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About the school

Hojoji School法城寺派

The Hojoji name (法城寺) begins as a place in Tajima province, where, the published sources relate, the Nanbokucho *naginata* master Kunimitsu lived at that spot and so took the place for his name, the man and the locality becoming one. The Meikan records a first generation of this Kunimitsu working in the Joji era (1362-68) and a second at Oei, the koto root from which the line descends. The old genealogies count this Tajima Kunimitsu among the three great pupils of Soshu Sadamune, a claim the NBTHK reports only to set aside as wanting plausibility and unwarranted, the texts finding the influence of Bizen work rather the stronger. From this Tajima stock an Edo branch carried the name into the *shinto* period, where it grew, in the words of the published sources, into the largest body of swordsmiths active in Edo through the Kanbun and Enpo years. Its founder was *Omi no Kami* Hojoji Tachibana Masahiro, named the head of the group and its most accomplished hand, and after him followed *Tajima no Kami* Sadakuni, *Higo no Kami* Yoshitsugu, *Echizen no Kami* Masateru, and Kunimasa, with Kawachi no Kami Nagakuni filed by common opinion within the same lineage, the whole bearing the *Soshu*-derived idiom out of Tajima and into a productive Edo workshop of many capable smiths. Two manners separate the koto root from the Edo branch, and the members describe each in its own vocabulary. The Tajima Kunimitsu survives almost wholly as *mumei* attribution: flamboyant *choji-midare* that can at first sight be mistaken for Bizen Ichimonji, settled against Bizen by the markedly stronger *nie* of *ji* and *ha*, *chikei* entering a large-patterned standing forging, and *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* worked incessantly through the *ha*, the build that of the long converted *naginata* with thin *kasane* and a large *kissaki*, the *boshi* often ending *yakizume* from the filing of the *mune*. The Edo smiths share a different and unified hand. Over a tightly forged *ko-itame*, at times mixed with *mokume*, the *ji-nie* lies dust-fine and *chikei* enter, and the temper resolves into two registers across the branch: a *suguha* base, deep in *nioi* with *ko-nie* gathering, in which Masahiro, Sadakuni, Masateru, and Nagakuni excel, the *nioiguchi* bright and *nijuba* mixing in places; and a *gunome* hand, most conspicuous in Yoshitsugu, whose connected *gunome* run into a rosary-bead *juzu-ba* over *ko-notare*. Through nearly every Edo blade the *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* run, and the *boshi* turns back straight into *ko-maru*. The divergences are of degree: Sadakuni falls a small margin short of Masahiro in the clarity of the *jihada* and the strength of the *nioiguchi*; Nagakuni links his *gunome* into broader *midare*; Masateru keys his *chu-suguha* to a chrysanthemum crest cut above the signature. To *kantei* Hojoji Edo work, the published sources direct the eye to the deep *nioi* and bright *nioiguchi* over a tight, *chikei*-laden *ko-itame*, the *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* that keep the quiet *suguha* from reading flat, and the long thick-chisel signatures cut on the *sashi-omote*; the resemblance the judges draw runs upward to Nagasone Kotetsu and *Kazusa no Suke* Kaneshige, the Edo masters of the *nie*-laden temper, whose level the best work of Masahiro, Yoshitsugu, and Nagakuni is said to approach, the Kotetsu group and the Hojoji line held to stand in a fairly close relationship through the shared Yamano testing house. For the koto Kunimitsu the tells are the well-covered *ji-nie* with weak *utsuri* and the *ko-nie* of the *ha*, the points that part his work from the Bizen it resembles. The standing of the members ranges with their tier: Kunimitsu is the school's apex, graded *Jo-jo saku*, his blades vouched for across centuries by Honami attribution inscriptions and his finest tracing to the Akimoto and Maeda houses, with the tea master Kobori Enshu among his owners; Masahiro and the Edo hands are graded *Jo saku*, attainable signed *shinto* names whose blades carry their pedigree in the gold-inlaid Yamano cutting-test inscriptions rather than in named daimyo provenance. Yoshitsugu's Satsuma service for the Shimazu house left its trace on the later Kagoshima smiths, and a signed Hojoji blade, above all one bearing a documented test-cut, comes to the market only from time to time, rewarding patience.

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