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About the maker

Sendai Kunikane國包

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」, 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」, 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」, 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.

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