Sengoku Seki was an industry: smiths organized under their tutelary Kasuga shrine, arming the war bands of central Japan. Magoroku Kanemoto’s sanbonsugi and the finest Kanesada work prove quality survived inside mass production.
NihontoWatchNihontoWatch刃長69.9センチ 反り1.26センチ 元幅29.7ミリ 元重ね7.1ミリ 物打幅23.6ミリ 物打重ね5.4ミリ 横手位置幅22.2ミリ 松葉先重ね5.2ミリ 裸身重量695グラム 拵に納めて鞘を払った重量950グラム 室町後期 The latter period of Muromachi era 平成16年7月20日 東京都登録 附属 保存刀剣鑑定書、素銅地金鍍金はばき、黒蝋塗鞘打刀拵、白鞘 / 継木 元先の幅差は目立って開かず、切先はやや延びごころ。区から上は総体的に反りを浅目としながらも、茎に反りを付けた体配を見せており、室町後期における太刀と刀の併用期を如実に物語る、時代感に富んだ姿です。実戦性と様式美が交錯する過渡期ならではの趣が感じられます。 地鉄は杢目が緻密に練れて詰み、地沸が良く付き、地景入りて精美。刃文は匂口明るく冴えた互ノ目乱れを基調とし、大小一組に瓢箪状を成して焼き上げられ、刃中には砂流しかかり、太く力強い足が盛んに入るなど、躍動感に富んだ景色を呈しています。鋩子は乱れ込み火炎がかった趣を見せ、先丸く返るなど、見どころに事欠きません。 附属の拵は柄にガタツキ無く、締まりは良好。実際に鞘を払って構えてみると、手元重心で全体のバランスが良く、扱い易さが直感的に伝わる一振です。鐔鳴りはありますが、実用・鑑賞の双方において大きな減点となるものではありません。 時代の空気を色濃く残す姿と、確かな鍛え・冴えを備え、観ても、手にしても応えてくれる一刀。室町後期刀に魅力を感じる方には、ぜひ手元で味わって頂きたい出来口です。
Certificate reading — 銘 濃州住兼久作
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Mino-den · Mino
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Seki (関), in Mino Province, grew from two roots set down in the Nanbokuchō period and rose to become the great center of mass sword production in the late medieval age. The published sources trace the wellspring of Mino swordmaking to Kinju (whose name the commentary also reads Kaneshige), counted since antiquity among the Masamune Jittetsu, the ten disciples of Sōshū Masamune, and to Kaneuji of the Shizu line; the Kokon Meizukushi records Kinju as a native of Tsuruga in Echizen who "crossed over to Seki and resided there," carrying the Sōshū-den manner east. Beneath that Sagami inheritance lay a Yamato foundation, legible in the Tegai descent of the Seki Zensada line through Kaneyoshi, so that the Mino-den the Seki workshops forged stands as a fusion of Yamato grain and Sōshū activity in nie. From this Nanbokuchō founding the name multiplied across the Muromachi period into Sue-Seki, the last and largest body of the tradition; its representative masters at the close of the old-sword age were Magoroku Kanemoto, famed for the sanbonsugi, and Izumi no Kami Kanesada, the smith called Nosada, while the Kanefusa, Ujifusa and Daidō hands worked beside them and the move of Wakasa no Kami Ujifusa to Kiyosu carried the Mino body to the threshold of Owari shintō. A common Mino vocabulary binds the Seki body, however widely its members range. The forging is an itame that stands and runs to masame, often mixed with mokume and nagare, over which rises the cool whitish shirake-utsuri of Mino steel rather than the bright midare-utsuri of Bizen; this pale, standing jigane is the constant tell the judges read first, present alike on Kinju's Nanbokuchō katana, Kaneyoshi's Ōei tachi and Nosada's late-Muromachi blades. Over it the smiths temper gunome into which the pointed togariba of Mino enters, with ko-nie clinging to a tight nioiguchi, ashi and yō, and sunagashi streaming through; the bōshi answers in midare-komi turning to a pointed or jizō-cast ko-maru swept with hakikake. From this shared grammar the individual hands diverge.
Kanemoto fixed the regular three-cedar sanbonsugi of pointed teeth; Kanefusa devised the rounded-head, constricted-waist "Kanefusa midare"; Kinju and the early founders held a calmer, rounder gunome away from the restless Shizu line, their work laid with thicker ji-nie and dry, standing grain. The late masters carried the manner to a higher finish: Nosada wove togariba among rounder forms for a broader temper than Kanemoto's one-sided file, and turned at times to a slender Rai-styled suguha with a hidden gunome; Kaneyoshi held instead to a cool ito-suguha, the disciplined Yamato face of late Seki, lightly broken with ko-gunome. A collector seeks Seki because it is the connoisseur's ground for reading Mino-den across a vast body of signed and attributed work. The kantei runs through the jigane first: the standing, masame-leaning itame and the whitish shirake separate a Seki blade from Bizen and Yamashiro, after which the pointed togariba, the dry nie, and the pointed or jizō bōshi confirm the province; the discriminations the judges draw, Kinju held apart from Shizu by his rounder gunome, Nosada parted from Kanemoto by his breadth, give the eye its anchors. Within the school the standing of the best members is settled: Magoroku Kanemoto for the sanbonsugi, Nosada whom the swordbooks call simply "an excellent master" and the most accomplished of the several Kanesada hands, and the early Kinju as a rare and precious founding name, his record running through the Jūyō tier with the signed pieces few and the long blades attributed den. Signature works carry real provenance: a Kinju tantō presented to the Tokugawa shogunal house in 1679, a Nosada katana borne by a chief retainer of the Kii Tokugawa and a tachi forged for the father of Takeda Shingen, a Kaneyoshi tachi transmitted in the Chikuzen Kuroda family. Beyond connoisseurship, Seki's blades earned a battlefield reputation for cutting; the full hiraniku and stout build of the Sue-Seki katana, made to sever, set the wazamono standing that made Mino the working sword of its age. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kinju金重 | 1340-1346 | 42 |
| Kaneyuki金行 | 1350-1352 | 10 |
| Kanekore兼之 | 1504-1555 | 7 |
| Kanenori兼法 | 1579-1615 | 5 |
| Nagasada永貞 | 1862-1866 | 5 |
Mino in the Muromachi period
Sengoku Seki was an industry: smiths organized under their tutelary Kasuga shrine, arming the war bands of central Japan. Magoroku Kanemoto’s sanbonsugi and the finest Kanesada work prove quality survived inside mass production.
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