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About the maker

Horikawa Kunihiro國廣

A long katana dated Tensho 4 (1576), signed in Hyuga, carries the oldest date of Horikawa Kunihiro, whom the published sources acclaim, with Umetada Myoju, as a founder of the shinto sword (明寿とともに新刀の創始者と称えられる). Tanaka Kunihiro served as a warrior under the Ito family, lords of Obi castle in Hyuga; after that house fell he wandered the provinces, forging where he stopped, and from Keicho 4 (1599) he settled at Ichijo Horikawa in Kyoto, trained many outstanding pupils, and is said to have died in Keicho 19 (1614). The registers make him a son of Sanetada or of Kunimasa. His designation texts open with one sentence repeated for half a century: his work divides broadly into two manners (彼の作風は概ね二様に大別され), the Tensho-uchi of the wandering years, looking to late Soshu and late Seki, and the Keicho-uchi after the settlement, modeled on the top Soshu masters. In technique, and equally in the pupils he raised, the same texts call him the first man of the shinto age (新刀期の第一人者). His jigane is the school's own: itame mixed with mokume and o-itame, the grain standing, in the rough, loose surface the texts name outright the zanguri hada peculiar to Horikawa work (ザングリとした堀川物特有の肌合); over it ji-nie lies minute and thick, and chikei enter finely. From above the machi a mizukage rises obliquely, on one Tokubetsu Juyo wakizashi noted as the mizukage that is his habit (手癖である水影). The habuchi carries a second tell: rough nie stands in uneven patches, the nioi width varies, and of one katana the published commentary writes that the slightly uneven temper and the sinking nioiguchi are Kunihiro's habits of hand (匂口が沈みごころとなるなどの態は、国広の手くせである). He hardens the yakiba past the hamachi and widens the temper at the monouchi. Nearly everything is signed, the Keicho work above all with the large kata-ochi two-character mei beside the long residence signatures. He sets the mekugi-ana low, so that on a two-hole tang the plugged lower hole is the original (国広のくせとして茎の孔が下). The Keicho-uchi rests on a stated ideal: his goal, the sources write, lay in the revival of the Soshu tradition (その理想としたところは、相州伝の復活にあった), and the leaning is strongest toward Shizu (特に志津に対してその傾向が強い). The katana of these years are wide, with little taper, shallow in sori, the chu-kissaki extended or grown to o-kissaki, a build the texts liken to a great Nanbokucho odachi cut down to a katana (恰も南北朝期の大太刀を大磨上げにした刀姿); one Tokubetsu Juyo blade is read as a direct transcription of an o-suriage mumei Shizu, down to the half-worn look of its copied carvings. Over the zanguri kitae he tempers a shallow ko-notare mixed with gunome and pointed teeth, thick in nie, with kinsuji, sunagashi and yubashiri; the boshi runs sugu or shallowly undulating into ko-maru or o-maru, lightly swept. Beside the katana stand the wide, sun-nobi hira-zukuri wakizashi with mitsu-mune, the Momoyama form, where the copying reaches past Shizu: one Tokubetsu Juyo piece is judged in temper and carvings to recall Sadamune, and the manner of Sa is taken in so actively that the texts call one piece Samonji to the life (左文字宛ら). The Tensho-uchi is another smith at first sight: hira-zukuri wakizashi and small uchizori tanto with strong saki-zori, tempered in a gunome-midare mixing togariba and angular teeth, tobiyaki and muneyaki running to a hitatsura-like effect, the nioiguchi brighter than in his later work, and warrior deities, Daikokuten and Bishamonten, carved in a strong chisel. The sources read these blades as late Soshu and late Seki at a glance, and his itinerary is written into the mei themselves: the Furuya signatures of Hyuga, a katana signed as made in his days as a yamabushi (山伏時作), a blade forged at the Ashikaga school in Tensho 18 (1590), a Gifu collaboration with the senior Mino smith Daido, and work cut in Kyoto in Tensho 19 (1591). In carving he is paired with Myoju, in force, the sources allow, even his superior; Honma takes the horimono for the smith's own hand from the one manner running through every period. At the opposite pole stands a small, quiet class: suguha is rare in him (国広には稀れに直刃があり), and these tanto and small wakizashi, their kitae finer than his norm, their nioiguchi tighter and brighter, are read as aimed at Shintogo Kunimitsu, Yukimitsu or Rai Kunimitsu. The texts pass one judgment on all this copying: he chews the model thoroughly and creates without artifice (その対象物をよく咀嚼し、技巧を弄せず創作する), so that even there the zanguri surface, the mizukage and the uneven nioiguchi give his hand away. What he founded outlived him in the men he trained. From the school came Dewa no Daijo Kunimichi, Kuniyasu, Osumi no Jo Masahiro, Echigo no Kami Kunitomo and the elder Kunisada, the record tracing his manner onward in Kunimichi's small-patterned ha and Oya-Kunisada's carving. The last years belong partly to that workshop: among his dated works those of Keicho 15 (1610) are the most numerous, the sources note, a year falling by the traditional reckoning near his eighty-ninth; of this period one text concludes there is no way to take it but as almost entirely the disciples' daisaku and daimei (殆んど弟子達の代作であり、代銘と考えるより以外はない). The texts set this sharply apart from forgery: supervision was strict, and the blades of these years show no falling-off. Fujishiro rates him Sai-jo saku. Of one hundred forty-eight designated works on record, one hundred forty-seven are signed and none unsigned; the single blade counted otherwise bears his large two-character mei beside the gold-inlaid cutting test of Yamano Kaemon Nagahisa, dated Kanbun 6 (1666), rare on his work. Twelve blades are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony outside the market, and twelve more are prewar Juyo Bijutsuhin; nine are Tokubetsu Juyo and one hundred thirteen Juyo, one hundred twenty-two blades in those two tiers. The tachi he dedicated to the Hataeda Hachimangu in Keicho 2 (1597), with an itomaki tachi koshirae transmitted as the donation of Emperor Go-Mizunoo, remains in the shrine's keeping. The provenance runs through the houses of his own story and of the country: blades handed down in the Hyuga Ito he had served; the sidearm of Iki Nagato no Kami Tadasumi, chief retainer of the Okayama Ikeda; pieces of the Tosa Yamauchi and of the great Shimazu house, one old scabbard inscribed for the use of lord Mitsuhisa (光久公御用); transmissions reaching Toyotomi Hideyori and the Imperial Family; order pieces for Nagaoka Okimoto of the Hosokawa and the connoisseur Sawada Doen. What a private collector may realistically encounter is the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tier, and even there a Kunihiro is held closely, coming to market only from time to time; when one appears, it carries on its nakago the signed hand of the smith with whom the new sword begins.

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