The gokaden and the schools

What it is and how far it goes

When the gokaden was formulated is disputed. Kōkan Nagayama traces it to the kotō period itself; the NBTHK places it in the Edo period; Nobuo Nakahara argues that its present form was fixed by the Hon'ami family of appraisers in the Taishō era and refined after the war. An appraisal manual of 1793 already separates Yamato, Yamashiro, Bizen, Sōshū and Mino, with Awataguchi and the Yamato schools as groups of their own, so the frame predates the twentieth century. The form taught today was given to it by the polisher and appraiser Hon'ami Kōson (本阿弥光遜, 1879–1955), who systematised it in the Taishō and early Shōwa years. How it is used when looking at a blade is told in «Kantei: how to look at a blade», and each tradition’s hardening patterns in «The temper line up close».

Its usefulness has clear limits. By the late Muromachi the schools copy one another and hybrids appear — Sōden-Bizen, Sue-Tegai, Sue-Aoe — so the traits mix; and from 1596 the steel stops being local. Hence the practical rule: the gokaden really describes some 220 years, from the mid-Kamakura to the Ōei era, and for shintō one uses production centres rather than the five traditions.

One more caution: handbooks exaggerate traits so that they can be learnt. "Bizen always shows utsuri" describes the norm, not a law. And authors disagree on vocabulary: where most see itame, mokume and masame combined, Nagayama reserves itame for the Sōshū.

One more precision, this one about outline. Sugata — profile, curvature, width, point size — depends chiefly on when a blade was forged, not on its school: two blades from the same year, one Bizen and one Sōshū, resemble each other in outline more than each resembles a blade of its own tradition made a century later. Broadly, the early Kamakura gives slender blades with the curve set low, near the hilt (koshizori), and a small point (ko-kissaki); the late Kamakura and Nanbokuchō give wide, long blades with a gentler curve and a large point (ō-kissaki) or a short, stubby one (ikubi-kissaki); and the Muromachi narrows the blade again and moves the curve up towards the point (sakizori). So in the table below "sugata" describes what was typical of the era when each tradition did its best work, not a mould unique to the school.

The five at a glance

Yamashiro: steel for the court

Kyoto forged for the aristocracy, and it shows: slender, elegant blades with restrained activity. Many hold that the finest steel ever made is Awataguchi's, an extremely fine ko-itame covered in ji-nie and chikei, called nashiji-hada (梨子地肌), "pear skin". The hamon is suguha in ko-nie, bright and clear, with kinsuji, inazuma and sunagashi on a very small scale. The later Rai generations (Kunitsugu, Kunimitsu) take on Sōshū influence and lose part of that character. Given its early peak, Yamashiro's typical sugata is that of the old Kamakura: a slender blade, narrow mihaba, pronounced koshizori and a small ko-kissaki.

• Schools: Sanjō, Gojō, Ayanokōji, Awataguchi, Rai; Ryōkai, Nobukuni and Hasebe in its orbit.
• Names to know: Sanjō Munechika, Awataguchi Kuniyoshi and Yoshimitsu, Rai Kuniyuki, Rai Kunitoshi, Hasebe Kunishige.
• Related schools outside the province: Enju (Higo), Ukai, Aoe (Bitchū), the Rai of Echizen and of Chikuzen. In Rai and Enju work, dull patches of plain steel appear — rai-hada and enju-hada.

Yamato: blades for the temples

The oldest tradition and the quietest. The smiths of Nara worked for the great temples and armed their warrior monks, so most of their blades are sober, unsigned and utilitarian in intent, with a high shinogi and generous body. What gives them away is masame: straight parallel grain, mixed with itame and nagare, or almost exclusive in the Hoshō school. The temper is suguha in ko-nie, frayed along its edge (hotsure) and crossed by sunagashi. Also an early tradition, its sugata follows the same archaic outline: high shinogi, thick body and a contained point, in keeping with its utilitarian intent.

• The five schools: Senjuin, Taima, Tegai, Shikkake and Hoshō.
• Names to know: Kanenaga (Tegai), Norinaga (Shikkake), Sadayoshi and Sadamune (Hoshō; this Sadamune is not the Sōshū one).
• Diffusion: Yamato smiths travelled to temples in other provinces and seeded schools with a Yamato air: Kanabō, Mihara, Nio, Kongōbyōe and Naminohira.
• Yamato blades are scarce, and most of what survives is Tegai work. When Nobunaga's policy disarms the temples, production dies out.

Bizen: the country's largest output

The Kibi region had iron sand in abundance, washed down by its rivers, and forged more swords than anywhere else. Most kotō blades seen today are Bizen: the scholar Han Bing Siong calculated that of some 10,000 blades with jūyō papers, more than 40 per cent were. In workshop practice, the great early chōji came as much from the steel, highly responsive to hardening, as from the smith’s hand; the shinshintō chōji, by contrast, is a pattern laid out with the clay, and the two should not be confused.

Its mark is utsuri (映り), a pale reflection between hamon and shinogi, and a hamon made almost entirely of nioi, without the nie brightness of Yamashiro or Sōshū. The Ichimonji schools show an exuberant chōji-midare that "boils up" towards the shinogi; Osafune orders the pattern into gunome and, with Kagemitsu, into kataochi-gunome. Having produced without a break for four centuries, Bizen is the tradition that best shows the evolution of sugata: from the slender koshizori of Ko-Bizen to the wide mihaba and ō-kissaki of the Ichimonji, and from there to a more restrained gunome in the late Osafune. The kataochi-gunome is associated with Kagemitsu, who refined it, though it has forerunners in his father Nagamitsu.

• Schools, in order: Ko-Bizen, Ko-Ichimonji, the Ichimonji schools (Fukuoka, Yoshioka, Katayama), Osafune, Ōei-Bizen, Sōden-Bizen and Sue-Bizen.
• Names to know: Tomonari and Masatsune (Ko-Bizen), Norimune and Sukezane (Ichimonji), Mitsutada, Nagamitsu, Kagemitsu and Kanemitsu (Osafune), Sukesada (Sue-Bizen).
• The end: production collapsed with the great flood of the Yoshii river in the Tenshō era. In the shintō period the Ishidō smiths tried to reproduce the Ichimonji chōji, and utsuri only halfway.

Sōshū: Kamakura and nie

The Kamakura shogunate had no forge of its own and summoned smiths from elsewhere: Kunitsuna of the Awataguchi, and Sukezane and Kunimune of Bizen. The Sagami tradition grows out of that graft. Shintōgo Kunimitsu is its first recognisable exponent, though his work still smells of Yamashiro; the next generation changes the history of the sword.

The technical key credited to Masamune is working and quenching the steel at far higher temperatures, which yields large, bright nie in both ji and hamon — and demands exceptional skill not to ruin the blade. The result is an itame with chikei, a loose midare hamon and activity everywhere: kinsuji, inazuma, yubashiri, tobiyaki. In Hiromitsu and Akihiro that activity overflows into hitatsura, a temper covering the whole blade. Active chiefly in the Nanbokuchō, its sugata is that of the period: long blades, generous mihaba and a large kissaki, with a gentler curve than the early Kamakura. Workshops say that notare was born together with the ō-kissaki of Nanbokuchō, and that early hitatsura was not designed: it came out of a hardening rich in nie, very hard to control. From Sōshū it spread across the country: workshops point to examples in Seki in the 15th century and in Owari in the 16th, and Muramasa has a famous one, the Murachidori (群千鳥).

• Names to know: Shintōgo Kunimitsu, Yukimitsu, Masamune, Sadamune, Norishige (Etchū), Hiromitsu and Akihiro.
• Related schools: Hasebe, Nobukuni, Samonji and Sengo.
• A short life: after the Nanbokuchō the school declines; the shogunate's move to Kyoto and competition from Mino and Bizen reduce it to Sue-Sōshū.

Mino: the last and the most influential

Mino appears in the late Kamakura and ends up mattering more than any other for what came after. It is founded by Kaneuji, a smith of the Yamato Tegai school who studied the Sōshū method and settled in Shizu, and by Kinju (Kaneshige), who came from Echizen. Kaneuji's blades are called Yamato-Shizu and combine precisely that: itame with undulating masame, rich in ji-nie and chikei, and a nie hamon with a thick nioiguchi full of inazuma, kinsuji and sunagashi.

His pupils found the Naoe-Shizu school at Naoe, with a more orderly temper, and later the centre shifts to Seki. There the traits everyone recognises appear: pointed gunome (togari-ba), whitish steel with shirake-utsuri, and the sanbonsugi, "three cedars", of the Kanemoto line. Its methods travelled the country: most shintō schools descend technically from Mino. Mino's sugata follows the same drift: a sturdy body in Kaneuji and Naoe-Shizu work, and lighter, quicker-handling blades once production standardises at Seki. The sanbonsugi changes over the generations: in the first Kanemoto and the second, the one called Magoroku, it is irregular and low, with a soft nioiguchi; in later Kanemoto it becomes regular, almost templated, with a tighter nioiguchi. A very regular sanbonsugi therefore points to a late Kanemoto, not to Magoroku.

• Names to know: Kaneuji, Kinju, Kanemoto (Magoroku), Kanesada (Nosada), Kanefusa, Kanenobu.

The shintō schools outside the gokaden

From 1596 the steel is uniform and the traditions explain nothing: what distinguishes a shintō blade is the production centre and the workshop. These are the ones most often met on the market.