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.
This is a katana by the 2nd generation Fujiwara Kunikane, who served the Date family in the Mid-Edo period. It features a straight hamon with thick nioiguchi and active nie, characteristic of the smith's family tradition. The jigane shows flowing ko-itame and masame with fine chikei, and a long kinsuji is visible. The sword comes with a koshirae featuring a dragon motif on a shuro-nuri saya.
NihontoWatchmei · Shinto · nagasa 71.7cm · sori 1.1cm
Sendai Kunikane, Mutsu (Sendai Shinto) · Rikuzen · around 1644-1670
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 31%
4 pieces on the market now
Yamashiro-no-kami Fujiwara Kunikane, the second of the Sendai line, was born in Keicho 17 (1612), succeeded to the house in Shoho 2 (1645) at the age of thirty-four, received the Yamashiro-no-kami title in Kanbun 7 (1667), and died in Kanbun 12 (1672) aged sixty-one. He was the eldest son of the founder, the shodai Yamashiro-daijo Kunikane, who claimed descent from the late line of Yamato Hosho, served Date Masamune of Sendai, and by his lord's order went up to Kyoto to study under Etchu-no-kami Masatoshi before receiving the Yamashiro-daijo title in Kanbun 3 (1626). The Kunikane name was the standing forge of the Date house, and across both generations its identity rests on a single inherited manner: the masame forging of the Yamato Hosho tradition, tempered in suguha. The published sources call this his hereditary specialty, the family's transmitted Hosho-style masame at which he was particularly accomplished in the straight temper, and they rate the second generation a master of suguha second only to his father.
His hand is recognized first in the jigane. The blade is a shinogi-zukuri katana with iori-mune, the curvature shallow in the Kanbun manner and the kissaki medium, and over its whole length runs a masame-hada forged tight and well ordered, with ji-nie laid and chikei entering along the masame. This straight-grain jigane is the first of the two Hosho marks, a forging almost no other Shinto school takes as its default, and the second mark is set into it: a chu-suguha frayed at the habuchi into hotsure, mixing kuichigai-ba and a tendency to nijuba, with sunagashi and kinsuji running freely along the masame, the nioi deep and the nioiguchi bright and clear with ko-nie. Where the suguha and the masame both appear on every blade on record, the two together are the surest reading of the smith.
The boshi runs straight, sweeping into hakikake, and closes as often in a yakizume without turnback as in a small round, a Yamato-Hosho boshi habit that follows from the masame and the suguha rather than against them. To this inherited core the published sources add a tell peculiar to the Kunikane hand, and name it as such: a mizukage rising from below the hamachi, a faint pale reflection that on the broad, slightly long late blades connects and runs as an utsuri-like aspect across the lower half. Of one Kanbun katana they write that 「区下より水影が立っているが, 初代同様二代にも見る手くせであり」[[c:1]], a habit seen in the second generation as in the founder, and they note alongside it that the nakago file is sometimes finished as a plain, simplified kesho, another of the points to watch in his work. On that same wide blade the masame stands a little on the ura, the ji-nie laid dust-fine and thick, the chikei finely formed.
Against the calm suguha the published sources record that the second generation also leaves a gunome-midare. On these the chu-suguha base mixes in small gunome and a shallow notare, ashi entering and the habuchi frayed, and one wide, long blade carries a suguha that swells into a large, shallow undulation with ko-nie and ara-nie and a nijuba tendency. The sources frame this as the exception within a hand whose default is the straight temper, writing that 「家伝の保昌流の柾目鍍を得意とし」 he was particularly skilled at suguha, with slight gunome-midare seen at times besides. A small register within the corpus carries the founder's own signatures rather than the second generation's, the go Yokei and the title Yamashiro-daijo: blades signed Yamashiro-daijo Fujiwara Yokei Kunikane, one dated Keian 1 (1648), in the same Hosho idiom but read with a founder's accent, the koshi-zori standing high with funbari, the masame tending to stand, the suguha a ko-nie chu-suguha damp and frayed with sunagashi following.
What sets his work apart within the broad world of Kanbun Shinto is not a flourish but the consistency of the Hosho reading: the masame carried the length of the blade, the quiet suguha laid over it, the swept yakizume boshi, and the mizukage below the machi. The published sources keep his standing honestly relative to the founder. They write of one second-generation katana that it is in fact forceful and that its quality is 「殆んど初代に劣らない」[[c:3]], scarcely inferior to the first generation, and of his masame finest pieces that some approach the shodai while his ordinary technique does not equal him. The signature itself is a connoisseur's field: in the second generation's mei the horizontal strokes are driven hard and pressed at their close so that they read like the character ichi, and within the character 包 the inner element is cut in a distinctive form, both, the sources say, important features when reading a Kunikane signature.
Kunikane is rated Jo-saku by Fujishiro. His record is held entirely in the Juyo tier, ten katana of the second generation on record there, with two further blades under the founder's Yokei signature reaching the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin. He holds no National Treasure and no Important Cultural Property, so the work that can be encountered is the designated Juyo katana, and these come to market only from time to time and with patience, a steady Sendai-Shinto name rather than a rarity locked wholly away. The published sources single out the well-forged, in-the-style pieces as typical and representative of the second generation, one of which, worn at the side of Kan Shinbei, carries a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription dated Kanbun 11 (1671) and is valued as a documentary representative work. Of his quietest masame katana the sources write that it is 「上品に静温に仕上げている」[[c:4]], finished with refined elegance and a quiet warmth. Among recorded owners of his blades are Kurokawa Fukusaburo and the Kurokawa Institute for Ancient Cultures, which hold the two Yokei-signed Juyo Bijutsuhin, and Itaya Taneo.
Where Kunikane 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
Yamato-den · Rikuzen
14 pieces on the market now
Below Sendai Castle, at Kokubu Wakabayashi in Miyagi District of Ōshū (later Rikuzen, present-day Sendai), the first Kunikane established a forge that served the Date house across the early shintō period. The setsumei record him as a member of the Hongō family, first called Genzō and later Yoshinosuke, born in Bunroku 1 (1592), who claimed descent from a later branch of Yamato Hōshō Gorō. As a retained smith (kakae-kaji) of Date Masamune he was sent by his lord's command to Kyoto in Keichō 19 (1614), where he studied under Etchū no Kami Masatoshi; he received the court title Yamashiro Daijō in Kan'ei 3 (1626), took the tonsure upon Masamune's death in Kan'ei 13 (1636) under such Buddhist names as Ninzawa Yōe and Yōkei, retired in Shōhō 2 (1645) at fifty-four, and died in Kanbun 4 (1664) at seventy-three. The house continued through his legitimate son, the second-generation Kunikane (Hongō Kichiemon), born Keichō 17 (1612), who succeeded to the headship in 1645 and received the title Yamashiro no Kami in Kanbun 7 (1667). Other Sendai hands appear in the register as well: a Rinsuke (倫助) of the same lineage as Anrin signing "Ōshū Kokubu Sendai-jū," and later signatures reading Yōe Kunikane and the Shōwa-era Yōke Kunitsutsumi, carrying the line forward. What binds these blades into one hand is the deliberate transplant of the Yamato-den Hōshō manner onto Sendai steel. The setsumei describe the first generation as turning, in an age when the Sōshū tradition was widely practiced, toward the working range of the Yamato Hōshō line: a high shinogi, a forged masame-hada, and a suguha-based temper.
Recognition begins in the kitae, a masame-hada running well throughout, often tending toward standing grain (hada-dachi), with fine chikei entering and ji-nie adhering thickly over clear steel; a mizukage frequently rises from below the machi, called a habitual trait of both first and second generations. The temper is a chū- or hiro-suguha carrying a shallow notare, into which uchi-noke, hotsure, kuichigai-ba, and a nijūba-like effect mingle along the habuchi, with deep nioi, well-adhering nie, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight and tends toward yakizume with vigorous hakikake. Generations divide on detail rather than idiom: the first generation's strongest pieces show the masame at its most ordered with a bright nioiguchi, while the second generation, equally schooled in the family specialty, sometimes works toward gunome-midare and finishes with a quiet warmth; certain late first-generation works, such as the dated Kan'ei 19 katana, depart unusually into a primarily itame ground with whitish utsuri. For kantei the register fixes the points plainly: ordered masame with ji-nie and chikei, the suguha-and-hotsure edge with masame carried into a yakizume boshi, and the rising mizukage habit. The signature itself is a marker, the setsumei noting that from Kan'ei 9 (1632) the grass-radical of the character 藤 begins to be chiseled as separated strokes resembling a "#," and that the rarer "Yōe" form and examples bearing Kunitsugu's kaō carry documentary weight. Named works anchor the line: a Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana signed Yamashiro Daijō Fujiwara Kunikane transmitted in the Uwajima Date family, with an iron tsuba signed Myōchin Sōhei; first- and second-generation katana held in the Imperial Collection; a Jūyō wakizashi bearing the kuyō crest of the Date house said to have been bestowed by Masamune; and a katana carrying a Yamano Ka'emon cutting-test inscription dated Kanbun 4. The setsumei place the first generation's best blades at a level close to, and at points surpassing, the old Hōshō master, and present the Sendai Kunikane house as the enduring carrier of the Yamato Hōshō manner under Date patronage through the Edo period. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunikane國包 | 1624-1644 | 33 |
| Kunikane國包 | 1644-1670 | 12 |
| Kaneshige包重 | 1661-1673 | 1 |
| Tomosuke倫助 | 1661-1673 | 1 |
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.
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 sitePlease contact us by phone within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back the next day. The postage and security service fees are the customer's responsibility.
This is a katana by the 2nd generation Fujiwara Kunikane, who served the Date family in the Mid-Edo period. It features a straight hamon with thick nioiguchi and active nie, characteristic of the smith's family tradition. The jigane shows flowing ko-itame and masame with fine chikei, and a long kinsuji is visible. The sword comes with a koshirae featuring a dragon motif on a shuro-nuri saya.
NihontoWatchmei · Shinto · nagasa 71.7cm · sori 1.1cm
Sendai Kunikane, Mutsu (Sendai Shinto) · Rikuzen · around 1644-1670
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 31%
4 pieces on the market now
Yamashiro-no-kami Fujiwara Kunikane, the second of the Sendai line, was born in Keicho 17 (1612), succeeded to the house in Shoho 2 (1645) at the age of thirty-four, received the Yamashiro-no-kami title in Kanbun 7 (1667), and died in Kanbun 12 (1672) aged sixty-one. He was the eldest son of the founder, the shodai Yamashiro-daijo Kunikane, who claimed descent from the late line of Yamato Hosho, served Date Masamune of Sendai, and by his lord's order went up to Kyoto to study under Etchu-no-kami Masatoshi before receiving the Yamashiro-daijo title in Kanbun 3 (1626). The Kunikane name was the standing forge of the Date house, and across both generations its identity rests on a single inherited manner: the masame forging of the Yamato Hosho tradition, tempered in suguha. The published sources call this his hereditary specialty, the family's transmitted Hosho-style masame at which he was particularly accomplished in the straight temper, and they rate the second generation a master of suguha second only to his father.
His hand is recognized first in the jigane. The blade is a shinogi-zukuri katana with iori-mune, the curvature shallow in the Kanbun manner and the kissaki medium, and over its whole length runs a masame-hada forged tight and well ordered, with ji-nie laid and chikei entering along the masame. This straight-grain jigane is the first of the two Hosho marks, a forging almost no other Shinto school takes as its default, and the second mark is set into it: a chu-suguha frayed at the habuchi into hotsure, mixing kuichigai-ba and a tendency to nijuba, with sunagashi and kinsuji running freely along the masame, the nioi deep and the nioiguchi bright and clear with ko-nie. Where the suguha and the masame both appear on every blade on record, the two together are the surest reading of the smith.
The boshi runs straight, sweeping into hakikake, and closes as often in a yakizume without turnback as in a small round, a Yamato-Hosho boshi habit that follows from the masame and the suguha rather than against them. To this inherited core the published sources add a tell peculiar to the Kunikane hand, and name it as such: a mizukage rising from below the hamachi, a faint pale reflection that on the broad, slightly long late blades connects and runs as an utsuri-like aspect across the lower half. Of one Kanbun katana they write that 「区下より水影が立っているが, 初代同様二代にも見る手くせであり」[[c:1]], a habit seen in the second generation as in the founder, and they note alongside it that the nakago file is sometimes finished as a plain, simplified kesho, another of the points to watch in his work. On that same wide blade the masame stands a little on the ura, the ji-nie laid dust-fine and thick, the chikei finely formed.
Against the calm suguha the published sources record that the second generation also leaves a gunome-midare. On these the chu-suguha base mixes in small gunome and a shallow notare, ashi entering and the habuchi frayed, and one wide, long blade carries a suguha that swells into a large, shallow undulation with ko-nie and ara-nie and a nijuba tendency. The sources frame this as the exception within a hand whose default is the straight temper, writing that 「家伝の保昌流の柾目鍍を得意とし」 he was particularly skilled at suguha, with slight gunome-midare seen at times besides. A small register within the corpus carries the founder's own signatures rather than the second generation's, the go Yokei and the title Yamashiro-daijo: blades signed Yamashiro-daijo Fujiwara Yokei Kunikane, one dated Keian 1 (1648), in the same Hosho idiom but read with a founder's accent, the koshi-zori standing high with funbari, the masame tending to stand, the suguha a ko-nie chu-suguha damp and frayed with sunagashi following.
What sets his work apart within the broad world of Kanbun Shinto is not a flourish but the consistency of the Hosho reading: the masame carried the length of the blade, the quiet suguha laid over it, the swept yakizume boshi, and the mizukage below the machi. The published sources keep his standing honestly relative to the founder. They write of one second-generation katana that it is in fact forceful and that its quality is 「殆んど初代に劣らない」[[c:3]], scarcely inferior to the first generation, and of his masame finest pieces that some approach the shodai while his ordinary technique does not equal him. The signature itself is a connoisseur's field: in the second generation's mei the horizontal strokes are driven hard and pressed at their close so that they read like the character ichi, and within the character 包 the inner element is cut in a distinctive form, both, the sources say, important features when reading a Kunikane signature.
Kunikane is rated Jo-saku by Fujishiro. His record is held entirely in the Juyo tier, ten katana of the second generation on record there, with two further blades under the founder's Yokei signature reaching the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin. He holds no National Treasure and no Important Cultural Property, so the work that can be encountered is the designated Juyo katana, and these come to market only from time to time and with patience, a steady Sendai-Shinto name rather than a rarity locked wholly away. The published sources single out the well-forged, in-the-style pieces as typical and representative of the second generation, one of which, worn at the side of Kan Shinbei, carries a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription dated Kanbun 11 (1671) and is valued as a documentary representative work. Of his quietest masame katana the sources write that it is 「上品に静温に仕上げている」[[c:4]], finished with refined elegance and a quiet warmth. Among recorded owners of his blades are Kurokawa Fukusaburo and the Kurokawa Institute for Ancient Cultures, which hold the two Yokei-signed Juyo Bijutsuhin, and Itaya Taneo.
Where Kunikane 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
Yamato-den · Rikuzen
14 pieces on the market now
Below Sendai Castle, at Kokubu Wakabayashi in Miyagi District of Ōshū (later Rikuzen, present-day Sendai), the first Kunikane established a forge that served the Date house across the early shintō period. The setsumei record him as a member of the Hongō family, first called Genzō and later Yoshinosuke, born in Bunroku 1 (1592), who claimed descent from a later branch of Yamato Hōshō Gorō. As a retained smith (kakae-kaji) of Date Masamune he was sent by his lord's command to Kyoto in Keichō 19 (1614), where he studied under Etchū no Kami Masatoshi; he received the court title Yamashiro Daijō in Kan'ei 3 (1626), took the tonsure upon Masamune's death in Kan'ei 13 (1636) under such Buddhist names as Ninzawa Yōe and Yōkei, retired in Shōhō 2 (1645) at fifty-four, and died in Kanbun 4 (1664) at seventy-three. The house continued through his legitimate son, the second-generation Kunikane (Hongō Kichiemon), born Keichō 17 (1612), who succeeded to the headship in 1645 and received the title Yamashiro no Kami in Kanbun 7 (1667). Other Sendai hands appear in the register as well: a Rinsuke (倫助) of the same lineage as Anrin signing "Ōshū Kokubu Sendai-jū," and later signatures reading Yōe Kunikane and the Shōwa-era Yōke Kunitsutsumi, carrying the line forward. What binds these blades into one hand is the deliberate transplant of the Yamato-den Hōshō manner onto Sendai steel. The setsumei describe the first generation as turning, in an age when the Sōshū tradition was widely practiced, toward the working range of the Yamato Hōshō line: a high shinogi, a forged masame-hada, and a suguha-based temper.
Recognition begins in the kitae, a masame-hada running well throughout, often tending toward standing grain (hada-dachi), with fine chikei entering and ji-nie adhering thickly over clear steel; a mizukage frequently rises from below the machi, called a habitual trait of both first and second generations. The temper is a chū- or hiro-suguha carrying a shallow notare, into which uchi-noke, hotsure, kuichigai-ba, and a nijūba-like effect mingle along the habuchi, with deep nioi, well-adhering nie, and kinsuji and sunagashi running through; the bōshi runs straight and tends toward yakizume with vigorous hakikake. Generations divide on detail rather than idiom: the first generation's strongest pieces show the masame at its most ordered with a bright nioiguchi, while the second generation, equally schooled in the family specialty, sometimes works toward gunome-midare and finishes with a quiet warmth; certain late first-generation works, such as the dated Kan'ei 19 katana, depart unusually into a primarily itame ground with whitish utsuri. For kantei the register fixes the points plainly: ordered masame with ji-nie and chikei, the suguha-and-hotsure edge with masame carried into a yakizume boshi, and the rising mizukage habit. The signature itself is a marker, the setsumei noting that from Kan'ei 9 (1632) the grass-radical of the character 藤 begins to be chiseled as separated strokes resembling a "#," and that the rarer "Yōe" form and examples bearing Kunitsugu's kaō carry documentary weight. Named works anchor the line: a Tokubetsu-Jūyō katana signed Yamashiro Daijō Fujiwara Kunikane transmitted in the Uwajima Date family, with an iron tsuba signed Myōchin Sōhei; first- and second-generation katana held in the Imperial Collection; a Jūyō wakizashi bearing the kuyō crest of the Date house said to have been bestowed by Masamune; and a katana carrying a Yamano Ka'emon cutting-test inscription dated Kanbun 4. The setsumei place the first generation's best blades at a level close to, and at points surpassing, the old Hōshō master, and present the Sendai Kunikane house as the enduring carrier of the Yamato Hōshō manner under Date patronage through the Edo period. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunikane國包 | 1624-1644 | 33 |
| Kunikane國包 | 1644-1670 | 12 |
| Kaneshige包重 | 1661-1673 | 1 |
| Tomosuke倫助 | 1661-1673 | 1 |
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.
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 sitePlease contact us by phone within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back the next day. The postage and security service fees are the customer's responsibility.
