suishinshi masahide wakizashi

Suishinshi Masahide wakizashi

Nagasa: 53.4cm
Motohaba: 3.15cm
Sakihaba: 2.27cm
Sori: 0.9cm
Kasane: 0.60cm

MASAHIDE (正秀), 1st gen., Kansei (寛政, 1789-1801), Musashi – “Dewa Yamagata ni oite Fujiwara Terukuni kore o saku shin jūgomai kōbuse-gitae” (於出羽山形藤原英国作之真十五枚甲伏鍛, “made by Fujiwara Terkuni in Dewa´s Yamagata in the kōbuse technique by using 15-times folded steel”), “Suzuki Saburō Takuei shin jūgomai kōbuse” (鈴木三郎宅英・ 真十五枚甲伏), “Terkuni” (英国), “Suishinshi Masahide” (水心子正秀), “Kawabe Gihachirō Fujiwara Masahide” (川部儀八郎藤原正秀), “Kawabe Gihachirō Fujiwara Masahide” (川部儀八郎藤原正日出), “Akimoto-shin Kawabe Gihachirō Fujiwara Masahide saku” (秋元臣川部儀八郎藤原 正秀作), “Ushū Yamagata no shin Kawabe Gihachirō Fujiwara Masahide” (羽州山形之臣川部儀八郎藤原正秀), “Suishin Fujiwara Masahide” (水心藤原正秀), “Suishin Masahide” (水心正日出), real name Kawabe Gihachirō (川部儀八郎). Masahide was born under the name Suzuki Saburō (鈴木三郎) in the third year of Kan´en (寛延, 1750) in Akayu (赤湯) in Dewa province. Or, to be more precise, in the village of Nakayamamura-Suwahara (中山村諏訪原) in the Yonezawa fief (米沢藩) of Dewa, because he was “only” raised in Akayu namely by his mother´s Toyama family (外山) after the early death of his father. First he worked there as a village blacksmith and it is said that he had learnt the craft of forging from a certain Yoshizawa Sanjirō (吉沢三次郎) from the close village of Nagai (長井). But Masahide had decided early for himself to become a swordsmith and his first station in this goal was Sendai where he became a student of a later generation Kunikane (国包). His smith name was Takuei (宅英) at that time. After this initial training he moved to Hachiōji (八王子), in Musashi province, where he learnt from the local Shitahara master Musashimaru Yoshiteru (武蔵丸吉英) who was in turn a student of Musashi Tarō Yasukuni (武蔵太郎安国). With this master-student relationship he changed his name to Terukuni (英国) and was hired by the Akimoto family (秋元), the daimyō of the Yamagata fief (山形藩), in the third year of An´ei (安永, 1774) whereupon he changed his name again, namely from Terukuni to Masahide (正秀), and his entire real name to Kawabe Gihachirō (川部儀八郎). But Masahide “experimented” with his signature, that means he also signed Masahide with the characters (正日出) and (正日天). His gō was Suishinshi (水心子) and it is said that he also signed it in the variant (水神子). He developed his koku´in seal from the characters for “hide” (日天) which he used from the third year of Bunka (文化, 1806) onwards. And his kaō is composed of a displacement of the strokes of the characters for “hide” (秀) (see picture below). With his employment at the Yamagata fief he was able in terms of money to travel further and further, to take lessons in the Bizen tradition at the Ishidō school (石堂) and in the Sōshū tradition under the 10th generation Tsunahiro (綱広). There exists for example a blade from the eighth month of Kansei three (寛政, 1791) which is signed with the supplement “Kamakura-jūnin Masamune-masson Minamoto Tsunahiro Sōden no kitae” (鎌倉住人正宗末孫源綱広相伝鍛之, “forged in the Sōshū tradition of the Masamune-descendant Tsunahiro from Kamakura”). It is said that he was not satisfied with the then status quo of the sword world, i.e. to remain stuck to the Ōsaka-shintō and the danger of falling into oblivion of the kotō-era forging techniques. Suishinshi Masahide was, apart from learning from the mentioned masters, for the most part an autodidact. He tried more or less single-handedly to rediscover and revive the old forging techniques of the Heian and Kamakura period and turned more and more his back on the Ōsaka-shintō style. After devoting himself extensively to the Sōshū tradition he came to the conclusion that a wide, too nie-laden, hamon was not equal to a sword blade with a chōji-based hamon in nioi-deki into which already the Bizen smiths had focused. Apart from that, Masahide also worked of course in the Yamato, Yamashiro and Mino traditions and summarized his studies in publications like the Tōken Jitsuyō Ron (刀剣実用論) and Tōken Buyō Ron (刀剣武用論), both can be translated “Essay on the Practicality of Sword Blades (from the Heian and Kamakura era),” the Tōken Bengi (刀剣弁疑, “Sword Almanac”), or the Kenkō Hiden Shi (剣工秘伝志, “Secret Forging Techniques”). These publications in turn stimulated the sword literature of his time, and the movement which evolved out of Masahide´s ambitions is called fukkotō (復古刀, “sword revival movement”). In his early years he tempered a tōran-midare with thick nie and nioi in the style of Sukehiro (助広) or the notare-midare of Inoue Shinkai (井上真改). After this phase he started to work in notare-midare with nie-kuzure and hitatsura of the Sōshū tradition and in later years he shifted to a chōji-midare in the Bizen tradition and to a suguha. The reasons for the latter change have been described in chapter 1.4. Works in the Yamashiro tradition show an elegant sugata with funbari which reminds us of kotō blades. The jihada is a beautifully forged ko-itame, the hamon a chū-suguha-hotsure in nie-deki which, by trend, shows little hataraki, and the bōshi is ko-maru. Sometimes he also forged a masame-hada in the style of the Yamato tradition. Works in the Bizen tradition comprise copies of different kotō-sugata. The hamon is tempered in nioi-deki and appears as ko-chōji-midare with long and somewhat slanted nioi-ashi, or as koshi-no-hiraita midare mixed with chōji-midare in the style of the Ōei-Bizen school (応永備前). Hard-looking, dark spots might appear in the hamon and the nioiguchi is neither bright nor tight. In the case of the Sōshū tradition he tempered an ō-midare, as mentioned a notare-midare with nie-kuzure and hitatsura, or an ō-gunome-midare which he described himself as modelled on Kamakura-era Sōshū works or on Masamune. Regarding the shintō-tokuden, the jigane and jihada of the Ōsaka-shintō copies or homages are quite beautiful and the hamon consists of thick nioi and nie but, unlike the originals, Masahide´s blades have less hira-niku and the tōran-midare in general and the size of the individual midare elements is not that uniform. There are nie of different kinds of roughness in the habuchi and the yakigashira show as mentioned dark spots. The jigane looks soft and the jihada tends to muji, and the ha towards the base might appear somewhat dull and subdued. This peculiarity should become a characteristic feature of the Suishinshi school. The ji-nie is inferior to that of Sukehiro in terms of quantity and quality. Masahide made sunnobi-tantō or rather hira-zukuri ko-wakizashi in Enbun-Jōji-sugata combined with a Sōshū deki, or standard-length tantō with uchizori combined with a dense and beautifully forged jihada and a chū-suguha-hotsure in the style of the Yamashiro tradition. Occasionally we also find tantō in katakiriba-zukuri or osoraku-zukuri and from time to time also works where he engraved his own horimono, with the mention „hori-dōsaku“ on the tang. But most of Masahide´s horimono were added by his student Honjō Yoshitane (本荘義胤). They comprise designs like suken, sankozuka-ken and kenmaki-ryū in the hi, whereas the scales of Yoshitane´s dragons looks like overlapping coins. Masahide´s tangs are by trend rather long and end in his early years with a pronounced ha-agari kurijiri. Later he applied a shallower ha-agari kurijiri. The yasurime are sujikai with keshō, and for Ōsaka-shintō-utsuri the tangs are also finished like the originals. Suishinshi Masahide was also famous for training countless students, at least more than one hundred according to transmission, which the fiefs had sent to his workshop after he had settled and made a name for himself in the Hamamachi district (浜町) of Edo. The famous master students are described in chapters of their own. Well, in Bunsei one (文政, 1818) he left his name Masahide to his son Sadahide (貞秀) and called himself Amahide (天秀). With the name change to Amahide he also used the gō Suishinrō (水心老) and Suishin-rōō (水心老翁) which both mean “the old Suishin.” Masahide died on the 27th day of the ninth month of Bunsei eight (1825) at the age of 76. Saijō-saku.

– Markus Sesko