¥7,500,000

Tracked across 76 dealers worldwide · price history · sold archive

Specifications

About the maker

Tegai Kanenaga包永

For Kanenaga (包永) of Yamato the published commentary of the NBTHK returns, blade after blade, to one standing judgment: his manner "is the strongest in nie among Yamato works, the nioiguchi bright, and the jigane notably clear" (大和物の中では最も沸の強い), and beside the nie, the figure: "many of his blades present a dignified figure of high bearing" (凜然として格調の高い). He is the founder of the Tegai school, one of the five lineages of Yamato, which resided and forged outside the Tegaimon (転害門), the west main gate of Todai-ji, thought to have served the temple. The reference works place him around the Shoo era (1288 to 1293), but the published sources repeatedly argue he goes back further: a tanto dated Karyaku 4 (1329) survives by Kanekiyo of the second generation's circle, and his own workmanship points earlier, so his activity is read from the middle into the late Kamakura period. The name was then carried by successive generations into the Muromachi period. The construction leads in his work. The shinogi stands high and the shinogi-ji is cut wide, and nearly everything surviving is a suriage tachi of standard width, keeping its koshizori and closing in a chu-kissaki. The hamon is a suguha-cho bent in shallow notare, ko-gunome mixing in, the nioi deep; along the habuchi the edge frays into hotsure, with uchinoke, kuichigai-ba and nijuba, yubashiri drifting into the ji, kinsuji and sunagashi running through the ha. What the sources single out within this activity is the nie itself, especially strong compared with the other schools: "beautiful nie that is rounded and lustrous" (つぶらで輝きのある美しい沸). The boshi continues sugu, strongly swept with hakikake, ending yakizume or turning back small in ko-maru. The jigane is itame, mixed with mokume in places, flowing along the ha and tending toward masame, with thick ji-nie, chikei entering frequently, and the steel bright and clear. Around the monouchi the yakihaba often widens and the nie abruptly strengthens. Some blades temper the omote and ura differently, the trait typified by the Meibutsu Konotegashiwa Kanenaga (児手柏包永). The record also documents a quieter class, blades in a quiet, low-tempered suguha styling (焼きの低い穏やかな直刃仕立て), at times narrowing to hoso-suguha. One such katana, bearing the red-lacquer attribution of Honami Koson and transmitted at Nagono Shrine, is read as "a comparatively calm type among Kanenaga's works" (穏やかな部類の包永); even there the thick ji-nie, the chikei and the round, shining nie carry the attribution. His work survives in two registers. Comparatively many signed tachi remain, the sources note, nearly all suriage with the two-character mei left at the tip of the nakago; the ubu pieces are counted at a mere two. The signature itself is a documented tell: the character Kane compressed vertically, the second vertical stroke of Naga drawn out extremely long. To the doubt sometimes raised over their near-uniform suriage state the NBTHK answers that shortening like tachi yields like nakago: it "does not warrant suspicion" (不審とするに足りない). The other register is the o-suriage mumei katana attributed to him, where kuichigai-ba appears far more often than on the signed blades and the judgment rides on the quality of the nie: of one such blade the published record writes that on close inspection it surpasses typical Tegai work, the nioi conspicuously deeper and the gleaming ha-nie thick (通常の手掻以上に一際匂深く光美しい刃沸が厚くつき); of another, that its workmanship connects directly to his signed works. The blades gathered here are the founder's: the second generation, of the Nanbokucho period, is catalogued separately, and the later generations part company readily, their steel turning generally whitish (白けごころ) and the nioiguchi tightening toward ko-nie, against the founder's bright, heavy nie. Within Yamato the name set beside his is Shikkake Norinaga, and the separation runs along Kanenaga's own line: he holds the suguha-cho through its shallow notare, his ko-gunome never stringing into connected rows, and he lets yubashiri, uchinoke and nijuba play above the habuchi with unusual freedom. The judgments reach beyond the province. Honma observed of the first generation's nie that "at times one sees brilliant, sparkling nie of the kind observed in Awataguchi Hisakuni" (まま粟田口久国に見るような輝く沸を見る), and the eighth Tokubetsu Juyo session writes of one signed tachi that its beautifully shining nie rivals the upper Soshu masters (相州上工). Of a shogunal-gift tachi the record concludes simply that it is "outstanding among his works" (同作中の白眉である). Kanenaga is rated Jo-jo saku by Fujishiro, and sixty-seven designated works stand on record, among them one National Treasure, five Important Cultural Properties, nine Juyo Bijutsuhin, eight Tokubetsu Juyo and forty-one Juyo. These upper tiers are patrimony, held in shrines, museums and long-private collections, never to trade; recorded holders include the Tokyo National Museum, Himeji Jinja, Shijonawate Jinja, the Sano Art Museum and the Tokugawa Art Museum. The provenance is deep, twenty-five blades carrying a recorded history. One tachi went from the shogun Tokugawa Ieshige to Mizuno Izumi-no-kami Tadayuki and later to Inukai Bokudo; another from Tokugawa Ienari to Sakai Tadanori of Himeji. A signed tachi bears the gold-inlaid possessor mark of Honda Heihachiro Tadatame, that is Tadatoki, husband of Senhime; the folded-back-mei katana of the Ise Ishikawa family is transmitted as Horio Mosuke's; a den katana carries a gold-inlaid cutting test of Tenna 2 (1682), four bodies severed. The rolls extend to the Date and Hachisuka families and the Imperial Family. For a collector the realistic field is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, forty-nine blades in all. Signed pieces are unusually numerous for so early a smith, eighteen against ten mumei attributions here, yet a tachi with the two-character mei changes hands rarely; what the market more often shows is the o-suriage den attribution, judged, as the published sources always judge it, on the round and lustrous nie.

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