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 high-quality katana forged by Nobukuni Yoshikane from Kyushu, Japan. It is a precious piece of Japanese history, featuring high-level forging. The blade comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon certificate.
NihontoWatchKanbun (1661-1673) · nagasa 69.7cm
Chikuzen Nobukuni (Shinto) · Chikuzen · around 1661-1686
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 39%
2 pieces on the market now
Yoshikane signed his blades Chikushu-ju Minamoto Nobukuni Yoshikane, used the common name Sukezaemon, and died in Genroku 6 (1693), the year his son Shigekane turned twenty-one. He worked in Hakata as one of the representative smiths of the Chikuzen Nobukuni group, the Shinto-period branch that the published sources trace back to the Kyoto Nobukuni line and that served the Kuroda house of Fukuoka as retained smiths (kakae-kaji) from the Keicho era down to the early Meiji years. The line is set out in the commentaries with a clear shape: its effective founder Yoshisada answered an invitation from Kuroda Nagamasa and moved from Buzen to Hakata, after which the headship passed generation to generation, and the representative makers are named as Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane. Yoshikane was the son of Yoshitsugu, and from the Shinto period it had become customary for the group to take Nobukuni as a surname and style each member "Nobukuni so-and-so," which is why his five designated katana all carry the personal name within a boldly cut long signature.
Two deliberate manners run through that small body of work, and the more striking of them is a reach toward Soshu-den. Over an itame that flows and leans strongly toward masame, with ji-nie adhering and fine chikei entering, he forges a ko-notare mixed with gunome, angular elements among it, the nioi deep, the nie thick and well attached, with fine sunagashi running vigorously and kinsuji and a slight tobiyaki suggestive of yubashiri. The boshi follows the temper into a midare-komi that rises with tsukiage, comes to a sharp point with a deep return, and sweeps frequently with hakikake. Of the katana that shows this hand most fully the published sources write that "his aim lay clearly in Soshu-den"[[c:1]], calling it an ambitious work through which the high level of his ability can be understood. This is not the broad gunome-based midare that the commentaries give as the school's common range but a separate, intended idiom, and it is the gunome beneath the notare, present on every one of his designated blades, that ties the two manners together.
The jigane is the steady foundation on which both hands are laid. The forging is an itame, well knit and at times a tight ko-itame, that overall carries a nagare-hada and on the ura flows strongly into a masame-like state, with minute ji-nie adhering and delicate chikei entering. On the blades where he tempers the school's choji it throws up a clear midare-utsuri in a bright jigane, and the published sources note that this is the customary accompaniment of his choji manner, the flowing hada and the standing reflection arriving together. That flowing, masame-leaning itame, rather than a tight Bizen jigane, is the Yamashiro-descended surface that carries the Chikuzen line back to its Kyoto Nobukuni source, and it is the constant against which the variety of the ha is read.
His second documented manner is the choji-midare the commentaries name the salient point of the Chikuzen Nobukuni hand. It sits over the tight ko-itame and runs chiefly choji with togariba, gunome, ko-choji and ko-gunome mixed in, the yakigashira generally aligned in a small-pattern midare, a reverse-slanting tendency appearing in places, ashi and yo entering well, ko-nie adhering, fine sunagashi present, and the nioiguchi bright. One katana carries this further than any other on record: it shows differing manners on its two faces, a flamboyant choji-midare with marked rises and falls on the omote and a small-pattern, level-headed choji on the ura, the so-called kashiwade style[[c:2]]. The published sources call it the only known example of that approach within the smith's work and read in the flamboyant omote a resonance with the Fukuoka Ishido of the same province, a kinship they support by pointing to a documented Ishido carving on a blade of the second-generation Yoshimasa. Of this blade they conclude that it manifests the school's salient points[[c:3]].
What distinguishes Yoshikane is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast with his neighbours. His is a smith of two intentions held at a high finish: the Soshu reach, with its deep nioi, thick nie, sunagashi and kinsuji over the flowing itame; and the school choji, with its aligned yakigashira and the midare-utsuri that the flowing hada throws up. The ura of the kashiwade katana, a small-pattern choji without rises and falls and with the heads of the midare aligned, the commentaries call a typical example of the distinctive Chikuzen Nobukuni choji, so that one blade holds both the school's textbook hand and its rarest variation. The mei is cut ubu on every designated piece, a long signature in bold, thick chisel strokes set below the mekugi-ana toward the mune, and on one blade an added inscription records that it was made of nanban-tetsu, the imported steel.
Yoshikane is rated Jo saku by Fujishiro, a sound standing for a provincial Shinto smith rather than a first rank, and his designated record is small and entirely signed. Five of his katana hold the Juyo rank, his record reaching no Important Cultural Property or National Treasure tier, so his blades are encountered as Juyo and lower-ranked pieces rather than as patrimony held permanently out of reach. One of his swords is recorded as having been held by the Imperial Family, the single notable provenance attached to his name in the corpus, and the remainder pass through private hands. The number of designated works on record is genuinely small, and the blade worth waiting for is the one in which both his intentions are fully realised, of the kind the published sources praise in their highest verdict on him: a work in which "the ji and the ha are both strikingly clear"[[c:4]], revealing, as they put it, Yoshikane's outstanding workmanship among the Shinto-period Nobukuni smiths. Such a blade comes to market only from time to time, and when one does it is a good representative of a respected provincial school whose finest hand looks back to both Soshu and the old Yamashiro line.
Where Yoshikane 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
Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
31 pieces on the market now
Few Kyoto houses bridged two traditions as deliberately as Nobukuni (信国), the Yamashiro-den lineage whose work runs from the Nanbokucho period through Muromachi and on, in a western branch, into the shinto age. The first generation, the smith the NBTHK counts as shodai, is the master of the Enbun, Koan and Joji years; the older registers placed a founding Nobukuni back in the Kenmu era, but the published sources set that legend aside, since no work survives so early and the style of the oldest dated blades connects directly with that of Sadamune. Two inheritances meet in him. By blood he belongs to the Ryokai line, recorded as son or grandson of Ryo Hisanobu and therefore of Rai descent; by training he is said to have studied under Soshu Sadamune, counted among the Sadamune Santetsu, the three brilliant pupils. The name then passed on: a change-of-generation Nobukuni with Eitoku, Shitoku and Meitoku dates stands at the close of Nanbokucho, and in early Muromachi come the so-called Oei Nobukuni, Saemon-no-jo and Shikibu-no-jo, conventionally the third generation. The published commentary keeps these hands apart and notes that several smiths of the same signature appear within the Nanbokucho period alone. Through Muromachi the line moved to Buzen and then Chikuzen, where it served the Kuroda house of Fukuoka as retained smiths and flourished as the Chikuzen Nobukuni group of Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane. A single steel underlies the whole school. The jigane is an itame mixed with mokume that flows toward the ha and stands into masame, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering frequently; on the finer-forged pieces a streak-like nie-utsuri rises, and that masame-tinged surface is read as the visible token of the Ryokai pedigree.
Over it the temper divides into the manners the sources name together: a suguha expressing the Kyoto tradition, refined in ko-nie with fine hotsure and a niju-ba tendency, carried on tanto and ko-wakizashi; and a ko-notare mixed with gunome inheriting the Sadamune style, laid thick in nie, with kinsuji, sunagashi, hotsure and conspicuous yubashiri, on the most flamboyant pieces stringing into a two-tiered ha. From the late Nanbokucho succession into the Oei generation a third range enters, a gunome-led midare whose tell is paired gunome linked across the valleys by a low ko-notare into a yahazu, arrow-notch, profile, with muneyaki, tobiyaki and niju-ba on the liveliest blades. Above all stands the carving the sources call the house art, the horimono of bonji, kurikara, suken, gomabashi, sanko-ken and the invocation of Hachiman Daibosatsu, often layered one over another in kasanebori; few smiths of the age are so consistently identified by what they carved. The Chikuzen branch carried the masame-leaning itame forward and added a choji-midare with midare-utsuri, Yoshikane reaching toward Soshu-den with deep nioi and thick nie, Shigekane ranked highest in skill within his group and noted as a copyist of meibutsu who emulated Fudo Kuniyuki at the Hama Palace. To kantei Nobukuni is to read the Kyoto traces that part him from Sadamune: the nie-utsuri, the niju-ba, and the hada that drifts into masame along the ha. Within the long succession the shodai remains the touchstone, his dated work the standard against which unsigned blades and generation questions are resolved, the reversed left-form kuni marking the Oei Saemon-no-jo, the yahazu the daigawari hand. The best members rank Jo-jo saku under Fujishiro, and the carving reputation is the constant thread, distinguishing these blades from the plainer utilitarian grooving of contemporary Bizen. Provenance runs through the great houses: the Kuroda wakizashi once carried by Kuroda Nagamasa, a Hongan-ji meibutsu held to have been cherished by Rennyo Shonin, the signed Arao Nobukuni descended in the Asano of Geishu, pieces in the Sanada, Tosa Yamauchi and Tamura families, and a tachi bestowed on the Owari Tokugawa. Examples rest today in the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Kyoto National Museum, shrines such as Atsuta and Ise, and long-held private collections, with the Chikuzen smiths' shogunal-command pieces preserving the historical episodes that produced them. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Nobukuni信國 | 1356-1361 | 70 |
| Nobukuni信國 | 1383-1392 | 33 |
| Nobukuni信國 | 1394-1428 | 44 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1661-1686 | 7 |
| Masanobu正信 | 1356-1361 | 4 |
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.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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 siteIf the item fails to meet the description, it may be eligible for a return (at the seller's discretion). Item(s) must be shipped back only via FedEx or UPS within 48 hours of receipt, in original undamaged state. Costs are the purchaser's responsibility.
This is a high-quality katana forged by Nobukuni Yoshikane from Kyushu, Japan. It is a precious piece of Japanese history, featuring high-level forging. The blade comes with an NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon certificate.
NihontoWatchKanbun (1661-1673) · nagasa 69.7cm
Chikuzen Nobukuni (Shinto) · Chikuzen · around 1661-1686
Fujishiro Jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 39%
2 pieces on the market now
Yoshikane signed his blades Chikushu-ju Minamoto Nobukuni Yoshikane, used the common name Sukezaemon, and died in Genroku 6 (1693), the year his son Shigekane turned twenty-one. He worked in Hakata as one of the representative smiths of the Chikuzen Nobukuni group, the Shinto-period branch that the published sources trace back to the Kyoto Nobukuni line and that served the Kuroda house of Fukuoka as retained smiths (kakae-kaji) from the Keicho era down to the early Meiji years. The line is set out in the commentaries with a clear shape: its effective founder Yoshisada answered an invitation from Kuroda Nagamasa and moved from Buzen to Hakata, after which the headship passed generation to generation, and the representative makers are named as Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane. Yoshikane was the son of Yoshitsugu, and from the Shinto period it had become customary for the group to take Nobukuni as a surname and style each member "Nobukuni so-and-so," which is why his five designated katana all carry the personal name within a boldly cut long signature.
Two deliberate manners run through that small body of work, and the more striking of them is a reach toward Soshu-den. Over an itame that flows and leans strongly toward masame, with ji-nie adhering and fine chikei entering, he forges a ko-notare mixed with gunome, angular elements among it, the nioi deep, the nie thick and well attached, with fine sunagashi running vigorously and kinsuji and a slight tobiyaki suggestive of yubashiri. The boshi follows the temper into a midare-komi that rises with tsukiage, comes to a sharp point with a deep return, and sweeps frequently with hakikake. Of the katana that shows this hand most fully the published sources write that "his aim lay clearly in Soshu-den"[[c:1]], calling it an ambitious work through which the high level of his ability can be understood. This is not the broad gunome-based midare that the commentaries give as the school's common range but a separate, intended idiom, and it is the gunome beneath the notare, present on every one of his designated blades, that ties the two manners together.
The jigane is the steady foundation on which both hands are laid. The forging is an itame, well knit and at times a tight ko-itame, that overall carries a nagare-hada and on the ura flows strongly into a masame-like state, with minute ji-nie adhering and delicate chikei entering. On the blades where he tempers the school's choji it throws up a clear midare-utsuri in a bright jigane, and the published sources note that this is the customary accompaniment of his choji manner, the flowing hada and the standing reflection arriving together. That flowing, masame-leaning itame, rather than a tight Bizen jigane, is the Yamashiro-descended surface that carries the Chikuzen line back to its Kyoto Nobukuni source, and it is the constant against which the variety of the ha is read.
His second documented manner is the choji-midare the commentaries name the salient point of the Chikuzen Nobukuni hand. It sits over the tight ko-itame and runs chiefly choji with togariba, gunome, ko-choji and ko-gunome mixed in, the yakigashira generally aligned in a small-pattern midare, a reverse-slanting tendency appearing in places, ashi and yo entering well, ko-nie adhering, fine sunagashi present, and the nioiguchi bright. One katana carries this further than any other on record: it shows differing manners on its two faces, a flamboyant choji-midare with marked rises and falls on the omote and a small-pattern, level-headed choji on the ura, the so-called kashiwade style[[c:2]]. The published sources call it the only known example of that approach within the smith's work and read in the flamboyant omote a resonance with the Fukuoka Ishido of the same province, a kinship they support by pointing to a documented Ishido carving on a blade of the second-generation Yoshimasa. Of this blade they conclude that it manifests the school's salient points[[c:3]].
What distinguishes Yoshikane is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast with his neighbours. His is a smith of two intentions held at a high finish: the Soshu reach, with its deep nioi, thick nie, sunagashi and kinsuji over the flowing itame; and the school choji, with its aligned yakigashira and the midare-utsuri that the flowing hada throws up. The ura of the kashiwade katana, a small-pattern choji without rises and falls and with the heads of the midare aligned, the commentaries call a typical example of the distinctive Chikuzen Nobukuni choji, so that one blade holds both the school's textbook hand and its rarest variation. The mei is cut ubu on every designated piece, a long signature in bold, thick chisel strokes set below the mekugi-ana toward the mune, and on one blade an added inscription records that it was made of nanban-tetsu, the imported steel.
Yoshikane is rated Jo saku by Fujishiro, a sound standing for a provincial Shinto smith rather than a first rank, and his designated record is small and entirely signed. Five of his katana hold the Juyo rank, his record reaching no Important Cultural Property or National Treasure tier, so his blades are encountered as Juyo and lower-ranked pieces rather than as patrimony held permanently out of reach. One of his swords is recorded as having been held by the Imperial Family, the single notable provenance attached to his name in the corpus, and the remainder pass through private hands. The number of designated works on record is genuinely small, and the blade worth waiting for is the one in which both his intentions are fully realised, of the kind the published sources praise in their highest verdict on him: a work in which "the ji and the ha are both strikingly clear"[[c:4]], revealing, as they put it, Yoshikane's outstanding workmanship among the Shinto-period Nobukuni smiths. Such a blade comes to market only from time to time, and when one does it is a good representative of a respected provincial school whose finest hand looks back to both Soshu and the old Yamashiro line.
Where Yoshikane 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
Yamashiro-den · Yamashiro
31 pieces on the market now
Few Kyoto houses bridged two traditions as deliberately as Nobukuni (信国), the Yamashiro-den lineage whose work runs from the Nanbokucho period through Muromachi and on, in a western branch, into the shinto age. The first generation, the smith the NBTHK counts as shodai, is the master of the Enbun, Koan and Joji years; the older registers placed a founding Nobukuni back in the Kenmu era, but the published sources set that legend aside, since no work survives so early and the style of the oldest dated blades connects directly with that of Sadamune. Two inheritances meet in him. By blood he belongs to the Ryokai line, recorded as son or grandson of Ryo Hisanobu and therefore of Rai descent; by training he is said to have studied under Soshu Sadamune, counted among the Sadamune Santetsu, the three brilliant pupils. The name then passed on: a change-of-generation Nobukuni with Eitoku, Shitoku and Meitoku dates stands at the close of Nanbokucho, and in early Muromachi come the so-called Oei Nobukuni, Saemon-no-jo and Shikibu-no-jo, conventionally the third generation. The published commentary keeps these hands apart and notes that several smiths of the same signature appear within the Nanbokucho period alone. Through Muromachi the line moved to Buzen and then Chikuzen, where it served the Kuroda house of Fukuoka as retained smiths and flourished as the Chikuzen Nobukuni group of Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane. A single steel underlies the whole school. The jigane is an itame mixed with mokume that flows toward the ha and stands into masame, with thick ji-nie and chikei entering frequently; on the finer-forged pieces a streak-like nie-utsuri rises, and that masame-tinged surface is read as the visible token of the Ryokai pedigree.
Over it the temper divides into the manners the sources name together: a suguha expressing the Kyoto tradition, refined in ko-nie with fine hotsure and a niju-ba tendency, carried on tanto and ko-wakizashi; and a ko-notare mixed with gunome inheriting the Sadamune style, laid thick in nie, with kinsuji, sunagashi, hotsure and conspicuous yubashiri, on the most flamboyant pieces stringing into a two-tiered ha. From the late Nanbokucho succession into the Oei generation a third range enters, a gunome-led midare whose tell is paired gunome linked across the valleys by a low ko-notare into a yahazu, arrow-notch, profile, with muneyaki, tobiyaki and niju-ba on the liveliest blades. Above all stands the carving the sources call the house art, the horimono of bonji, kurikara, suken, gomabashi, sanko-ken and the invocation of Hachiman Daibosatsu, often layered one over another in kasanebori; few smiths of the age are so consistently identified by what they carved. The Chikuzen branch carried the masame-leaning itame forward and added a choji-midare with midare-utsuri, Yoshikane reaching toward Soshu-den with deep nioi and thick nie, Shigekane ranked highest in skill within his group and noted as a copyist of meibutsu who emulated Fudo Kuniyuki at the Hama Palace. To kantei Nobukuni is to read the Kyoto traces that part him from Sadamune: the nie-utsuri, the niju-ba, and the hada that drifts into masame along the ha. Within the long succession the shodai remains the touchstone, his dated work the standard against which unsigned blades and generation questions are resolved, the reversed left-form kuni marking the Oei Saemon-no-jo, the yahazu the daigawari hand. The best members rank Jo-jo saku under Fujishiro, and the carving reputation is the constant thread, distinguishing these blades from the plainer utilitarian grooving of contemporary Bizen. Provenance runs through the great houses: the Kuroda wakizashi once carried by Kuroda Nagamasa, a Hongan-ji meibutsu held to have been cherished by Rennyo Shonin, the signed Arao Nobukuni descended in the Asano of Geishu, pieces in the Sanada, Tosa Yamauchi and Tamura families, and a tachi bestowed on the Owari Tokugawa. Examples rest today in the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Kyoto National Museum, shrines such as Atsuta and Ise, and long-held private collections, with the Chikuzen smiths' shogunal-command pieces preserving the historical episodes that produced them. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Nobukuni信國 | 1356-1361 | 70 |
| Nobukuni信國 | 1383-1392 | 33 |
| Nobukuni信國 | 1394-1428 | 44 |
| Yoshikane吉包 | 1661-1686 | 7 |
| Masanobu正信 | 1356-1361 | 4 |
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.
A Hozon-certified blade judged to show notably superior workmanship and a better state of preservation. The bar is higher: re-tempered blades and most unsigned Muromachi/Edo works are excluded.
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 siteIf the item fails to meet the description, it may be eligible for a return (at the seller's discretion). Item(s) must be shipped back only via FedEx or UPS within 48 hours of receipt, in original undamaged state. Costs are the purchaser's responsibility.
