The Date Yukimitsu

A hamon is hard to see in daylight. In a dark room, with one small light moving along the blade, the crystals of the temper line catch it in turn, and the grain of the forged steel shows between them.

The Jūyō papers describe this one: nie-laden ko-gunome mixed with ko-notare, with ashi, kinsuji and sunagashi; excellently forged itame with mokume, fine ji-nie and chikei.

Yukimitsu worked in Sagami at the end of the Kamakura period, in the circle of Shintōgo Kunimitsu: one of the smiths who brought the Sōshū tradition to maturity. The signed works of his that survive are tantō, so a long blade like this one is known by attribution.

Here the attribution is in gold. Hon’ami Kōyū, of the family of sword appraisers, inlaid the name 行光 on the tang after the blade had been shortened, and his own name and seal mark, 本阿（花押）, on the other face: in 1735, it appears, when the sword was prepared for presentation.

In 1735, on the betrothal of Princess Tone to Date Munemura, the shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune gave the sword to the Date house of Sendai. The sources differ on who received it at the ceremony: the shogunate’s chronicle names Munemura’s father, Yoshimura, lord of Sendai; the genealogies of the Kansei era name Munemura. The Date family’s register of swords, the Kensō Hiroku, lists it as entry 50 and values it at 200 mai. Its description there (the gold inlay, a groove on each face, a length of two shaku three sun six bu) fits this blade.

The sword stayed with the Date, it appears, through the removal of their collection to Tokyo in the Meiji era and until the death of Count Date Okimune in 1947, and left the family in the dispersal of the collection after the war. A sayagaki by Hon’ami Nisshū, now lost, is reported to have recorded it as an heirloom of the Date of Ōshū.

On 6 November 2024 the NBTHK designated it Jūyō Tōken at its 70th shinsa, item 16 of the session. Its description concludes that Kōyū’s attribution may be accepted.