Hojoji Masateru katana
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About the maker
Hojoji Masateru正照
On a Juyo katana of the thirty-first session the published commentary writes that the blade is tempered in the maker's own specialty, a chu-suguha, the nioi deep and the ko-nie well applied, kinsuji entering the temper and the nioiguchi bright, and closes by calling it an especially satisfying blade by Masateru. Echizen-no-kami Tachibana Masateru was a swordsmith of the Edo-period Hojoji line, the Soshu-derived school whose root lay in Tajima and whose branch was carried into the Shinto period at Edo. The published sources transmit that he studied under Hojoji Masahiro, received the court title Echizen-no-kami, and later resided at Akita in Ugo province, and they reckon him an accomplished hand within the group (一門中の上手). His long signatures are cut on the sashi-omote below the mekugi-ana and toward the mune, reading Echizen-no-kami Hojoji Tachibana Masateru, and on a small number of blades a chrysanthemum crest is chiselled above them in fine line work. His characteristic hand is the middle suguha the judges name his specialty. Of his work the published sources write that his suguha pieces are especially excellent (殊に直刃の作には優れたものがある), and elsewhere that among his suguha there are works of outstanding quality (特に直刃の出来には優れたものがある), and they name the chu-suguha the manner in which he excelled (彼の得意とした中直刃). The line is built on a chu-suguha into which ko-gunome ashi enter, and on the broader works the suguha takes on a slight notare tendency, gunome-ashi entering vigorously through the upper half. The nioi is deep, ko-nie adheres well, the habuchi shows hotsure in places, fine sunagashi runs along it and kinsuji appear, and over all of this the nioiguchi reads bright and clear. The boshi runs straight and turns in a small ko-maru, on one ura showing slight hakikake. The jigane is a tightly forged ko-itame mixed at times with mokume, the steel reading good in the published commentary; over it the ji-nie adheres, finely and abundantly on his best work, with chikei entering. The stance is the typical Kanbun-Shinto figure, shinogi-zukuri with iori-mune, the sori shallow and the kissaki a compact chu, the mihaba showing a marked taper from base to tip and at times a feeling of funbari; one of the later katana is built instead with mitsu-mune and a somewhat deeper curvature. Horimono, where present, is cut on both faces, a koshi-hi with soe-hi on one blade and a bo-hi with soe-hi finished in maru-dome on another. The whole reads, in the published account, as the typical high-quality output of the Hojoji line (法城寺一派の典型的な出来口をあらわしている), the workmanship of a Kanbun-Shinto figure outstanding in both ji and ha (典型的な寛文新刀の姿を示し、地刃の出来も傑出している). Within this one prime manner a single register stands apart, keyed to the nakago rather than to a change of style: the chrysanthemum crest cut in fine chisel above the long signature. The published sources observe that the meaning of the crest is not clear (如何なる意味かが明白でなく) and that among his other works examples bearing it are scarcely seen, which makes it the hinge of the generation question. Though it had been transmitted that the carving of the crest was the practice of a second smith of the same name (同名二代と伝えられている), the published commentary judges from a first-generation masterwork, whose standing suguha it calls superb, that the crest was a practice from the first generation onward, and calls that blade one of the masterpieces of the first-generation Masateru (初代正照の傑作の一本). The signed katana run from the Kanbun years through the later Edo period; one of the chrysanthemum-crest blades carries, below Masateru's own signature, a separate gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription by Maejima Hachiro Tomotsugu recording two bodies and a wakige cut, and on its ura the long signature of Izumo-no-daijo Fujiwara Yoshitsugu, with whom it was jointly made. The published sources place him by his school and its resemblances rather than by contrast. They read the Hojoji line as standing in some manner of relationship to Nagasone Kotetsu, writing that there are works of the school so reminiscent of Kotetsu that one might feel as though viewing Kotetsu himself (殆んど虎徹を見るような作があり), the jigane good and the temper, whether in gunome or in suguha, deep in nioi with ko-nie well adhering and bright and clear in appearance (互の目の刃文、直刃の刃文にも、匂深く小沸がよくついて明るく冴えた), the boshi too closely resembling Kotetsu's manner. His own grounded tells, the chu-suguha with its ko-gunome ashi, the deep nioi and bright nioiguchi, the dust-fine ji-nie over a tight ko-itame, set him within that line as one of its more accomplished suguha hands, the resemblance the judges draw running upward to the great Edo master of the nie-laden temper. The Edo Hojoji circle around him was close: several extant blades record a three-smith collaboration by Masateru together with Kazusa-no-suke Kaneshige and Sukekuro Kanetsune (上総介兼重と助九郎兼常との三人合作の遺例が数口現存), and beyond these survive joint works with Kaneshige and the fourth Yasutsugu and with Izumo-no-daijo Yoshitsugu, from which the sources infer that these smiths maintained close ties. Fujishiro rates him Jo saku, and his designated record stands at five Juyo katana, none carried to a higher tier; four are signed in his own hand and one, read by the judges as a signed first-generation work, carries the chrysanthemum crest. No National Treasure or Important Cultural Property is among them, and no early provenance to a daimyo house is recorded for these blades, so the whole of his designated output sits in the tradeable tiers. Even so, the figures are not for-sale counts: most designated blades, in private hands as in public, are held rather than traded, and a signed Echizen-no-kami Hojoji Masateru comes to the market only from time to time, more rarely still one carrying a documented cutting-test inscription or a gassaku mei. The published sources call his best suguha work a typical high-quality example of the Hojoji line and, on the thirty-first-session katana, an especially satisfying blade by Masateru (正照快心の一口), and on the fortieth-session katana a superior piece among his extant works (同作中の優品); a blade of that standing is the kind a collector encounters seldom and with patience, valued as much for its place in the Edo Hojoji record as for the bright suguha it shows.
