NihontoWatch毛抜形太刀は、平安期に蝦夷の蕨手刀から発展したと云われており、平安中期から後期に掛けて、このスタイルが確立されました。刀剣外装の中で最も古いものの一種とされており、儀礼用のみでなく、当時の実戦刀としても使われていましたが、鎌倉期以降は、主に儀礼用として用いられるようになります。 最大の特色は、柄が刀身と共鉄造りであり、その中央に毛抜形の透かし彫りを施してあることです。 その中で最も有名なのが、奈良県の春日大社に収蔵されている、国宝『金地螺鈿毛抜形太刀』、平安末期を下らない作とされます。 現存品の大半は江戸期の作、それより古い作は、ほとんど見られません。 本作は、生ぶ無銘で、『慶心斎直正』の極めが付されています。 直正は、宮崎姓、大慶直胤門、相馬中村藩の藩工で、越前守を受領、慶心斎と号しました。 相馬中村藩は、陸奥国中村(現在の福島県相馬市)を拠点とし、相馬家が藩主を務めました。 活躍期は、幕末から明治初期、明治維新後は脱刀令、廃刀令が出される世の中となり、刀剣の需要は全く無くなりました。職を奪われた直正は、明治十二年、失意のあまり自死したと云います。 銘は、『慶心斎直正』、『宮崎越前守直正』などと切ります。 寸法二尺一寸二分弱、小板目肌沈み勝ちで無地風となった地鉄は、所々流れて肌立ち、小互の目乱れ主体の刃は、刃縁匂い勝ちで明るく締まり気味、所々二重刃風の沸筋掛かり、刃中小互の目足入る出来です。 刀身と柄、ハバキが一体となっていますので、鐔、切羽等を外す場合、目釘を抜けば、縁、鐺金具等が着脱可能となり、下へ外せます。 昭和二十六年三月の古い登録証は東京登録、兎にも角にも、大珍品の毛抜形太刀、確実に押さえて下さい。
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Shinshinto · Mutsu · around 1864-1865
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At Hamachō in Edo, in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nineteenth, Suishinshi Masahide[[c:1]] gathered the school that would turn Japanese swordmaking back toward its medieval models. Born Kawabe Gihachirō at Akayu in Dewa in 1750, signing first as Suzuki Takahide and then Eikoku, he studied under the Shitahara smith Yoshihide of Musashi, took the name Masahide in An'ei 3, and served the Akimoto house of Yamagata before settling in Edo, where he worked for nearly fifty years. He is the founding figure of the shinshintō and the theorist of the fukko-tō (revival-sword) doctrine, the argument that the sword ought to return to its Kamakura forms. Around that teaching he drew a large body of pupils, among them Taikei Naotane, who would give the revival its fullest practical form, the future second Masayoshi (Hosokawa Morihide), and a wider Edo and provincial following that carried the program into the Mito, Yonezawa, Tsuyama, and Tatebayashi domains. The shared vocabulary of the school is the deliberate reach back into the koto traditions, worked over a tightly forged, often muji-toned ko-itame with thick ji-nie. Masahide's own prime hand was the Ōsaka-utsushi, the surging tōran-midare of Tsuda Sukehiro opening from a long yakidashi and the broad suguha after Inoue Shinkai, betrayed on even his closest copies by a blackish, coarse nie that spills from the ha into the ji. Naotane gave the revival its Bizen and Sōshū faces: a reverse-leaning chōji-midare with angular kaku-gunome and saka-ashi, modeled on the late-Kamakura Osafune masters Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu and anchored by a consciously revived midare-utsuri that no ordinary shinshintō steel carries, set beside a Sōshū notare with its whorled uzumaki-hada and coarse, striped nie. The pupils divided this inheritance along their own lines. Jirōtarō Naokatsu, Naotane's adopted son, took a Bizen-den led by a kataochi-gunome from Kanemitsu with a pervasive saka-gakari slant and chōji- or midare-utsuri in the ji.
Suishinshi Masatsugu reproduced Naotane's two traditions, Sōshū and Bizen, down to the cut of his signature. Through Masayoshi the Bizen current passed to his heir Hosokawa Masamori of Tsuyama, whose chōji clusters mixed with gunome-chōji and togariba. The Osaka wave traveled separately into Mito through Naoe Sukemasa, who set a Shinkai-styled suguha and a Sukehiro tōran over a clear ko-itame, while Chōunsai Tsunatoshi of the Uesugi service carried a nioi-deki chōji mixed with gunome, suguha, and tōran-midare, often with carving by his own hand. To kantei the school is to weigh a tradition consciously copied against the period marks the copy cannot shed: the constant of the line is that the hamon is never the pure nioi-deki of old Bizen but carries nie throughout, a difference the NBTHK names outright as the divide between koto and shinshintō. The revived utsuri in Naotane and Naokatsu, the spilling nie in Masahide, the whorled uzumaki-hada shared across the line, and the broad, thick-kasane late-Edo sugata are the surest tells, narrowed further by the school's habit of full, dated signatures that make these smiths among the most exactly knowable of their age. Masahide stands at the head as the teacher and theorist, his finest work in his Ōsaka copies rather than the doctrine he proclaimed; Naotane stands ahead of him in execution, his Bizen-den held the finest among the shinshintō. Their pupils define the late-Edo Osafune and Sōshū revivals as practiced through Edo and the domains, with Naokatsu and Masatsugu read as the next hands after Naotane and Masayoshi. The provenance of the school runs through domain commission and bestowal (Mito blades forged at the Kōrakuen by lordly order, Tsuyama and Yonezawa fief work, Naotane's Sanada daishō and a tachi recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection) rather than ancient daimyō transmission, fitting for a movement that, within a single generation at Edo, redrew the direction of nineteenth-century swordmaking by turning it back toward the old models. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Naotane直胤 | 1801-1837 | 40 |
| Masahide正秀 | 1777-1817 | 28 |
| Sukemasa助政 | 1804-1825 | 8 |
| Jirotaro Naokatsu直勝 | 1805-1858 | 7 |
| Masayoshi正義 | 1791-1860 | 5 |
The Shinshintō revival
Around 1800 Suishinshi Masahide argued in his writings that the craft must return to the old masters’ methods: the fukkotō revival. His greatest successor Naotane worked convincingly in Bizen and Sōshū manners that had been dead for centuries.
Certifies a genuine blade worth preserving: a signature confirmed correct, or, if unsigned, an era, province, and school that the NBTHK can reliably identify.
The NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) is a public-interest incorporated foundation founded in 1948 and supervised by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō); it is based at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo. Its expert panels physically examine each submitted work (shinsa) and issue a certificate (kanteishō) ranking it by artistic and historical merit. NBTHK papers are the most widely recognized standard of authentication for Japanese swords and fittings.
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