¥580,000

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About the maker

Nio Kiyotsuna清綱

The Niō school of Suō Province is traditionally said to have begun around the Hōen era (1135–1141) with Kiyozane or Kiyohira as its founder, but the published sources record that no securely attributable work by either survives, so Kiyotsuna is now regarded "in effect as the school's founder" (事実上の祖). His oldest dated work, and the touchstone against which the first generation is read, is a *tachi* signed in a written-out inscription, "Bun'ei 2, third month, Kiyotsuna" (文永二年三月 清綱, 1265), preserved at Itsukushima Shrine; after it the same signature continues without interruption through the Muromachi period and into the *shintō* era, the name borne by generation after generation. The Niō name is most persuasively held to derive from the school's residence in Niho-shō within the province, though one tradition has the first Kiyotsuna cut a chain with a sword of his own making to free the Niō Guardian Kings from a temple fire, a pun the name itself carries. He works late in the Kamakura period, the well-documented main generation of the line, and his hand sits between the Yamashiro of Rai and the Yamato heartland. His is a Yamato-leaning provincial make, and the published sources are explicit about why: Suō Province held a heavy concentration of temple estates, including lands of Tōdai-ji, so that the "strong Yamato color" (大和色が強い) of the Niō manner is understood as the fruit of exchange with the Yamato heartland. The *tachi* is slender and high in the *shinogi*, the *kasane* somewhat thick, the curvature marked at the hips with the koshizori of a late-Kamakura blade; the *tantō* is *hira-zukuri* with a slight *uchizori*. Over a forging of *itame* with a little *mokume* mixed in, the grain flows overall and in places flows strongly toward *masame*, the *hada* standing finely. The temper is a narrow *suguha* carrying small *ko-ashi* and small *gunome* in a continuous run, with *ko-nie* attached; *sunagashi*, and at times *kinsuji*, move along it. The whole reads as quiet and controlled rather than flamboyant. What the judges single out as the school's own individuality, the features that separate Niō from the Yamashiro and Yamato *suguha* work it otherwise resembles, the published sources state outright: "the *shirake-utsuri* stands and the *hamon* turns *urumi*, and in these the individuality of the school is recognized" (白け映りが立ち、刃文がうるむ点に、同派の個性が認められる). The whitish *shirake-utsuri* rises in the *jigane*, faint and unlike a bright reflection, and it is paired with an *urumi*, a softly clouded *nioiguchi*: the base of the temper tightens while the upper half clouds, the bright *nioiguchi* of the Rai and Tegai *suguha* giving way here to something moister and more subdued. The *bōshi* runs straight and turns back in a small *ko-maru*. These are not bright effects but quiet ones, and it is precisely their quietness, named in the steel and in the line, that fixes the attribution. The school is read in two registers off one coherent manner. The signed *tachi* and *tantō* carry a finely-chiseled two-character *mei* toward the *mune* and the original *taka-no-ha* file marks; the published sources call the characters "the typical old hand of Kiyotsuna" (古い手の清綱の典型) and assign the signed pieces to the first generation, taking care to note when both file marks and signature are preserved distinctly. Against these stand the unsigned *ō-suriage* blades, attributed to the school by the same evidence read in reverse, the flowing-to-*masame* standing *hada*, the *shirake-utsuri* and the *urumi* of the temper. Of one such *katana* the sources write that these points conspicuously express the traits of "the Niō school, and Kiyotsuna in particular" (二王派、就中、清綱の特色が顕著にあらわれている). One Jūyō *tachi* of the earliest, fully signed type is judged to retain so little fatigue that it "clearly expresses not only this smith's manner but also the characteristic traits of the school" (同工のみならず同派の特色がよくあらわれている); a rare *ubu* signed *tantō* survives to anchor the form. The records distinguish this late-Kamakura hand from the Nanbokuchō and Muromachi Kiyotsuna who carried the name forward, the Kenmu 2 (1335) *tantō* signed Bōshū Kuga-shō Kiyotsuna marking the line's continuation. His place in the wider record is that of a western provincial founder whose manner is legible precisely because it is mixed. The flowing, *masame*-leaning *hada* is the Yamato inheritance the texts tie to Suō's temple lands; the narrow *suguha* base looks toward the Yamashiro of Rai; and it is the *shirake-utsuri* and the *urumi* together, not either alone, that the judges set against both to place the school. Kiyotsuna's standing, flowing *hada* clouds into *shirake* in the *ji* and *urumi* in the *ha*, a quieter, moister effect than the clear bright *suguha* of Rai or the tight Yamato grain of Tegai, and that pairing is the tell the published commentary returns to again and again. He stands, in the school's own telling, as its first knowable hand, the generation by which the rest are measured. The weight of designation behind his name is real but slight in number, as befits a provincial line whose securely attributable corpus is small: a single Tokubetsu Juyo *tachi* of the early signed type, several Jūyō blades signed and *mumei*, two Important Cultural Properties, and three prewar Important Art Objects (Jūyō-Bijutsuhin) among the touchstones. The provenance recorded against the blades is distinguished where it survives: the Important Art Object *tachi* now in the Sano Art Museum was held at the time of its prewar recognition by Tokugawa Iesato, head of the Tokugawa house, while another signed *tachi* descends to the Seikadō from the Osaka collection of Kajima Isao, recognized in 1939. The dated touchstone *tachi* remains at Itsukushima Shrine. Most of what survives is held, not traded: the Important Cultural Properties are patrimony, kept in shrine and institutional hands, and even the Tokubetsu Juyo and Jūyō blades of recorded whereabouts come to the market only rarely. A signed Kiyotsuna with its *taka-no-ha* file marks and old two-character *mei* intact is among the rarer things a collector of provincial Kamakura work could hope to encounter, appearing from time to time and with patience, a landmark when it does.

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