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About the maker

Soshu Takagi Sadamune高木貞宗

At its twenty-second Tokubetsu Juyo session the NBTHK designated an o-suriage mumei katana whose explanation opens with the smith himself, recording that Takagi Sadamune was a man of Takagi in Goshu and "is traditionally said to be a disciple of Soshu Sadamune" (相州貞宗の門人と伝える). He worked in Omi from the very end of the Kamakura period into early Nanbokucho, taking his name from the place he lived. The relationship to his master is the whole of his identity in the published record. An old theory once held that the two Sadamune were one man, but the published sources reject it: judging by workmanship Takagi falls a degree short of Hikoshiro Sadamune, and "seeing him as a disciple is the settled view of recent years" (弟子とみるのが近年の定説である), a pupil who, like Kyo Nobukuni, carried his teacher's manner faithfully. Genuine signed work is almost absent. The texts count only one or two reliable tanto, with no tachi and no certainly dated piece, so his hand is known from a handful of small signed wakizashi and read into the mumei katana the shinsa attributes to him. His characteristic hand is a quiet one. The temper the published sources call his specialty is a shallow notare, often a ko-notare, mixed with gunome, ashi and yo entering, the nioi deep and the nie thickly adhered, and over it sunagashi runs abundantly with frequent kinsuji and hotsure and yubashiri along the habuchi. The boshi is midare-komi or runs straight into a ko-maru with hakikake, often tending to a point. Across his blades the chisel is the Soshu devotional program his master made famous: bonji, suken and gomabashi, with a bo-hi carried through the longer pieces, and the published sources affirm that these traits in both ji and ha express the distinctive features of Takagi Sadamune. The carving is what ties the attribution to the Sadamune circle. On one prewar suguha tanto the connoisseur Honma judged the maker precisely from the accomplished bonji and suken and the ken-shaped tang, ranking it "a superior work of the Soshu tradition" (相州伝上々の作). The jigane is where his hand parts from the master's. He forges an itame, on the better pieces mixing mokume and well-packed with thick ji-nie and entering chikei, but the grain tends to stand a little, and the steel as a whole is calmer. The standing kantei line states the contrast plainly. Set beside Soshu Sadamune, "the forging stands somewhat more, the chikei are fewer in most, the temper takes notare as its principal tone with abundant sunagashi, the workings and variation within the ha are comparatively simple, and the nioiguchi in general tends toward shizumi, the subdued quality that marks a Takagi piece" (相州貞宗に比して、鍛がやや肌立ち、地景の少いものが多く、刃文も湾れを主調として、砂流しが多くかかり、刃中の働きや変化が比較的には単純であり、匂口には一般に沈みごころのものが高木である). Another text puts it more shortly: "compared with Soshu Sadamune his ji and ha have less brilliance, and his chikei are fewer" (相州貞宗程には地刃に冴えがなく、地景も少ない). The few quietest works carry a suguha-cho that turns shallowly to notare with hotsure and ko-nie, calm at first sight yet rich in activity, and his home province surfaces now and then as a coarse, zanguri texture in the hada the texts read as Goshu. The surviving work divides cleanly into two registers, and the NBTHK dates each blade by the build it shows. Most of the record is the o-suriage mumei katana of the grand Nanbokucho shape: wide in body with little taper, a shallow or rather high sori, a chu-kissaki or an extended o-kissaki, almost always with a bo-hi run through, the period read from the wide construction alone. The other register is the small, ubu format that carries his only signatures, hira-zukuri and kata-kiriha-zukuri tanto and ko-wakizashi, wide and sun-nobi with thin kasane and a three-faceted mune, the nakago ubu with a ken-form tip and katte-sagari file marks. Kata-kiriha-zukuri recurs across this group, a construction that saw only a brief vogue at the end of Kamakura but that the published sources name as a form favored by Soshu Sadamune and the followers said to be his, Amaro Toshinaga and Takagi Sadamune among them. Old oshigata even reproduce Takagi pieces bearing Kenmu-era dates, though none reliable and dated together survives, and Honma recorded that the genuine signed works known to him came to only two tanto, one of them retempered. What distinguishes him is exactly his nearness to the master, which makes him the kantei trap in person. The published sources warn that an unsigned Takagi katana can at first glance be taken for Soshu Sadamune himself, and that an old suguha tanto on his line was even appraised as a superior Soshu work. The attribution turns not on flamboyance but on the quieter tells the judges name: the standing hada, the fewer chikei, the simpler internal activity and the subdued nioiguchi. He stands at the Kamakura-Nanbokucho turn beside fellow Sadamune followers, carrying the perfected Soshu manner west into Omi rather than founding a manner of his own. His mark is a faithful, slightly quieter Soshu hand, distinguished within the school by his standing itame and shizumi nioiguchi where they fall short of the master's brilliance, and by the bonji and suken carving that anchors the attribution there. Fujishiro grades him Jo-jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin and the higher modern NBTHK tiers, forty designated works on record, two at Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty-six at Juyo, thirty-eight in the two upper tiers together. Among the prewar pieces is a signed tanto recorded as a treasured possession of the Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and several of his mumei katana rest on Hon'ami attributions, one bearing "an origami by Hon'ami Kochu" (本阿弥光忠の折紙がある). Provenance is recorded for only a handful, running through the Date family, the Mori family, the Hosokawa house and a katana set down as worn by the shogun Tokugawa Ienobu, with examples now held at the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures. For the collector almost everything here is held rather than traded. There are no museum-locked National Treasures to set aside, but the prewar designations and the long-held provenances rarely move, and what can realistically be met is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, thirty-eight blades, nearly all o-suriage mumei katana or sun-nobi wakizashi resting on Hon'ami papers. Such a blade comes to light only from time to time, and one carrying his ubu ken-form nakago, the kata-kiriha construction or the Soshu carving is the most knowable kind of Takagi Sadamune a collector could hope to encounter.

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