Hasebe Kunishige tanto

Article from Darcy Brockbank – The Soshu tradition starts with a tanto made by Shintogo Kunimitsu, famous now as the Midare Shintogo. It is otherwise in Yamashiro Awataguchi style, except for a beautiful nie-laden midare hamon. With the creation of this tanto, a whole new set of possibilities opened up in the sword world.

Shintogo Kunimitsu is famous in his own regard, and also probably had the three best students in the history of sword smithing, in Yukimitsu, Masamune and Norishige. These three would take the teachings of Shintogo and expand them, mastering the manufacture of activities in nie and binding together the best features of Ko-Hoki, Ko-Bizen and Yamashiro technique. With the subsequent generation, including Sadamune, Go Yoshihiro, Shizu and Samonji, the Soshu tradition would burn very brightly indeed.

Though these students have great fame today, the main line from Shintogo Kunimitsu was handed down to Shintogo Kunihiro who was likely his son and the headmaster of the Sagami forge in which all of these smiths would come to greatness. His style though never diverged from the traditional Yamashiro based style of his father.

Shintogo Kunishige had two other sons: Shintogo Kuniyasu and Shintogo Kunishige, but their work is difficult to find today. They would however have sat at the center of the Soshu tradition.

One important thing that Shintogo Kunimitsu and Shintogo Kunihiro did for us, was to record the place of their work as Kamakura on a small number of works. This allows us to confirm the place of manufacture and their central position in the Soshu tradition.

Hasebe Kunishige is recorded in old books as being a swordsmith from Yamato, which is given as one origin of the name Hasebe. He is said to have moved to Kamakura, made swords with the Kamakura smiths, and at the end moved to Kyoto in Yamashiro. Today he is often included because of this, along with his line, as a Yamashiro smith. However, his style has very little to do with traditional Yamashiro style but is entirely middle period Soshu. The story about Yamato may also just be apocryphal as an attempt to explain the origin of the Hasebe name, lacking information about its use in the Shintogo family. I personally discount the Yamato origin story because of the fact that Hasebe was used previously on works of Shintogo Kunimitsu, Shintogo Kunimitsu and Shintogo Kunishige.

There are opinions based on the surname Hasebe that their native place was Yamato. However, Kozan Oshigata and other authorized synopses list the name Hasebe as having been used also by Shintogo Kunimitsu and his sons, Kunishige and Kunihiro. This seems to indicate that Shintogo and Hasebe were consanguineous. It is most likely that shodai Kunishige was a direct student of Masamune, but it is also possible that he belonged to the Shintogo school and was influenced by Masamune who was trained by Shintogo. – NBTHK Token Bijutsu (English)

KUNISHIGE (国重), 1st gen., Kenmu (建武, 1334-1338), Yamashiro – “Hasebe Kunishige” (長谷部国重), real name Hasebe Chōbei (長谷部長兵衛), it is said that he came originally from Yamato province where his ancestors lived in Nara´s Hatsuse (初瀬), there exists the tradition that the family name Hasebe was, over “Hase,” a modification of the pronunciation of “Hatsuse,” another theory says that he was the son of Senju´in Shigenobu (千手院重信), so it is assumed that his roots were in the Senju´in or in the Taima school, some sources state that he moved to Kamakura to study as late student under Shintōgo Kunimitsu (新藤五国光) before he finally settled in Kyōto/Yamashiro, this is
supported by the tradition that Kunimitsu too bore the family name Hasebe, some even assume that Kunishige was the son of Shintōgo Kunimitsu, however, he moved around Kenmu to Inokuma (猪熊) in the Bōmon district (坊門) in the vicinity of Kyōto´s Gojō axis (五条), he is listed as one of the “Ten Students of Masamune,” unfortunately no signed works are extant by the 1st generation Hasebe Kunishige, his most famous work is the meibutsu Heshikiri-Hasebe (圧し切り長谷部) which was once the favourite sword of Oda Nobunaga, this and other ō-suriage-mumei blades have a wide mihaba, a thin kasane, a shallow sori, and an elongated kissaki, the mune is iori or maru, the jigane is a dense ko-itame which tends to masame towards the ha and the mune, the hamon is a notare mixed with gunome with plenty of hataraki within the ha like ashi, yō, sunagashi and kinsuji, towards the upper blade section also tobiyaki appear which can turn into a hitatsura, the bōshi is midare-komi with hakikake and a somewhat pointed kaeri, unsigned blades of the 1st and 2nd gen. are hard to differentiate, the jigane of the 1st gen. looks more “wet” and “sticky” whereas the ha is more bright, jōjō-saku

KUNISHIGE (国重), 2nd gen., Enbun (延文, 1356-1361), Yamashiro – “Hasebe Kunishige” (長谷部国重), real name Hasebe Chōbei (長谷部長兵衛), he is also listed with the first name Chōbei Jirō (長兵衛次郎), son of the 1st gen. Kunishige, he lived also in Kyōto´s Inokuma, we know blades from the Jōwa (貞和, 1345-1350) to the Ōan era (応安, 1368-1375), a tachi dated Jōwa five (1349) shows a ko-notare mixed with gunome, whereas the gunome tends in the middle blade section to an ō-gunome-midare that reaches the shinogi, no more tachi are found from the Bunna era (文和, 1352-1356) onwards, only hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi and tantō, the latest dated blade is a 54.5 cm measuring wakizashi from the first year of Ōan (1368), the jigane is an itame with masame towards the ha and the mune, this became a characteristic feature of the Hasebe school, the hada of the 2nd gen. stands more out as that of the 1st gen. and is rougher, some blades show a bō-utsuri or a jifu-utsuri, during his early years the hamon tends to a calm suguha mixed with a slightly undulating konotare which becomes via a ko-notare mixed with gunome and tobiyaki more and more flamboyant until it turns into an 6-gunome-midare with muneyaki and tobiyaki in bitatsura-manner, this hamon interpretation too became a trademark of the Hasebe school, we know several signature variants of the character for “Kuni,” at some of them the inner part is chiselled as (王), at others as (玉), and rarely he also used the unsimplified writing for “Kuni”(國), chujo-saku