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About the maker

Seki Ujifusa氏房

Hida no Kami Fujiwara Ujifusa was the son of Wakasa no Kami Ujifusa, born at Seki in Mino in Eiroku 10 and first called Kawamura Isechiyo, later Heijuro. The published sources follow his career closely: a page to Oda Nobutaka who became a ronin after his lord's death, then a retainer of Sakuma Masakatsu in Owari, he moved to Kiyosu and began forging swords from about Tensho 17. In Tensho 19, when the Kampaku Toyotomi Hidetsugu took Kiyosu, Ujifusa, Masatsune and Nobutaka were received at Jurakudai and each presented a blade, and Ujifusa was granted the title Hida no Kami. Those three smiths were counted in later generations as the Owari Sansaku, the makers who established Owari shinto under the Tokugawa. About Keicho 15 to 16 he moved to Nagoya and served Tokugawa Yoshinao as a retained smith; he passed the headship to Bizen no Kami Ujifusa in Kan'ei 8 and died that year at sixty-five. Three generations worked under the name, the first holding Hida no Kami, the second Bizen no Kami, and the third again Hida no Kami, and it is the first generation, the founder, who carries the line's reputation. His characteristic hand is a broad, unrestrained *notare*, the temper the published sources name his particular forte. On a wide-bodied katana with shallow *sori* and an extended large *kissaki*, the shape they call the archetypal Keicho-shinto *sugata*, he tempers a generous *o-notare* as the main tone, mixing *gunome* and small *notare* into it, with *ashi* and *yo* entering, *ko-nie* well attached, and patches of uneven *mura-nie* and *yubashiri* breaking the line. The same broad manner runs across his *naginata* and, on his *sun-nobi hira-zukuri* wakizashi, widens into a box-tinged *hako-gatta notare*. One such wakizashi the sources call a temper that 'fully and without reserve displays this smith's forte' (同工の本領を遺憾なく発揮した). On a dated Keicho 11 katana the same open *notare* mixed with *gunome* is named a typical work that clearly shows Ujifusa's own character. The *jigane* under that temper is a standing one. Over an *itame* that tends to rise, at times a large *itame* or a coarse *zanguri* *jigane*, mixed with *mokume* and flowing toward *masame* along the *shinogi-ji*, the *ji-nie* gathers. It is the grain of the Mino Seki body from which he came, and on his best signed katana the published sources read in it the *Shizu* manner, calling one blade the finest of his work and the piece that 'most clearly manifests the Shizu style of his native Mino' (志津風を最もよく現わしている). The *boshi* over this *ji* is tempered deeply, turning in *notare-komi* to a *ko-maru* or *o-maru* with a long return and *hakikake*; on his tanto and several other blades it rises instead in *tsukiage* to a pointed tip, the Sanpin manner of the Mino Mishina smiths. His katana carry a plain *bo-hi* run through, his naginata a *naginata-hi* with *soe-hi*, while figural and devotional carving, which the sources call rare for him, appears only on the *hira-zukuri* wakizashi. Within this one hand the published sources draw out two further faces. The first is his most numerous, the wide, shallow-curved, large-pointed body that recalls the look of greatly shortened Nanbokucho blades, qualified, the judges caution, by the *sakizori* that fixes it as Keicho work; among such pieces some, they note, resemble at a glance the work of Muramasa. The second is rare, and the sources twice mark it as unusual for him: a bright *chu-suguha* worked with *hotsure*, *nijuba* and fine *kinsuji* over a finely applied *ji-nie* *jigane*, the *boshi* deep and pointed. On these suguha katana the judges read a private aspiration to the superior Soshu masters, naming Go and Samonji, and find a forging well refined and carrying 'an archaic flavor as though he had privately aspired to the superior Sagami masters' (相州上工に私淑したような古色の趣). A Keicho 7 tanto presents the Sanpin *boshi* in a way that calls Echizen Yasutsugu to mind, yet the larger-scale *notare* and the stronger, unevenly gathered *nie* are read as Ujifusa's own. What sets him apart is the combination the judges keep returning to. He is a Seki smith by descent, and the standing, flowing *jigane* with *masame* along the *shinogi-ji*, the pointed Sanpin *boshi* and the broad *notare* all carry that Mino root; but the wide, powerful Keicho-shinto body, the deep *nie*, and the reach toward Soshu in his suguha work mark the Owari master who served the Tokugawa rather than the provincial Seki hand. His broad open *notare* distinguishes him from the tighter Mino *gunome*, and his bright deep-*nie* suguha from the plainer straight tempers of his peers; the documented careers of Ujifusa, Masatsune and Nobutaka together, received at Jurakudai and remembered as the Owari Sansaku, place him at the founding of a new tradition rather than at the end of an old one. For the collector he is a well-documented founder rather than a rarity of legend. Fujishiro grades him Jo saku. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the Juyo tier, where signed and frequently dated katana, wakizashi, tanto and naginata of the first generation survive in some number, several bearing Keicho-era dates that the published sources prize, calling them 'valuable material for the study of Hida no Kami Ujifusa' (飛騨守氏房研究の好資料). Because his blades with a Fujiwara Ason signature and a dated tang are uncommon, those dated pieces are held the most instructive of all. Provenance for his work is little recorded, so it is best described simply as held in private hands; a signed first-generation Ujifusa, broad and vigorous and clearly cut with its long signature, comes to market only from time to time, and a dated example is the one a student of Owari shinto would most wish to encounter.

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