Help with another translation please ....

[docliss]

Once again I am seeking assistance with a translation, and should be grateful for help with this tsuba.

 

Rendered in a beautiful, dark nigurome, it depicts a mass of high relief peony blossoms, set against an ishime surface and with some gold ten-zōgan decoration. The whole is surrounded by a gold nanako fukurin, and there is a gold overlay on the nanako surrounding the seppa-dai and both ryō-histu.

 

My efforts at translation so far are: GOTO MITSU ? with kao.

 

With many thanks, John L.

[IanB]

John, Might I suggest kiyo? Sorry but I dont know how to insert kanji but it is 295 in Nelson's dictionary.

Ian

[Rich T]

Hi John, It looks like it might be, or is meant to be Korai 光夾 who was a studend of Ichijo I think. I cannot find a visual match to this though as everything I have looked at so far is cursive. It does not mean of course he never signed straight up and down. I will need to go through my Goto books later.

 

Cheers

 

Rich

[docliss]

Dear Ian and Rich, thank you both for your replies. The only Gotō Mitsukiyo that I can find (H 08133.0) is Senjō. But his dates of 1623-1692 are clearly not those of the artist of this tsuba. Gotō Kenjō (H 03102.0) used the gō of Kōrai, as Richard suggests, and both his Gotō Ichijō lineage and his dates of 1828-1904 seem more appropriate to this tsuba.

 

But I would love to know if the kao matches that of the latter artist. Does anybody have an example of this? And are those his tagane-mei at the lower end of the nakago-hitsu?

 

Thank you again, John L.

[Nobody]

I might be wrong, but I suspect that the mei could be 光乗 (Kojo/Mitsujo?).

[docliss]

Thank you, Koichi, for that. Both Gotō Kōjō (H 03445.0) and Katsuchika Mitsunori (H 05362.0) used the two kanji that you have proposed. The former was a student of Gotō Ichijō and the latter is described as ‘working in his style’, and both are dated in the mid to late 1800s. Presumably it is Gotō Kōjō who is the artist of this tsuba.

 

John L.