War at home and trade abroad made Muromachi Bizen the busiest forge region in Japan: a century of Sengoku demand after the Ōnin War, and export missions to Ming China carrying blades by the tens of thousands.
This is a mumei katana attributed to Osafune Moromitsu, a smith active from the late Nanbokucho to early Muromachi period. It features a refined jigane with mixed grain patterns and a hamon of ko-gunome, ko-choji, and ko-midare. The blade is accompanied by an NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon certificate, indicating its high quality and preservation.
NihontoWatchmumei · Osafune · Oei (1394-1428) · nagasa 68cm · sori 2cm
Bizen Osafune, Kozori group · Bizen · around 1387-1428
Tōken Taikan top 26%
1 piece on the market now
Moromitsu is a Bizen Osafune smith of the late Nanbokuchō period whose dated tachi run from the Eiwa and Ōan eras through Meitoku and into the Ōei era. The published sources record him in the Meikan as 'the son of Rinkō and the father of Morimitsu'[[c:1]], the elder name standing one generation before the Ōei-Bizen master, and they place him among the late-Nanbokuchō Osafune smiths grouped together as the Kozori, the small-curvature makers: he is read as 'one of the representative smiths of the later Nanbokuchō group commonly described as the small-sori makers'[[c:2]]. Two generations worked under the name, and the Ōei-dated blades are read as the second, though the commentary grants that strict separation of the hands awaits further study. He is a documentary smith above all, an ubu, signed and dated witness to a quiet corner of Osafune at the threshold of the Muromachi age.
His characteristic hand is a small-patterned gunome-midare whose valleys open toward the koshi. Over the body of the temper he sets ko-gunome, ko-notare, pointed and angular elements and a little chōji, the whole running small and subdued, what the published sources call kozumu, with ashi and yō entering, the temper nioi-dominant and laid with ko-nie, and fine sunagashi sweeping through. The bōshi runs in midare-komi and turns back with a pointed tendency or a small ko-maru. It is a manner of restraint rather than display, and the judges name that restraint directly: his work, they write, 'is more subdued in comparison with makers such as Morimitsu and Yasumitsu'[[c:3]], the same Bizen idea tempered on a smaller, plainer scale than the Ōei masters who came after him.
The jigane is the constant beneath that quiet edge. He forges an itame, frequently flowing and mixed with mokume and standing grain, the steel taking ji-nie and at its best a clear bō-utsuri running straight along the blade, while on his fuller late pieces a midare-utsuri stands and a darkened, chikei-like iron enters the jigane. The reflection is the old Bizen tell, here read in the smaller key of the late period. Over it the hamon keeps to its small irregular line, the nioiguchi inclined to tightness, the activity carried in ashi and yō and in sunagashi rather than in towering clusters of clove-flower, so that ji and ha together present the irregular, finely worked surface the sources hold typical of the Kozori group.
His record divides into more than one register. Most of his signed blades are tachi of the ko-sori type, but a smaller body of work abandons the midare for a suguha-toned temper carrying ko-gunome and a kataochi-like manner, the bōshi finishing in hakikake with a yakitsume. This quieter register is seen on his small hira-zukuri tantō, which often add devotional carving of bonji and a sankozuke-ken, and on a rare ken, of which the published sources observe that 'examples of ken are few in any period'[[c:4]] and call it 'a notably rare piece as a ken by Moromitsu'[[c:5]]. On his finest late tachi the manner instead widens: the midare valleys open further and tobiyaki and muneyaki appear, features the judges read as 'already showing signs that foreshadow the style of Ōei-Bizen'[[c:6]].
What sets Moromitsu apart is exactly this threshold position. He works in a smaller, plainer pattern than the Osafune masters of the Nanbokuchō height, and his temper is held more subdued than that of his son Morimitsu and of Yasumitsu in the next age; yet his own koshi-open gunome, his straight bō-utsuri and the opening midare of his late tachi look forward to the Ōei flowering of the school. The published commentary draws the point as connoisseurship: because his ubu, dated blades carry a signature 'sharing points in common with Bizen works of the Ōei era, this piece constitutes valuable source material for research into Bizen smiths of this period'[[c:7]]. He is, in short, the documented hinge between the Nanbokuchō Osafune mainstream and Ōei-Bizen.
For the collector Moromitsu survives chiefly as signed, dated tachi, with three of his works designated Important Cultural Property and a body of others passed at the Jūyō rank; he has no National Treasures. His provenance is real and notable: a tachi of his is held in the Imperial collection, one dated tachi passed by shogunal bestowal in Hōreki 9 to the Iwaki house, lords of Kameda Castle, and one of his superior late tachi the sources call 'a fine work among his oeuvre'[[c:8]] and record as 'a sword transmitted in the Kuroda family'[[c:9]]. His blades are held today in the Imperial collection and in long-held private and daimyō lines rather than offered openly, and only a modest number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a signed Moromitsu of the ko-sori type comes to light only from time to time. A privately held example is a quiet but rewarding thing for a collector to encounter, an exactly dated document of how late Osafune turned toward Ōei-Bizen.
Where Moromitsu 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
Bizen-den · Bizen
235 pieces on the market now
No single workshop in the history of Japanese swordmaking grew larger or lasted longer than Osafune, the riverside village in Bizen Province whose name became, across three centuries, a byword for the province's mainline. Its de facto founder was Mitsutada (光忠), working at Osafune in the middle Kamakura period; tradition makes him the son of Chikatada, and the genealogies derive his line from the Ko-Bizen Masatsune group already settled in the village. His blades, bold and imposing with a jigane so refined the sources say it can at a glance suggest Kyoto work, were treasured from old as the swords of commanders, and from his hand the school spread immediately: his sons Nagamitsu (長光) and Sanenaga (眞長), his grandson Kagemitsu (景光), and outward through pupils and collaterals until, by the late Kamakura years, Osafune was less a family than an industry. The line is conventionally read as a three-generation spine, Mitsutada founding it, Nagamitsu setting its classical standard, Kagemitsu bringing both temper and forging to their finished form before handing the manner to his pupil Chikakage (近景), whose echo of the master is so close that signed Kagemitsu blades are sometimes read as Chikakage daimei. What binds the membership is a shared steel before any shared temper. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, tightening on the finest blades into a dense ko-itame; fine ji-nie adheres, chikei enter, and over all of it stands the midare-utsuri that anchors even the most Kyoto-like jigane back to Bizen. On that floor the founding generation tempers a flamboyant choji-midare mixed with gunome: Mitsutada's tadpole-headed kawazuko-choji, Nagamitsu's round-topped plump choji, the deep nioi with ko-nie, the bright nioiguchi. From here the school divides by hand and by era. Sanenaga draws the calm pole, a gentle chu-suguha of tightened nioiguchi; Kagemitsu completes the slanting, square-shouldered kataochi-gunome over a suguha base, the family's last great Kamakura invention, carried on by his close kinsman Kagemasa (景政). The Nanbokucho generation then turns toward Soshu-den: Kanemitsu (兼光), fourth master of the mainline, pioneers a broad notare and is read, with Chogi (長義), as the head of Soden-Bizen, the Bizen wing that worked Soshu nie into a jigane that still throws a Bizen utsuri.
Chogi is called the most un-Bizen of Bizen smiths, his ear-shaped mimigata his tell; around him Nagashige (長重), Yoshikage (義景), Tomomitsu (倫光) and Kanenaga (兼長) press the Soshu side by degrees, while Motoshige (元重), of a separate Hatakeda descent, carries an Aoe-tinged squared, slanting ha. Two generations later the Oei revival returns to Kamakura: Yasumitsu (康光) and Morimitsu (盛光), the twin pillars of Oei-Bizen, revive the tachi shape and the choji temper over a wide-waisted koshibiraki-gunome, both finishing in the pointed rosoku-no-shin (candle-wick) boshi that gives the late date away. For the collector the school is a school of discriminations, and to kantei it is to read those fine partitions. The constant midare-utsuri over a bright ko-itame fixes the province; the boshi then sorts the maker, Mitsutada's pointed midare-komi against Nagamitsu's composed ko-maru Sansaku turn, Kagemitsu's contained return, the candle-wick tongue of Oei. Within a single phase the calls turn on a half-step: Nagamitsu's plump crests against Sanenaga's cooler nioiguchi, Kagemasa's freer play against Kagemitsu's tighter order, Nagashige read out of Chogi by a nie that surpasses his brother's. The standing of the best is matched by their patrimony. Mitsutada, Nagamitsu and Kagemitsu each hold National Treasures and stand at the head of Fujishiro's Sai-jo saku; their named blades, the Daihannya Nagamitsu, the Kogaryu Kagemitsu, the O-Kanemitsu, passed through Nobunaga, Ieyasu, Uesugi Kenshin and the great daimyo houses. Because Nagamitsu and the Nanbokucho masters signed and survived in number, Osafune offers what most peerage names cannot, a deep field of Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo work that a patient collector may still realistically hold. Through every register the same hand declares itself: the bright steel, the vivid reflection, and a temper that runs, across three centuries, as the spine of Bizen. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsutada光忠 | 1238-1239 | 60 |
| Nagamitsu長光 | 1274-1304 | 244 |
| Kagemitsu景光 | 1303-1336 | 143 |
| Kanemitsu兼光 | 1323-1370 | 231 |
| Sanenaga眞長 | 1299-1309 | 64 |
Bizen in the Muromachi period
War at home and trade abroad made Muromachi Bizen the busiest forge region in Japan: a century of Sengoku demand after the Ōnin War, and export missions to Ming China carrying blades by the tens of thousands.
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 siteFor one-of-a-kind items such as swords, sword fittings, and antiques, please contact us about a return within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back within 8 days. Refunds are issued the same day the returned item arrives.
¥950,000
This is a mumei katana attributed to Osafune Moromitsu, a smith active from the late Nanbokucho to early Muromachi period. It features a refined jigane with mixed grain patterns and a hamon of ko-gunome, ko-choji, and ko-midare. The blade is accompanied by an NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon certificate, indicating its high quality and preservation.
NihontoWatchmumei · Osafune · Oei (1394-1428) · nagasa 68cm · sori 2cm
Bizen Osafune, Kozori group · Bizen · around 1387-1428
Tōken Taikan top 26%
1 piece on the market now
Moromitsu is a Bizen Osafune smith of the late Nanbokuchō period whose dated tachi run from the Eiwa and Ōan eras through Meitoku and into the Ōei era. The published sources record him in the Meikan as 'the son of Rinkō and the father of Morimitsu'[[c:1]], the elder name standing one generation before the Ōei-Bizen master, and they place him among the late-Nanbokuchō Osafune smiths grouped together as the Kozori, the small-curvature makers: he is read as 'one of the representative smiths of the later Nanbokuchō group commonly described as the small-sori makers'[[c:2]]. Two generations worked under the name, and the Ōei-dated blades are read as the second, though the commentary grants that strict separation of the hands awaits further study. He is a documentary smith above all, an ubu, signed and dated witness to a quiet corner of Osafune at the threshold of the Muromachi age.
His characteristic hand is a small-patterned gunome-midare whose valleys open toward the koshi. Over the body of the temper he sets ko-gunome, ko-notare, pointed and angular elements and a little chōji, the whole running small and subdued, what the published sources call kozumu, with ashi and yō entering, the temper nioi-dominant and laid with ko-nie, and fine sunagashi sweeping through. The bōshi runs in midare-komi and turns back with a pointed tendency or a small ko-maru. It is a manner of restraint rather than display, and the judges name that restraint directly: his work, they write, 'is more subdued in comparison with makers such as Morimitsu and Yasumitsu'[[c:3]], the same Bizen idea tempered on a smaller, plainer scale than the Ōei masters who came after him.
The jigane is the constant beneath that quiet edge. He forges an itame, frequently flowing and mixed with mokume and standing grain, the steel taking ji-nie and at its best a clear bō-utsuri running straight along the blade, while on his fuller late pieces a midare-utsuri stands and a darkened, chikei-like iron enters the jigane. The reflection is the old Bizen tell, here read in the smaller key of the late period. Over it the hamon keeps to its small irregular line, the nioiguchi inclined to tightness, the activity carried in ashi and yō and in sunagashi rather than in towering clusters of clove-flower, so that ji and ha together present the irregular, finely worked surface the sources hold typical of the Kozori group.
His record divides into more than one register. Most of his signed blades are tachi of the ko-sori type, but a smaller body of work abandons the midare for a suguha-toned temper carrying ko-gunome and a kataochi-like manner, the bōshi finishing in hakikake with a yakitsume. This quieter register is seen on his small hira-zukuri tantō, which often add devotional carving of bonji and a sankozuke-ken, and on a rare ken, of which the published sources observe that 'examples of ken are few in any period'[[c:4]] and call it 'a notably rare piece as a ken by Moromitsu'[[c:5]]. On his finest late tachi the manner instead widens: the midare valleys open further and tobiyaki and muneyaki appear, features the judges read as 'already showing signs that foreshadow the style of Ōei-Bizen'[[c:6]].
What sets Moromitsu apart is exactly this threshold position. He works in a smaller, plainer pattern than the Osafune masters of the Nanbokuchō height, and his temper is held more subdued than that of his son Morimitsu and of Yasumitsu in the next age; yet his own koshi-open gunome, his straight bō-utsuri and the opening midare of his late tachi look forward to the Ōei flowering of the school. The published commentary draws the point as connoisseurship: because his ubu, dated blades carry a signature 'sharing points in common with Bizen works of the Ōei era, this piece constitutes valuable source material for research into Bizen smiths of this period'[[c:7]]. He is, in short, the documented hinge between the Nanbokuchō Osafune mainstream and Ōei-Bizen.
For the collector Moromitsu survives chiefly as signed, dated tachi, with three of his works designated Important Cultural Property and a body of others passed at the Jūyō rank; he has no National Treasures. His provenance is real and notable: a tachi of his is held in the Imperial collection, one dated tachi passed by shogunal bestowal in Hōreki 9 to the Iwaki house, lords of Kameda Castle, and one of his superior late tachi the sources call 'a fine work among his oeuvre'[[c:8]] and record as 'a sword transmitted in the Kuroda family'[[c:9]]. His blades are held today in the Imperial collection and in long-held private and daimyō lines rather than offered openly, and only a modest number fall in the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers, so a signed Moromitsu of the ko-sori type comes to light only from time to time. A privately held example is a quiet but rewarding thing for a collector to encounter, an exactly dated document of how late Osafune turned toward Ōei-Bizen.
Where Moromitsu 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
Bizen-den · Bizen
235 pieces on the market now
No single workshop in the history of Japanese swordmaking grew larger or lasted longer than Osafune, the riverside village in Bizen Province whose name became, across three centuries, a byword for the province's mainline. Its de facto founder was Mitsutada (光忠), working at Osafune in the middle Kamakura period; tradition makes him the son of Chikatada, and the genealogies derive his line from the Ko-Bizen Masatsune group already settled in the village. His blades, bold and imposing with a jigane so refined the sources say it can at a glance suggest Kyoto work, were treasured from old as the swords of commanders, and from his hand the school spread immediately: his sons Nagamitsu (長光) and Sanenaga (眞長), his grandson Kagemitsu (景光), and outward through pupils and collaterals until, by the late Kamakura years, Osafune was less a family than an industry. The line is conventionally read as a three-generation spine, Mitsutada founding it, Nagamitsu setting its classical standard, Kagemitsu bringing both temper and forging to their finished form before handing the manner to his pupil Chikakage (近景), whose echo of the master is so close that signed Kagemitsu blades are sometimes read as Chikakage daimei. What binds the membership is a shared steel before any shared temper. The forging is itame mixed with mokume, tightening on the finest blades into a dense ko-itame; fine ji-nie adheres, chikei enter, and over all of it stands the midare-utsuri that anchors even the most Kyoto-like jigane back to Bizen. On that floor the founding generation tempers a flamboyant choji-midare mixed with gunome: Mitsutada's tadpole-headed kawazuko-choji, Nagamitsu's round-topped plump choji, the deep nioi with ko-nie, the bright nioiguchi. From here the school divides by hand and by era. Sanenaga draws the calm pole, a gentle chu-suguha of tightened nioiguchi; Kagemitsu completes the slanting, square-shouldered kataochi-gunome over a suguha base, the family's last great Kamakura invention, carried on by his close kinsman Kagemasa (景政). The Nanbokucho generation then turns toward Soshu-den: Kanemitsu (兼光), fourth master of the mainline, pioneers a broad notare and is read, with Chogi (長義), as the head of Soden-Bizen, the Bizen wing that worked Soshu nie into a jigane that still throws a Bizen utsuri.
Chogi is called the most un-Bizen of Bizen smiths, his ear-shaped mimigata his tell; around him Nagashige (長重), Yoshikage (義景), Tomomitsu (倫光) and Kanenaga (兼長) press the Soshu side by degrees, while Motoshige (元重), of a separate Hatakeda descent, carries an Aoe-tinged squared, slanting ha. Two generations later the Oei revival returns to Kamakura: Yasumitsu (康光) and Morimitsu (盛光), the twin pillars of Oei-Bizen, revive the tachi shape and the choji temper over a wide-waisted koshibiraki-gunome, both finishing in the pointed rosoku-no-shin (candle-wick) boshi that gives the late date away. For the collector the school is a school of discriminations, and to kantei it is to read those fine partitions. The constant midare-utsuri over a bright ko-itame fixes the province; the boshi then sorts the maker, Mitsutada's pointed midare-komi against Nagamitsu's composed ko-maru Sansaku turn, Kagemitsu's contained return, the candle-wick tongue of Oei. Within a single phase the calls turn on a half-step: Nagamitsu's plump crests against Sanenaga's cooler nioiguchi, Kagemasa's freer play against Kagemitsu's tighter order, Nagashige read out of Chogi by a nie that surpasses his brother's. The standing of the best is matched by their patrimony. Mitsutada, Nagamitsu and Kagemitsu each hold National Treasures and stand at the head of Fujishiro's Sai-jo saku; their named blades, the Daihannya Nagamitsu, the Kogaryu Kagemitsu, the O-Kanemitsu, passed through Nobunaga, Ieyasu, Uesugi Kenshin and the great daimyo houses. Because Nagamitsu and the Nanbokucho masters signed and survived in number, Osafune offers what most peerage names cannot, a deep field of Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo work that a patient collector may still realistically hold. Through every register the same hand declares itself: the bright steel, the vivid reflection, and a temper that runs, across three centuries, as the spine of Bizen. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsutada光忠 | 1238-1239 | 60 |
| Nagamitsu長光 | 1274-1304 | 244 |
| Kagemitsu景光 | 1303-1336 | 143 |
| Kanemitsu兼光 | 1323-1370 | 231 |
| Sanenaga眞長 | 1299-1309 | 64 |
Bizen in the Muromachi period
War at home and trade abroad made Muromachi Bizen the busiest forge region in Japan: a century of Sengoku demand after the Ōnin War, and export missions to Ming China carrying blades by the tens of thousands.
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 siteFor one-of-a-kind items such as swords, sword fittings, and antiques, please contact us about a return within 3 days of the item's arrival and ship it back within 8 days. Refunds are issued the same day the returned item arrives.
¥950,000
