Project Description
SADAKATSU (貞勝), Taishō (大正, 1912-1926), Ōsaka – “Ōsaka-jūnin Gassan Sadakatsu kinchō-dōsaku” (大坂住人月山貞勝謹彫同作, “carvings carefully engraved by Gassan Sadakatsu”), “Ōsaka-jū Gassan Sadakatsu kinsaku” (大坂住月山貞勝謹作), “Naniwa-jū Gassan Sadakatsu” (浪華住月山貞勝), “Tōshō Sadakatsu tsukuru” (刀匠貞勝造, “made by the swordsmith Sadakatsu”), real name Gassan Eitarō (月山英太郎), he was born in Meiji two (明治, 1869) as son of Gassan Sadakazu (貞一) in Ōsaka, he made a lot of daisaku works for his father, in 1917 he forged a tachi for future Emperor Shōwa (昭和天皇) on the occasion of his nomination as heir to the throne, in 1927 he forged a katana for the emperor for his then function as Generalissimo (daigensui, 大元帥), at the same time he made a mamorigatana (守刀) for the emperor too, in 1934 he was awarded by the urban prefecture Ōsaka for his merits as craftsman, he died on December 24th 1943 at the age of 74, he focused on a saka-chōji-midare in combination with an ayasugi-hada and was an excellent horimono artist, often he engraved a poem of Motoori Norinaga (本居宣長, 1730-1801) next to cherry blossoms on his blades, the poem goes: “Shikishima no Yamato-gokoro o hito towaba, asahi ni niou yamazakura-bana” (敷島の大和心を人問はば朝日に匂ふ山桜花), “If one asks about the soul of Japan, I would say that it is like wild cherry blossoms glowing in the morning sun.”, Sadakatsu was also experimenting with the so-called Kamura-hagane (嘉村鋼), an awarded steel with ultrahigh purity that was invented in 1935 by Kamura Heihachi (嘉村平八, 1890-1967), a metallurgist who was both president of the Kyushu Institute of Technology and the Nishinippon Institute of Technology, Sadakatsu signed that in the way “Kamura-hagane o motte seisaku” (以嘉村鋼製作, “made by using Kamura steel”), shinpin no retsu (Akihide)
