Juyo Koto by the numbers. (Sort of)

[Mushin]

Please consider the following which is the result of me mining the Juyo lists compiled by Jussi Ekholm. It is a very arbitrary list of Juyonumbers from top Koto smiths and schools where possible. Listed is the school or smith followed by the total number of Juyos. Not every school or smith were included, thus the artibrary designation. That said I think this does reveal some interesting trends. All in the decription means every smith and mumei attribution to either a smith or school is represented. Here is the list:

 

Rai (All) - 680
Ichimonji (All) - 422
Shizu (All) - 399
Aoe (All) - 344
Taima (All) - 226
Norishige - 211
Rai Kunimitsu - 210
Bizen Kanemitsu -201
Bizen Nagamitsu - 180
Naoe Shizu (All) - 166
Rai Kunitoshi - 159
Senju’in (All) - 157
Nobukuni (All) - 146
Soshu Yukimitsu - 136
Hasebe (All) - 120
Bizen Sukesada (All) - 111
Sadamune - 106
Awataguchi (All) - 97
Tegai (All) - 97
Chōgi - 96
Kencho - 88
Bizen Masamitsu - 82
Tametsugu - 78
Masamune - 71
Shintogo (All) - 62
Soshu (Yukimitsu through Sue-Soshu) - 58
Rin Tomo - 58
Rai Kunitsugu - 51
Rai Kuninaga - 50
Sue Sa - 50
Sa Kunihiro - 48
Kinju - 45

Bizen Nagamori - 42
Bizen Katsumitsu (All) - 39
Sa Yasuyoshi - 39

Shintogo Kunimitsu - 36
Bizen Motomitsu - 35 

Hiromitsu - 35
Sa Sadayoshi - 22
Akihiro - 17
Samonji - 12
Sa Yukihiro - 9
Soshu Masahiro (Zaimei) - 5
Go Yoshihiro - 5

 

Let me start out by saying that this little endeavor began as an exercise in mental self-gratification. I was intrigued by the theory espoused by the late Darcy Brockbank and others, holding that Soshu swords were the modern weapons of their day, used mostly to the point of failure so fewer remain around today, while blades by big sword names of the Kamakura period and earlier where stashed away as treasure pieces. I figured that Juyo numbers to some extent should bear this out as there would be many, many more blades from other schools.

 

While the data -- which by no means is exhaustive, let alone double-checked, so user beware -- does show to a large degree that Soshu works do seem to be considerably fewer, it also raises some interesting facts. One is the large number of blades from a handful of Soshu smiths such as Norishige, Shizu and his students compared to others. And then there are these interesting big numbers of the SoDen-Bizen smiths like Kanemitsu and Chogi Schools (560 just counting Kanemitsu, Tomomotsu, Masamitsu, Motomitsu, Chogi, Kencho and Nagamori. This number grows considerably when when we expand the circle to include other students and family members,)

 

So, why did so many of these works survive until today in decent condition while top mainline Soshu Smiths like Shintogo Kunimitsu, Masamune, Sadamune, Hiromitsu and Akihiro blades seemingly left behind so few top quality blades (203)? Could it be that their numbers are better reflected among Hozon and Tokubetsu Hozon blades because heavy use left them in a condition less than Juyo? (I can't think that this would be correct as I would imagine that the number of less than Juyo blades would also go up proportionally with the other smiths. Also because of their rarity, some condition issues are overlooked at the Juyo level.) Could this be because smiths like Hiromitsu and Akihiro stayed behind in Kamakura long after the town fell to Nitta Yoshisada in 1333, while their customers fled elsewhere? Could it be simply that the output of these smiths was low because their market share moved away? Did Norishige, Shizu and the Sa School fare far better because they found new markets in Echizen, Mino and Kyoto? Did they make technological breakthroughs that allowed them to produce more swords in the same period of time? And why did so many Rai blades survive in such great numbers, including from the Nanbokucho? Or was this whole mental exercise using incomplete or incompatible data sets to draw conclusions horribly flawed? I understand the heyday of the Soshu school lasted for a dramatically shorter period of time than all other schools, notwithstanding some smiths and schools of the day did way better in the same period than others. Would love to hear your thoughts about what you make of the trends that this information seems to indicate?

 

Bobby

 

[Robert S]

Not to throw too many cats among the pigeons... but I wonder how much of this is also due to familiarity bias - i.e. people have seen many Rai Kunimitsu blades, so when a mumei (or really good gimei) blade comes along which resembles Rai Kunimitsu work it gets attributed to them... even though it may be by an unknown smith working with similar techniques and/or imitating their style.  In general in the arts attribution without solid provenance remains a (highly educated and carefully founded) guess, and the context for those guesses changes over time, as is for example the case with attributions of western paintings to specific artists.

 

Robert S