Ranks, cutting tests and titles

Four scales that do not compare

A catalogue may say of one and the same smith that he is "ō-wazamono", that he is "jō-saku", that his blade has Tokubetsu Hozon papers, or that he is "mukansa". These are four different judgements, made by different people in different periods, and none follows from another:

Scale	What it measures	Applies to	Who and when
wazamono (業物)	cutting ability proven in tests	the smith, and one particular generation	the Yamada house; 1797, with editions up to 1830
Fujishiro grades, such as jō-saku (上作)	skill, relative to the school and period	the smith	Fujishiro Yoshio (藤代義雄), 1937–1938
NBTHK papers	authenticity and quality	each blade	the NBTHK, at each examination
mukansa (無鑑査)	a record of prizes at the annual competition	the living swordsmith	the NBTHK, since 1958

That is why a blade "by an ō-wazamono smith" has not been tested for being one, and a smith well placed for his cutting can sit low on the scale of skill. Papers are covered in "NBTHK papers"; the smiths, period by period, in "Famous smiths, period by period".

Wazamono: the Edo cutting ladder

In everyday Japanese, wazamono (業物) is a blade that cuts well. In the Edo period it also came to name a classification of smiths — not of blades — according to how their work had cut in the tests of the Yamada house, which held the post of testing the shogunate’s swords.

The books and their dates

The classification was published in the Kaihō Kenjaku (懐宝剣尺) in the autumn of 1797 (Kansei 9), at the request of Tsuge Heisuke, a samurai of the Karatsu domain, with the results of Yamada Asaemon Yoshimutsu, fifth head of the house, and of Sudō Godayū, who carried out the cuts. It sold well and was reissued in 1805 and in 1815. In 1830 (Bunsei 13) came the Kokon Kaji Bikō (古今鍛冶備考), in seven volumes, which bears Yoshimutsu’s name although it appeared after his death (1823): it reworked the book, added the tests of the following years, and included oshigata and notes on the smiths.

The figures of 163 and of 228 smiths found in different works do not contradict each other: they are the same 1797 edition, counted without the mixed category or with it. Later editions corrected grades and added names, but their full counts vary from source to source; only the three additions to the top grade given by the Japanese Wikipedia list are shown here; the English list changes one of them, as explained below.

The method and the grades

According to the criteria of the Kaihō Kenjaku, the tests were made on the torsos of adult men, cutting at the height of the chiwari (乳割), just above the chest, or through a harder part, and counting how many times out of ten the blade went through. The grade follows from that proportion:

Grade	Hits out of ten	Smiths in 1797
saijō ō-wazamono (最上大業物)	8–9	12, plus 3 added later
ō-wazamono (大業物)	7–8	21
yoki-wazamono (良業物), today also ryō-wazamono	5–7	50
wazamono (業物)	3–4	80
mixed category, ō-wazamono yoki-wazamono wazamono kongō (大業物・良業物・業物混合)	depending on the blade	65

The mixed category gathers the smiths whose blades ended up spread across grades. In all, 163 smiths in the four grades and 228 with the mixed one.

The additions to the top grade

The 1805 reissue listed Soboro Sukehiro (ソボロ助広), the first Tsuda Sukehiro of Ōsaka, in the top grade, and the 1830 Kokon Kaji Bikō added Osafune Kanemitsu (長船兼光) and Izumi no Kami Kanesada (和泉守兼定), the Kanesada known as Nosada: fifteen in all. The English Wikipedia list gives Osafune Kagemitsu instead of Kanemitsu; the Japanese list gives Kanemitsu, and that is the version followed here.

The tables below

They follow the Japanese Wikipedia list (刀剣の業物一覧, Tōken no wazamono ichiran), based on the first edition and ordered by name, checked against the English one. The generation goes with the name when the source specifies it, and some entries of the Japanese list group the first and second generations of the same name. In wazamono and in the mixed category that list has 78 and 64 entries, against the 80 and 65 smiths its own headings give for those grades; the sources consulted do not explain the difference.

Where the sources disagree, the Japanese list has been followed:

• in ō-wazamono, the English list has Osafune Yoshikage (長船義景) instead of Hikobei no Jō Sukesada (彦兵衛尉祐定);
• in yoki-wazamono, the English list adds Aoe Tsugunao (次直) and Shizu Kaneuji (志津兼氏), who are not in the Japanese one;
• in wazamono, the English list gives Izumo no Kami (出雲守) Sadashige and Mutsu no Kami (陸奥守) Muneshige where the Japanese one gives Izumi no Kami (和泉守) and Hitachi no Kami (常陸守), and it also leaves out a dozen smiths of this grade.

Absences and limits

Masamune, Awataguchi Yoshimitsu and Gō Yoshihiro, the three greats of the Kyōhō meibutsuchō (享保名物帳), are not on the list. The usual explanation is that blades kept as treasures by the daimyō could not be tested, nor could the shōgun’s authority be challenged. Muramasa is missing too, despite his reputation for cutting: the metallurgist Iwasaki Kōsuke put it down in 1934 to the legend of the cursed sword, which the Yamada house would rather not touch. For the same practical reason the list leans towards blades of the late Muromachi and of shintō, which were the ones that could be cut with.

Muramasa is also dogged by another legend, the one that makes him Masamune’s pupil or rival and tests the two with their blades set in a river: it is a moral tale, for some two centuries separate them.

The list measures the edge, not the art, and the result also depended on the polish and on the hand that cut. The grade belongs to the smith — and, when the source specifies it, to one particular generation — not to a blade: one writes "smith graded ō-wazamono", not "ō-wazamono sword". Already in its day the book served as a selling point: blades by Kotetsu, very well placed, were forged on a massive scale.

The cutting test: who cut, and how

The cutting test is called tameshigiri (試し斬り); in the Edo period it was also written tameshigiri (様斬). It served to check the edge of a blade, and until the Meiji era it was done on bodies: already in the sixteenth century the Jesuit Luís Fróis noted that the Japanese did not trust tests on animals. Cutting a body held still was called suemono-giri (据物斬り), and in the Bakumatsu destructive tests on hard materials were also carried out, katamono-dameshi (堅物試し).

The post and the two houses

Testing the shōgun’s swords was an office, the o-tameshi goyō (御様御用), under the officer in charge of the swords, the koshimono bugyō (腰物奉行); with the shōgun’s own sword it was performed as a ceremony. In the mid-seventeenth century it was held by the Yamano house: Yamano Kaemon Nagahisa (山野加右衛門永久), who died in 1667 and is credited with thousands of cuts, and his son Kanjūrō Hisahide (勘十郎久英), called to service in 1685. Many Kotetsu blades bear the inscription of one or the other.

The Yamano lost the post for want of a capable successor. After several short-lived holders it passed to Yamada Asaemon Sadatake, and with his son Yoshitoki the post settled in the Yamada house, under the hereditary name Asaemon. The Yamada were not vassals of the shōgun but rōnin holding an official post; their fifth generation, Yoshimutsu, is the one of the Kaihō Kenjaku. A decree of 1870 banned tests on executed criminals, and the Penal Code of 1882 ended beheading: with them the trade came to an end.

How the tests were made

The body was held between stakes on a mound of earth, the dodan (土壇). The blade was mounted in a test hilt, the kiri-tsuka (切り柄), sometimes with a lead-weighted guard. For exceptional blades bodies were stacked: two, futatsu-dō (二ツ胴); three, mitsu-dō (三ツ胴); and so on up to the accepted record of seven, nanatsu-dō (七ツ胴). Above three, inscriptions are rare.

A few cases give the measure. The record of seven bodies is attributed to a katana by Kanefusa (兼房). Testing was not kept for long blades: a ko-wakizashi by Nobukuni, 38.5 cm long, bears a torso cut by Nakagawa Saheita (中川左平太), a tester who came before the Yamano. And the same blade could go back to the dodan many times: it is said of one wakizashi that its tang adds up the sessions of two testers, Urano Masanaga and Tomita Yaichizaemon Shigetsuna, with cuts through three bodies, through two, and through one with a single hand, up to twenty-five bodies in all.

Each cut had a name according to its height. The systems changed with the period and the school, and one and the same word came to name different places; the short list given by the Japanese Wikipedia runs from top to bottom:

1. suritsuke (摺付), at shoulder height;
2. kenashi (毛無), above the armpit;
3. wakige (脇毛), through the armpit;
4. ichi no dō (一の胴);
5. ni no dō (二の胴);
6. hachimaime (八枚目);
7. ryōguruma (両車), through the waist.

Tameshigiri today

In iaidō and battōdō, rolled and soaked tatami mats are cut (tatami-omote, 畳表), sometimes with a bamboo core. It is a martial practice, not a test of the blade, and it calls for blades made for it: an antique blade used in this way is exposed to damage. In Japan, a National Police circular of December 2024 holds that letting tourists cut with registered swords for fun has no place under the weapons law, and tameshigiri experiences for visitors came to an end.

Blades meant for mats are broad and thin, with almost flat sides. Some practitioners grind down an old blade with full, rounded sides until it looks like that, and for those who care for antique blades this amounts to destroying it.

What can be read on a tang

The result of a test was engraved on the tang. The inscription is called saidan-mei (截断銘) or tameshi-mei (試し銘) and usually gives three things: the date, the result — how many bodies and through which cut — and the tester’s name with his monogram, the kaō (花押). Sometimes it adds the place, the owner or a nickname. It is nearly always inlaid in gold, kinzōgan (金象嵌); sometimes chiselled or in silver.

The words that recur most often:

Inscription	Reading	What it says
截断 · 裁断	setsudan	"severed": the formula for the result; the name of the inscription, saidan-mei, is read with sai
二ツ胴 · 貳ツ胴	futatsu-dō	two stacked bodies; mitsu-dō (三ツ胴), three; yotsu-dō (四ツ胴), four
土壇払	dotan-barai	the cut went through the body down to the mound
落	otoshi	"felled", as in futatsu-dō otoshi (二ツ筒落), with 筒 (dō) for 胴 (dō)
切手	kirite	"the one who cuts": it comes before the tester’s name
花押	kaō	the tester’s monogram

The example in the figure is the Kotetsu katana of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. It gives the date, the twelfth month of Kanbun 5 (1665); the tester, Yamano Kaemon Nagahisa, with his age, 68, and his monogram; and the result, yotsu-dō setsudan (四ツ胴截断): four bodies severed.

Some gold inscriptions carry a nickname that alludes to the cut, such as Kagotsurube (籠釣瓶), "the wicker bucket" that holds nothing back, or Sasa no yuki (笹雪), "snow on bamboo", which falls without weight. But not everything in gold is a test: inlays also record attributions, owners or names unrelated to cutting.

The NBTHK does not rule on the cutting test: the inscription is on the tang and is not part of the paper, which certifies the blade and the smith’s signature. There are test inscriptions added later, including famous names, and some with a tester who appears in no record at all. It helps to check that the dates fit: the test cannot predate the blade, and the tester must have been active that year; Nagahisa, aged 68 in 1665, is a useful reference.

Why they were forged has, as is often said in the trade, a market explanation: a cutting test on the tang, like a greater length, the name of a famous owner or a good horimono, raises a blade’s value in the appraisers’ scales. Markus Sesko has described a case he regards as probably fake: a Kotetsu wakizashi with the gold-inlaid inscription of a tester, Yamano Kantarō Nagatsugu, who appears in no record, and with a date earlier than the blade itself. According to the Kotetsu Taikan it was added by Kajihei, a Meiji-era forger known for his Kotetsu, and the year was altered later; who altered it is not known.

Mukansa: exemption from the jury

At Japanese art exhibitions, mukansa (無鑑査) is someone who may exhibit without going through the jury thanks to earlier merit. At the NBTHK it is the status of not needing examination at its annual competition for new work, which from 1955 to 2017 was called Shinsaku Meitōten (新作名刀展) and since 2018 has been the Gendai Tōshokuten (現代刀職展). It is neither a prize nor the grade of a blade: it is a status of the craftsman.

The NBTHK regulations set out the requirements for a swordsmith:

• fifteen prizes at the competition, at least eight of them special prizes, tokushō (特賞), in the tachi, katana, wakizashi, naginata and yari section, and at least two Takamatsunomiya prizes, Takamatsunomiya kinen-shō (高松宮記念賞);
• or else ten special prizes, six of them in that same section;
• and, in both cases, an upright character and outstanding skill.

It is granted by the NBTHK president with the agreement of the board. A mukansa must exhibit every year, and the title can be withdrawn if he misses three competitions in a row (except from the age of 75 or through illness), if he damages the association’s good name, or if his skill declines markedly. A Living National Treasure may be given the honorary title of meiyo mukansa (名誉無鑑査).

From 1958 to 2019, 39 swordsmiths received the title; the official exhibitor lists of 2025 and 2026 bring no new one, and in 2026 nine exhibited as mukansa. The table below gives the year of each appointment according to Markus Sesko’s list (2018). The sources do not always agree: other sources give 1972 for Ōsumi Toshihira (the Japanese Wikipedia among them), 1988 for Kawachi Kunihira and 2009 for Ogawa Kanekuni II.

The other crafts of the competition — polishing, blade engraving, metalwork, hilt and scabbard — also have their mukansa, with their own requirements.

The Masamune Prize and the state titles

The Masamune Prize, Masamune-shō (正宗賞), is the competition’s highest award and is not given every year: today only when a work by a mukansa deserves exceptional mention. It has been given 15 times to 8 swordsmiths, from 1961 to 2014. The first, Fujimura Kunitoshi, was never mukansa, so the present rule came later. Sumitani Masamine, Ōsumi Toshihira and Amata Akitsugu won it three times, and Gassan Sadakazu II twice. The last were Miyairi Norihiro in 2010, with a tantō, and Kawachi Kunihira in 2014, with a tachi; the official results of 2025 and 2026 do not award it.

The state has titles of its own. In 1906 two swordsmiths were appointed Imperial Household Artists, teishitsu gigeiin (帝室技芸員): Gassan Sadakazu (月山貞一), the nineteenth-century one, and Miyamoto Kanenori (宮本包則). Since 1955 the state has designated holders of important intangible cultural properties, the Living National Treasures, ningen kokuhō (人間国宝). Swordsmiths, six:

Year	Swordsmith
1955	Takahashi Sadatsugu (高橋貞次)
1963	Miyairi Akihira (宮入昭平)
1971	Gassan Sadakazu II (月山貞一)
1981	Sumitani Masamine (隅谷正峯)
1997	Amata Akitsugu (天田昭次)
1997	Ōsumi Toshihira (大隅俊平)

None is alive today: the last two died in 2009 and 2013, and no later designation of a swordsmith is on record. Five polishers have also been Living National Treasures; the latest, Hon'ami Kōshū (本阿弥光洲), in 2014.

The craft today, in figures

In Japan only someone licensed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs may forge swords: after at least five years of apprenticeship with a licensed swordsmith, one has to complete the Agency’s course for swordsmiths. Every blade is registered, and it is often said in the craft that each smith may make at most two long blades a month. For that reason, and because the craft pays little, one also hears among swordsmiths that only a few dozen of them live from forging full time.

How many there are depends on what is counted: about 350 swordsmiths according to an interview published by nippon.com in 2018; fewer than 200 are estimated to be active. Above that base the firm figures are few, and the figure shows only the verified ones:

1. licensed swordsmiths: between 200 and 350, depending on the source;
2. mukansa: 9 exhibited in 2026, out of 39 appointed between 1958 and 2019;
3. Masamune Prize: 2 of its 8 winners are alive, Miyairi Norihiro and Kawachi Kunihira, who exhibited in 2026;
4. swordsmith Living National Treasures: none is alive, of the 6 designated.

Figures checked as of 27 September 2026.

Fujishiro, Tōkō Taikan, Hawley and the banzuke

Fujishiro. The Nihon Tōkō Jiten (日本刀工辞典) by Fujishiro Yoshio, published in two volumes, kotō and shintō, between 1937 and 1938, and later revised by his brother Fujishiro Matsuo, a polisher who would become a living national treasure, rates some fifteen hundred smiths, the most accomplished, in five grades: saijō-saku (最上作), jōjō-saku (上々作), jō-saku (上作), chūjō-saku (中上作) and chū-saku (中作). It is a scale of skill relative to the school and the period, not an absolute one, and it is usually said to leave out the smiths who were alive when it was written, such as Gassan Sadakatsu (月山貞勝). A high grade does not vouch for any particular blade, although it has been observed that blades reaching Jūyō tend to be by smiths rated jō-saku or above, with exceptions. This guide explains it but does not assign it smith by smith.

Tōkō Taikan. The Tōkō Taikan (刀工大鑑) by Tokuno Kazuo (得能一男), as it is usually described, gives each smith an indicative market value, meant for an ideal blade: unshortened (ubu), signed, healthy and well polished, from his best period. From that base, deductions are made for alterations, and additions for features such as a greater length, an inscribed cutting test, the name of a famous owner or a good horimono. It is a market scale, not an artistic one, and it is not reproduced here.

Hawley. Japanese Swordsmiths, by W. M. Hawley (1966, with later revisions), is an index in English of thousands of names, each with a figure for its importance in which some see, in proportion, a close resemblance to the values of the Tōkō Taikan. It is usually said to have grown out of a translation of the Tōshō Zenshū, a Japanese reference of 1934, to lean towards kotō smiths and to carry duplicated names and some doubtful entries. It is useful for finding a name, not as a judgement.

Banzuke. From the nineteenth century onwards, rankings of smiths were published in the manner of sumō rankings, the banzuke (番付), with their ōzeki and sekiwake, by period or by region. Even then they were read as a rough guide, not as a verdict.