneyaki and tobiyaki are added. The boshi rises shallow and pointed in a tsukiage, swept with frequent hakikake into a flame shape and run down long. The published sources read the whole as bolder and more flamboyant than usual, of his hallmark style yet with "something that calls to mind the Kyoto shodai Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi"[[c:1]].
The jigane carries the temper. On the shodai's wakizashi the kitae is a compact ko-itame mixed with mokume, the ji-nie adhering thickly and exceedingly fine, fine chikei entering well, the hada flowing and standing a little in places. The yakidashi itself is a study of its own. The published sources distinguish the shodai's straight sudare-ba yakidashi from the broadening Osaka yakidashi, noting that here the yakihaba keeps an even width as it rises rather than spreading toward the upper blade, a point of recognition within the Osaka-Tanba hand. The temper is the constant; the build and the strength of the nie vary.
The name is read by hand and by signature rather than by a single dated chronology. The Osaka Tanba shodai is the prime sudare-ba hand.
Within the school the line is best placed by its own signature. Of the sudare-ba the sources write that the line "excelled above all in the sudare-ba, the house specialty"[[c:2]], and the shodai's straight, even yakidashi and pointed, flame-swept boshi distinguish his hand from the broadening Osaka yakidashi of his neighbours. Against the Kyoto shodai he is most easily confused and most carefully separated: because the Osaka line cut no chrysanthemum crest while the Kyoto line did from the second generation on, the published sources give the character 守 of the signature as the decisive point, its 寸 element cut straight down on Osaka work and slanting on Kyoto work. The sources are honest about the line's later course, observing that "as the generations descended"[[c:3]] the manner grew more technical and more uniform, the temper settling toward a single pattern as the individuality of the founders thinned.
The Osaka shodai is rated Jō saku by Fujishiro, and two blades on this record stand in the Jūyō tier and two more in the Imperial collection, none in a higher grade. Provenance is sparse but includes the Imperial collection, the kind of patrimony that is preserved rather than traded. There are no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties here, and the holdings are few, so a designated Osaka-Tanba Yoshimichi does not appear often. When one does, it is most often a Jūyō wakizashi of the hira-zukuri Keichō-shintō build, and it reaches a private collection only from time to time. For a name carried by several generations under one signature, each surviving designated work is a documented point on the line, and the sudare-ba on a sound blade remains the surest mark by which this Osaka branch of the Mishina school is known.
Where Yoshimichi 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.
Shinto · Yamashiro
55 pieces on the market now
The Mishina school (三品), one of the two dominant smithing groups of early Edo Kyoto beside the Horikawa, grew from the late-Mino workshop of Kanemichi of Seki, whose dated blades run through the Tenbun, Eiroku, and Tenshō eras. During the closing decades of the sixteenth century Kanemichi came up to the capital with his four sons and settled at Nishinotōin Ebisugawa, where the eldest, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, is recorded as having greatly raised the name of the line. The brothers, Kinmichi together with Izumi no Kami Rai Kinmichi, Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi, and Etchū no Kami Masatoshi, became known collectively as the Sanpin (三品) makers, and the published sources count Kinmichi head of the Kyō go-kaji, the five Kyoto smiths. From the second generation the house held a hereditary right to recommend smiths to the court for their titles and added that by-line to its signatures. The name continued under the same appellation to the end of the Tokugawa period, throwing off branches that included the Tango no Kami line working at Ōsaka into the Genroku years, though the published record consistently holds the founding generation the most outstanding of the line. Beneath every branch lies a shared vocabulary carried up from Mino-Seki. The jigane is the constant: an itame mixed with mokume that flows into nagare-hada and tends toward masame near the mune, the grain standing, with thick fine ji-nie and frequent chikei. Over it the Mino-derived gunome and togariba are refined toward a Kyoto manner, the nie strong and at times coarse, gathering unevenly, kinsuji and vigorous striped sunagashi running throughout. Two tells bind the house. The first is the Mishina bōshi, a notare or midare run-in pointed at the tip and swept with vigorous hakikake, the form Masatoshi shows at its clearest, described as if drawn from a picture. The second is sudareba, the bamboo-blind temper in which layered sunagashi and yubashiri stripe into parallel bands; Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi devised it, and the first-generation hand keeps it a free, semi-cursive disorder where his heirs would regularize it into a fixed lattice.
The lines diverge from that common ground. Kinmichi and his younger brother Masatoshi both excelled in a Shizu manner, the large midare of Mino grafted onto Sōshū nie, with Masatoshi the most versatile, ranging across Shizu, Mino sanbon-sugi, Yamato suguha, and Sōshū hitatsura. The later Ōsaka Tanba branch held to the sudareba alone, opening from a straight yakidashi, while the second Tango no Kami Kanemichi cast off the family chōji for a flamboyant tōran-style large gunome in alternating two-joined and three-joined groups, and a deep-nioi suguha read in the manner of Inoue Shinkai. To kantei Mishina is to read these two house marks first. The pointed, hakikake-swept bōshi and the striped sudareba, set over a standing itame that flows to masame, place a blade within the line before any signature is weighed; the sunagashi, far heavier than on a Bizen ji, is the very material from which the temper is built. Within the house the founding generation sets the standard. Fujishiro grades Kinmichi and Masatoshi Jō-jō saku, the Ōsaka Tanba shodai Jō-saku, and the second Tango no Kami Chū-jō saku, the sources judging the later Kyoto and Ōsaka generations markedly inferior to the founders as the manner thinned toward a single uniform pattern. Provenance on record runs through samurai and collector hands rather than great museums: a Kinmichi katana among the cherished swords of Tani Tateki, a Yoshimichi katana made for Naitō Kuroemon and another now in the Kyoto National Museum, Masatoshi blades passing through Oda Urakusai and the Imperial household, and a second Tango no Kami katana descending from the Aoyama wardens of Ōsaka castle. The brothers' blades are signed and knowable, dated examples rare, so the manner of the mei joins the workmanship in placing them; for the Ōsaka and Kyoto branches the cut of the character 守 separates one hand from the next. Most designated work is held rather than traded, so a signed founding-generation Mishina blade comes to light only from time to time, and with it the temper in which one of the most recognizable hamon of the Shintō era was first being worked out. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kinmichi金道 | 1596-1615 | 25 |
| Yoshimichi吉道 | 1596-1615 | 36 |
| Masatoshi正俊 | 1596-1615 | 29 |
| Kanemichi兼道 | 1681-1704 | 5 |
| Eisen来栄泉 | 1673-1688 | 3 |
The Edo period (1615 to 1868)
For two and a half centuries of peace the sword was the warrior’s legal badge rather than his weapon. Each great city developed its own manner, Edo’s tested strength against Ōsaka’s polished brilliance, until demand thinned in the era’s last decades.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
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.