AOI ART KANTEI QUIZZ 4

[Guest reinhard]

This smith is considered the same as Yamato Kaneuji, after absorbing teachings of Masamune and having left Yamato for Kamakura then Mino. Some disagree, like Fujishiro, considering them separate smiths.

 

Darcy,

 

I'd like to put some oil into the fire. Some works of this KANEUJI were confused with works of MASAMUNE in the past, only separated by subtle details by now, and this has not always been done completely satisfactory. It is my theory, that KANEUJI from Yamato Tegai school was not only an accomplished master-smith when going to Kamakura to learn from MASAMUNE, but also taught MASAMUNE a lot in return and some of his blades might be mistaken for works by MASAMUNE nowadays. Take this sword for example: It is a Juyo bunkazai attributed to MASAMUNE (owned by the Sano bijutsukan). It has all of MASAMUNE's traits but also displays togari-ba and yakizume boshi typical for SHIZU and his future Mino traits and his Tegai heritage.

 

This is going off topic again; don't tell me.

 

reinhard

[Ted Tenold]

Seems to me there's a look of Etchu"ness" with this sword. I keep coming back to that, but would like to see more characteristic qualities of Norishige to call it that.

 

I'd say how about Kaga Sanekage?

[Jean]

AND THE WINNER IS :

 

 

http://www.aoi-art.com/kantei/kantei05.html

 

 

"Sometime I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home"

I love Paul Robson singing this Gospel

[Darcy]

Ah Ted, you just slipped that in there, well done. You are turning out to be the grand-master here. So looks at least we were all kind of beating around the bush a bit with combining Soshu and Yamato influences. Also Reinhard was right on the trail with the blackish itame.

 

I have to kick myself in the pants again for saying this: "The itame pattern flirts with looking like Norishige, and the pattern of gunome on the sword is something that looks more like Naoe Shizu." and then not thinking to consider students of Norishige haha. I went horizontally from Norishige->Shizu instead of vertically to Sanekage, and with the lesser skill than grand-master should have looked down instead of sideways. Always something to learn in this process.

 

About Yamato Kaneuji and Masamune, the blades that were attributed in the past to Masamune that look like Kaneuji had a hand in them, these seem to get attributed by the NBTHK to Shizu these days.

 

There is a Shizu in the English Token Bijutsu #42, and this blade is also in other books. In comparing to the Masamune oshigata you show, the work is much more detailed and interesting in the Shizu and looks to me for what my opinion is worth to have a higher degree of skill. So that could agree with a Shizu teaching Masamune theory a bit, but could also be that that Masamune needs a re-attribution. Overall I am not entirely sure where I sit on the Masamune skill thing these days anyway. I accept that Yukimitsu, Go and Norishige are of equal skill to Masamune, and Shizu has shown that if he can confuse people, then he kind of proves that he belongs in that club too at least for his absolute best work.

 

I had the pleasure of examining this sword in #42 myself... the history is that it had an old attribution to Sadamune, and then another Honami elevated it to Masamune. The NBTHK when they attributed it put it to Shizu, citing those same kinds of elements that you see in that Masamune Reinhard. It's described in #42 there.

 

In the hand the sword completely blows you away with quality and it can be easy to see why someone would say Masamune and it seems fully acceptable. The NBTHK said it's Shizu's best work in changing the attribution over.

 

When we were looking at this sword, Bob Benson was with me and remarked particularly on the black chikei. He was asked for his kantei on the sword and said "Only three men, Go, Masamune or Shizu could make this." Which was a great kantei since it embraced the old expert's opinions and the current judgment.

 

About boshi, it's possible to go through the various attributed works and you see all variations on boshi. I had a Juyo Shizu with identical boshi to the Sanekage and have been digging trying to find a photo of it. This was from before I was doing anything very good with photos unfortunately.

[Darcy]

Oh, forgot to mention, here is another Shizu boshi (not Yamato shizu):

 

 

If you change the folding pattern a bit, you get the wilder curving chikei and inazuma. There are so many swords attributed to Shizu and so much flux in the style that it is very hard to nail down textbook styles. It's like Go, you read in all the books Ichimai, Ichimai, Ichimai and then when you see them you can never find one that is Ichimai except for the most famous couple, they're all over the map.