Abalone shell tsuba with signature. Help please?

[mercierarmory]

I picked up this tsuba from a friend of mine today. I am very happy with the new addition to the collection, but would like some help with the signature.

 

I got two other tsuba with one being a very nice unsigned piece and the other possibly a heianjo which has a very faint, unreadable signature on it.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mike

[Jean]

The last two kanjis are the artist name. Go to the kanji pages at the top of this page and you will have decipher it in 5 minutes

 

Abalone design.

[mercierarmory]

EFU JU AKAO YOSHITSUGU?

[Jean]

Yes, Yoshitsugu is the name

[docliss]

Haynes lists no fewer than five artists, working in Edo between the second half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, whose mei was AKAO YOSHITSUGU. Most of the work of this school is in the soft metals, but the early masters, living in Echizen, worked in iron, as did occasionally later artists.

 

It is difficult to attribute a particular artist to Mike’s tsuba (six of these artists’ mei are illustrated on pp.609a-610b of Kinkō Meikan) but it probably dates to the eighteenth century - H 12227.0 or H 12228.0?

 

John L.

[Kurikata]

Considering the topic and the signature I found interesting to add this tsuba to the discussion , knowing I ignore which Akao Yoshitsugu  generation was involved.