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About the school

Muramasa School村正派

Kuwana, in Ise Province, gave the Sengo line its base, and from there the *Muramasa* (村正) name carried the work of late-Muromachi Ise into the Sengoku decades. The oldest extant date in the whole line is Bunki 1 (1501), carried by a *katana* signed "Seshu Kuwana-ju Uemon-no-jo Fujiwara Muramasa saku"; from that anchor the prevailing scheme reads the Bunki pieces as the first generation, the Tenbun as the second, and the Tensho as the third, with the second master held the most skillful and most prolific of the three. The published sources set aside the popular tale that the founder studied under Masamune, calling it an unfounded tradition; the line begins instead near the close of the Muromachi period. Its hand shares common features with Mino, Shimada, and Sue-Soshu, and resembles *Heianjo Nagayoshi* of Kyoto so closely that the judges presume some relationship between the two, while a likeness to the Shimada smiths and to the *Sue-Seki* *Kanesada* is noted as a thing that can confuse a first reading. From the workshop issued the disciples *Masashige* (正重) and *Masazane* (正眞), filed by tradition as students of the *shodai*, who carried the manner forward alongside the Muramasa name itself. The feature the commentary names again and again as the school's own is the matched temper: the *hamon* on *omote* and *ura* align to one mirror-image pattern (*omote-ura soroi*), and the valleys of the *midare* press in toward the cutting edge. To this the masters add box-shaped elements (*hako-midare*), a *gunome* and *notare* base mixed with compound *gunome*, *togariba*, and *yamagata* figures, the *nioiguchi* drawn tight with patchy *ko-nie* in *mura*, and *sunagashi* running frequently; the *boshi* runs *midare-komi* or *sugu* to a *ko-maru*, often swept with *hakikake*. The forms that carry it are the wide *hira-zukuri* *tanto* and *sunnobi* ko-wakizashi with *mitsu-mune*, and the short, strongly *saki-zori* *uchigatana*; the *jigane* is *itame* tending to stand, mixed with flowing and *masame*-inclined grain, the steel dark at times and showing the whitish *shirake* cast the descriptions repeatedly note. Beneath sits the *tanago-bara* *nakago*, the fish-belly swelling that grows pronounced from the second generation, cut with a thick-chisel two-character *mei*. The successors diverge by proportion rather than trick: Masashige opens the same vocabulary out, his grain standing more openly and his *o-gunome* and *nie* carried further; Masazane draws it in, holding box teeth low at the *koshimoto* under a calm *suguha*, his *jihada* closing tighter than his fellow pupil's. Beside the flamboyant rule each smith keeps a quiet register, *tanto* in *suguha* aimed at the *Rai* manner, and an occasional reach toward *hitatsura* with *tobiyaki* and *muneyaki*, never the rule of the work. To *kantei* the school, the matched faces are the first tell: the aligned *omote* and *ura*, the box figures, the valleys pressing to the edge, the tight *nioiguchi* with its patchy *nie*, and the *tanago-bara* *nakago* under the thick *mei* part Muramasa from the Mino, Shimada, and Heianjo hands it otherwise resembles. Within the line the *nakago-mune* decides: cut angular on Muramasa, it rounds out fleshily on Masashige, while Masazane is told from Masashige by his tighter steel. The Sengo reputation for cutting sharpness, with the *midare* valleys driven toward the *ha*, drew the Tokugawa legend that the blades brought calamity on the house; the sources handle it as recorded fact, noting that from the Edo period many signatures were effaced for fear of the name, so that signed *katana* in particular grew comparatively rare, and that one of Masazane's *katana* was cut "Yamashiro Province Masazane" as a deliberate screen for a daimyo recipient. Provenance runs through private and daimyo hands rather than institutional holdings: a first-generation *wakizashi* transmitted as a possession of Oda Nobunaga, a Masazane descended in the Mizuno and Tosa Yamauchi houses, a Lotus Sutra *katana* held in the Nabeshima line. The Nichiren devotion read off some blades, the title *Myoho-renge-kyo* cut into the steel, ties the work to its Ise region. A signed, *ubu* Sengo blade of secure date and matched temper comes to notice only from time to time, the legend that thinned the signatures adding to the call for those that remain.

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