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About the maker

Nobukuni Shigekane重包

A wakizashi of Hoei 7 (1710) signed "made of namban-tetsu, an emulation of Fudo Kuniyuki" marks the working life of Nobukuni Shigekane, the Chikuzen smith whom the published sources rank highest in technical skill within his school. He was the son of Nobukuni Yoshikane, born in Enpo 1 (1673), known by the common name Harada Sukeroku and also Sukezaemon, and he worked at Fukuoka as a retained smith of the Kuroda house. His line was the Chikuzen branch of the Kyoto Nobukuni school, which had moved west and flourished as Kuroda kakae-ko from the Keicho era down to the beginning of Meiji; the published record names its representative makers Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane, and of that company writes that "Shigekane in particular ranked high in technical skill within the group" (重包は同派中、とくに技価が高く). In Kyoho 6 (1721), when he was forty-nine, he was summoned by the eighth shogun Yoshimune to Edo and set to forge at the Hama Palace beside Mondo-no-sho Masakiyo of Satsuma and Ippei Yasuyo; his skill recognized, he was granted the single hollyhock crest to cut into the nakago, and on returning home he renamed himself Masakane, dying in Kyoho 13 (1728) at the age of fifty-six. His representative hand is a flamboyant choji-midare carried over a well-worked itame. On the daisho of the thirty-first session the jigane flows strongly into masame and mixes mokume, ji-nie adheres, chikei enters, and a faint midare-utsuri stands; over it the yakihaba is wide, a choji-midare into which ko-choji and ko-gunome are interwoven, ashi and yo entering well to a brilliant effect, with nie, fine kinsuji and sunagashi. So showy a temper, the published sources observe, can at a glance suggest a high-grade work of the Ishido lineage (一見石堂一派の上工作を思わせる); but they draw the kantei line at once. Against Ishido his ji-nie and chikei are the more conspicuous, while within the ha the nie is pronounced and the kinsuji and sunagashi stand out, and it is exactly there, the text concludes, that "the characteristics of Shigekane also appear" (ここに重包の特色もあらわれている). The boshi runs midare-komi into ko-maru, tending on the ura toward an o-maru flavor, with hakikake. The jigane is what carries that distinction. It is an itame, at times flowing markedly into masame and mixing ko-mokume, the ji-nie thick and the chikei plain, and it is on this steel that the faint midare-utsuri rises, the trace of old Bizen and Yamashiro the Ishido smiths did not keep so clearly. Where the temper grows quieter the hada becomes a dense ko-itame, as on the Hoei 7 wakizashi. Through the ha the activity is constant rather than gathered into set patterns: ko-ashi and yo enter, sunagashi runs, kinsuji appear, and on the Hama Palace wakizashi the nioiguchi is bright and clear. The horimono are a part of the picture, the Taki-Fudo and Kurikara cut in relief within the grooves of the two utsushi blades, deeply chiselled and dense, an iconography fitted to the Fudo Kuniyuki he was copying. Within one prime period his work divides into two registers the texts present together. The first is the flamboyant choji-midare just described, the showy side of his range. The second is a quieter manner tied to his fame as a copyist of meibutsu: a ko-notare or ko-gunome mixing a pointed tendency and choji-like elements, ko-ashi entering, the nioiguchi deep or brightly clear. The published sources record that he was adept at utsushi-mono and that there are blades bearing added inscriptions such as "Fudo Kuniyuki utsushi" and "Masamune utsushi" (「不動国行写」・「正宗写」などと添銘したものがあり、写し物も得意としている). The Hoei 7 wakizashi is the named example: its ko-choji-and-ko-gunome temper is called rare for him, a deliberate reach toward the Fudo Kuniyuki, and the text judges the attempt a success of fine workmanship. His designated blades are all signed, three of them carrying the long signature Chikushu-ju Minamoto Nobukuni Shigekane boldly cut on an ubu nakago, one adding the date and circumstances of manufacture in three lines. The utsushi project is what most clearly sets him apart, because it is documented as well as visible. The daisho of the thirty-first session bears no added inscription, yet the published sources transmit it as a copy of the meibutsu Nikko Ichimonji and find that intention fully legible in its flamboyant tempering. The Hama Palace wakizashi goes further: it is "a copy of the celebrated Fudo Kuniyuki" (この名物「不動国行」の写し), and it corresponds closely in both dimensions and carvings to the honka recorded under that name in the Kotoku Toezu (光徳刀絵図に所載されている), while the inscription cut into its tang fixes that it was forged at the Hama Palace on that occasion. His own bright, clear ji and ha, his conspicuous ji-nie and his pronounced ha-nie are what separate these copies from the Ishido work their outline resembles, and they place him securely as the leading hand of the Chikuzen Nobukuni line rather than a borrower of another school's manner. Fujishiro grades him Jo saku, and four designated works stand on the official record, all of them Juyo and all signed. The provenance is led by the Hama Palace wakizashi of the fifty-ninth session, called "a particularly painstaking work made in response to a shogunal command" (台命を受けた特別の入念作) and transmitted, in the words of the published record, as "a blade handed down within the Great Tokugawa house" (大徳川家に伝来した一口); it survives both as a sword and as a document of the Kyoho forging at Edo. The others passed through Tokyo and Fukuoka collectors of recorded whereabouts. His record carries no higher cultural-property designation, so the question of patrimony locked beyond the market does not arise; what a collector may realistically encounter is a Juyo blade of this small, even body of work, signed and often dated, coming to light only from time to time and a notable occasion when one does. For its rarity and for the historical episode it preserves, the shogunal-command wakizashi is among the more telling things a student of shinto could meet, and the four together give an exact measure of the technical level the published sources credit to the head of the Chikuzen Nobukuni school.

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