€10,000

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About the school

Tegarayama School手柄山派

At the foot of Mount Tegara in Himeji, Harima province, a family of smiths took the mountain's name as their own across successive generations, descending from the first-generation Yamato no Daijō Fujiwara Ujishige. The setsumei trace this Banshū line through its best-documented figure, Tegarayama Masashige (手柄山正繁), commonly called Asashichi or Chōshichi and using the art name *Tankasai*. He was the younger brother of the third-generation Tegarayama Ujishige, first succeeded to the name of the fourth-generation Ujishige, and only later changed his signature to Masashige. In Tenmei 8 (1788) he entered the service of Matsudaira Sadanobu, lord of Shirakawa in Ōshū, as a retained smith (*kakae-kaji*) and moved to Edo, where he resided at Surugadai in Kanda; in the fourth month of Kyōwa 3 (1803) he received the honorary title Kai no Kami. One setsumei records that in Edo he studied under Suishinshi Masahide. Around the start of the Bunsei era he forged for a time in Osaka before returning to Edo, and from his lord Rakuō he was granted the two characters "*Shinmyō*," which he cut on the works he held most successful. The hand the setsumei describe is a *Soshu*-toned revival built on the *tōran-midare* of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, whose style Masashige privately admired (*shishuku*). The forging runs to tightly compacted *ko-itame-hada* with *ji-nie* adhering thickly, fine *chikei* entering, and at times a quiet near-*muji* ground; the steel reads clear. Most blades open with a *suguha* or *sugu yakidashi* at the base and then rise into a billowing *tōran*-style large *gunome-midare*, mixed with *notare*, slightly pointed (*togari-gokoro*) elements, and arrow-nock (*yahazu*) shapes likened to surging waves. The temper carries deep *nioi*, evenly adhering *ko-nie*, *ashi* and *yō*, with *sunagashi* and *kinsuji* threading the edge and *tobiyaki*, *yubashiri*, and *muneyaki* breaking out above it; the *nioiguchi* tends bright. The *bōshi* is generally *sugu* ending in *ko-maru*, sometimes with *hakikake* and a long *kaeri*. Beyond this signature manner he also worked shallow *notare* of wide *yakihaba* and plain *suguha*, so the orderly large *gunome* that refuses to collapse, the pointed accents within the *ha*, and the wide *mihaba* of his forms serve as the readiest marks of his work. Across the register the kantei points cluster around that controlled *tōran* and its lively *ji* and *ha*, while one wakizashi, mingling *yahazu* into the edge, prompts the observation that Gonnoshin Terukane may also have been in mind. Self-carved *horimono* recur and aid attribution: jewel-chasing and ascending or descending dragons, *bonji*, the *sankō-tsuka-ken*, and *hi*, with tangs reading "*hori dōsaku*" to record the smith's own chisel. Several inscriptions carry documentary weight, naming Surugadai and Shundai in Buyō as places of forging, Ishū Dewa iron also used by Katayama Munetsugu, and a commission for Kosugi Tamenaga, a retainer of the Koga domain; a Juyo wakizashi signed "Ōshū Shirakawa kashin Masashige" bears self-cut dragon, *bonji*, and *sankō-tsuka-ken* recorded on its tang. The blades signed with bold, thick-chisel mei over *ubu* tangs finished in *keshō ō-sujikai*, dated through the Kansei and Kyōwa years, mark Tegarayama as a Himeji-rooted shinshintō line whose strength lay in the recreation of Sukehiro's waves.

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