¥380,000

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About the school

Horikawa School堀川派

At Ichijo Horikawa in Kyoto, from Keicho 4 (1599), Horikawa Kunihiro gathered the pupils whose work the published sources name with his own as the opening of the *shinto* age. Kunihiro himself reached forging late and by a roundabout road. Born Tanaka and serving as a warrior under the Ito of Obi castle in Hyuga, he wandered the provinces after that house fell, forging where he stopped, his earliest dated blade cut in Hyuga in Tensho 4 (1576); his itinerant *Tensho-uchi* looked to late Soshu and late Seki, often run toward a *hitatsura*-like effect over devotional carving. The settlement in Kyoto changed that. There his stated aim, the sources write, lay in the revival of the *Soshu-den* tradition, the leaning strongest toward Shizu, and around that ideal he trained the men who carried his manner forward: Dewa no Kami Kunimichi, Kuniyasu, Osumi no Jo Masahiro, Echigo no Kami Kunitomo, the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke, with later and minor hands reaching Settsu, Echizen and Edo. Many of them, born like the master at Obi, followed him from Hyuga to the capital. The shared vocabulary is read first in the steel. The school forges an *itame* mixed with *mokume* that stands up, the grain raised into the loose, granular surface the commentaries name outright, the *zanguri* hada particular to Horikawa work, with *ji-nie* lying thick and *chikei* entering; on many blades a *mizukage* rises obliquely from the *machi*. Over that ground the prime manner is the Keicho-shinto *sugata*, wide with little taper and an extended *chu-kissaki* or *o-kissaki*, the build likened to a Nanbokucho *odachi* cut down, tempered in a *notare* and *gunome* with thick *nie*, *sunagashi* and long *kinsuji*, the *nioiguchi* often sinking into *shizumi*. Within that frame the pupils diverge sharply. Kunimichi runs the flamboyant Shizu copy fully out and turns his *boshi* pointed in the Mishina manner, the Sanpin *boshi* the school otherwise does not show. Masahiro keeps the same *Soshu-den* worked at lower temperature, his temper calm and his *mokume* conspicuous; Kuniyasu and Kunitsugu stand closest of all to the master and signed for him. Kunitomo turns alone toward late Seki, his *gunome* round-headed and his chisel the finest in the group, and the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke carry the *zanguri* steel south into Osaka, the latter keeping the Ishido clove he was born to. Hiroyuki holds suguha over a blackish steel that recalls old Yamato, and the two Echizen Kunikiyo forge a dark, dense *hokkoku-gane* under a calm *chu-suguha*. A collector seeks Horikawa because the school stands at a hinge: Kunihiro is read as the first hand of the new-sword age, and the line he taught runs forward into the Osaka tradition through Kunisada and Kunisuke and into Echizen through Kunikiyo. To *kantei* the work, read the steel first, the standing *zanguri* surface and the oblique *mizukage*, then the sinking *nioiguchi* and the *Soshu*-revival *notare* with its *sunagashi* and *kinsuji*; the individual hand declares itself in the departures, Kunimichi's pointed *boshi*, Kunitomo's Seki *gunome* and compact tang, Kuniyasu's reversed file marks and two-character mei, Hiroyuki's *kiri-yasuri*. The founder and his closest pupils sit at the top of the line, Kunihiro signing almost everything he made, the large *kata-ochi* two-character mei beside his long residence signatures; because Kuniyasu, Masahiro, Kunitsugu and Hiromi worked as his *daisaku*, a share of the blades signed Kunihiro are in fact theirs. Provenance runs through the houses of the founder's own story and of the country, the Hyuga Ito he had served, the Shimazu of Kagoshima, the Imperial Family and Toyotomi Hideyori, with the *tachi* Kunihiro dedicated to the Hataeda Hachimangu still in the shrine's keeping. A signed Horikawa blade reaches a private collection only from time to time, carrying on its *nakago* the hand with which the new sword begins.

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