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.
This is an o-suriage mumei katana, attributed to Kanenori by the NBTHK Hozon paper and to Hidemitsu by saya-gaki. The blade features a bright and clear hamon with ko-gunome, nie-deki, and midare-utsuri. The jigane is a well-forged itame and mokume mix, characteristic of the Muromachi period.
NihontoWatchsuriage-mumei · Osafune · Muromachi · nagasa 68.8cm · sori 1cm
Mino-den · Mino · around 1370-1372
1 piece on the market now
Where Kanenori 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.
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Mino-den · Mino
10 pieces on the market now
The San'ami line takes its root in Mino Province, where its head smith Kanenori (兼則) worked as one of the so-called Seki Seven Schools. The setsumei place Kanenori from the close of the Nanbokuchō period into the Ōei era of the early Muromachi, alongside Kanemoto and Kanesada among the representative hands of Sue-Seki, and the earliest extant signed tachi of his is appraised as no later than Ōei. A second early smith, Kanekuni (兼国), is recorded as belonging to the San'ami lineage and is judged to predate the Sue-Seki group proper; the remote ancestry given for him runs variously to a disciple of Naoe Kanetomo, to Yamato Kanekuni, or to Kanenori, though the setsumei note that nothing survives to confirm so distant a descent. From this Mino stock came Hōki no Kami Fujiwara Nobutaka (信高), born at Kami-Ōchi in Mino in 1563 and said to descend from San'ami Kanekuni. After receiving the title Hōki no Kami in Tenshō 9 (1581) he moved to Kiyosu in Owari and, serving Tokugawa Yoshinao, later settled at Nagoya, carrying the line into the early Shintō era through a second generation who took the tonsure in Kanbun 2 (1662). Across the corpus the jigane is itame, often closely forged and tending to nagare-hada or flowing grain along the edge, with ji-nie and a frequent standing of the grain (hada-dachi); a faint whitish cast (shirake) marks the older Mino work of Kanenori and Kanekuni. The temper rests on suguha as a base. In the early hands it is a tight, clear (saete) suguha in nioi-deki, sometimes mixed with small gunome, angular elements and pointed ha, carrying ashi, hotsure and scattered tobiyaki.
The Nobutaka works open this out: a broad suguha shifting to shallow notare, ko-notare with a gunome-flavored edge, deep nioi with nie unevenly applied and partly coarse, nie-kuzure at the yakigashira, kuichigai-ba, kinsuji, sunagashi, yubashiri and tobiyaki that climb into the shinogi-ji until the upper half reads as hitatsura. The bōshi runs to sugu with ko-maru, at times midare-komi, pointed, or hakikake, and the early swords keep a slender, high-sori tachi shape while Nobutaka's carry the wide-bodied, ō-kissaki form of the Momoyama transition. The hand is recognized in this pairing of a flowing Mino itame with a suguha core that, in the descendants, breaks toward bold hitatsura. For kantei, the setsumei fix several anchors. In Kanenori's signature the scooped chisel at the fourth stroke of the character kane (兼) is read as a trait of late Nanbokuchō through Ōei work, matched in dated Kaneyoshi mei; the clear suguha of Kanekuni is likened to a Zenjō Kaneyoshi masterpiece. The jizō-flavored bōshi and the nagare-mixed itame in Nobutaka are named as the surviving stamp of the Mino root beneath his Owari manner, and one of his katana is recorded as an Inabae-utsushi. Provenance runs through the corpus: a Kanekuni bears kinzōgan recording it as the sashiryō of Ōkubo Genban-no-jō Tadanari, lord of Odawara in Sagami, worn at the age of ninety-three; Kanenori's tachi descended in the Yamanouchi family. Among the Owari yari makers beginning with Masatsune, Nobutaka's yari of extraordinary length is held in particular regard, and the second-generation Nobutaka is judged no less skilled than his father, with the finest extant Nobutaka works counted to his hand. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Nobutaka信高 | 1581-1615 | 3 |
| Nobutaka信高 | 1624-1644 | 2 |
| Kanenori兼則 | 1370-1372 | 1 |
| Nobutaka信高 | 1673-1681 | 0 |
| Kanekuni兼國 | 1455-1457 | 1 |
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.
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 site¥700,000
