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About the school

Hosho School保昌派

From the close of the Kamakura period into the Nanbokucho, the Hosho school worked in Takaichi District of Yamato Province, the old province whose forging traditions grew up around the great temples of Nara and answered to their need for arms. The line belongs to *Yamato-den*, one of its five schools alongside Tegai, Senjuin, Shikkake and Taima, and like them it carried the conservative temper of a smithing world bound to monastic patronage. Its smiths share the character *Sada* as the common element of their names, among them Sadatsugu, Sadamune, Sadayoshi, Sadakiyo, Sadaoki and Sadamitsu, and the published sources rank Sadamune and Sadayoshi as the two most knowable hands, recording that both styled themselves Hosho Goro. Sadayoshi is the smith who most often inscribes his residence and a working date, anchoring the school to the very end of Kamakura with eras such as Bunpo, Genko and Karyaku; Sadakiyo and Sadaoki follow as the textbook hands through whom the group manner is read in full, while Sadamitsu carries the *masame* idiom forward into the Nanbokucho generations. The forging is where every Hosho smith is known. Across the school the *jigane* becomes an all-over *masame-hada*, the straight grain running cleanly from machi to point and out onto the *mune*, frequently with a flowing *nagare* tendency, the steel dense and refined with *ji-nie* thickly adhered and *chikei* entering along the grain; a *nie-utsuri* stands faintly over the *masame* on the more tightly forged tanto. Over this grain the smiths temper a quiet *suguha*, often a *suguha-cho* carrying a shallow *notare* with small *gunome* and *ko-midare*, the temper not standing apart from the steel but intertwining with it and fraying repeatedly into *hotsure*, gathering *nijuba*, *kuichigai-ba* and *uchinoke* along the *habuchi*, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through and the *nioiguchi* clear. The published commentary names the school habit exactly, that from around the *monouchi* upward the tempered width broadens while the *nie* turns one step stronger. The *masame* runs into the *boshi*, which finishes *yakizume* with vigorous *hakikake*, at times a flame-like form, at times a small *ko-maru* turnback, and the same straight grain tends to open into *ware*. Within this shared vocabulary the hands diverge by degree: Sadayoshi forges the coarser grain with the strongest *nie*, while the slightly later Sadakiyo and Sadaoki read calmer and cleaner, quieter in both *ji* and *ha*. To *kantei* a Hosho blade is to read that pure, total *masame*, for the distinction from the rest of *Yamato-den* is drawn there: Tegai, Senjuin, Shikkake and Taima forge a *masame*-leaning *itame*, while Hosho commits to the complete straight grain, the most conspicuously individual manner of the five Yamato schools. The tang carries the second tell, filed in *higaki*, the cross-hatched cypress-fence pattern, and cut off bluntly at the tip, with a darkish iron color the sources count among Yamato work as a point to be appreciated. Workmanship is uniform enough that the smiths are told apart chiefly by their signatures, so that signed and dated Sadayoshi pieces are the most fixed, while the unsigned *o-suriage katana* given later gold-inlaid or *kiritsuke-mei* attribution are read as Hosho from manner and era. Of the best hands Sadayoshi stands highest, graded *Sai-jo saku* in Fujishiro's ranking, with Sadakiyo and Sadaoki close behind on a thin spine of designated work; tanto predominate throughout the school, the *hira-zukuri* form of slender width and thick *kasane* showing the old inward *uchizori*, with rarer *tachi*, *ken* and *shobu-zukuri* blades among the survivors. Provenance for the group runs through the daimyo houses, the Higo Hosokawa and Date families among them, while the shortened *katana* preserve in their inlay the names of Hon'ami and Umetada appraisers, a school that made its grain its signature.

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