Aoe Tsunetsugu
恒次 (Tsunetsugu)
A smith of the Aoe school of Bitchū, from between the late Heian and early Kamakura periods; one of Go-Toba’s rotating smiths. Several Aoe smiths worked under his name.
Profile
Tsunetsugu is one of the smiths of the Ko-Aoe, the first stage of the Aoe school of Bitchū. The dictionaries count him among the rotating smiths (番鍛冶, bankaji) of the retired emperor Go-Toba; the most widely circulated list gives him the month of May, and an old catalogue of signatures, the Kanchiin-bon Meizukushi, names Sadatsugu, Tsunetsugu and Tsugiie as the Bitchū smiths summoned by the emperor.
The name, however, recurs: the roll of Aoe brings together some eight Tsunetsugu from the Heian period on, and in neighbouring Bizen there was another, Ko-Bizen Tsunetsugu, so the tachi signed Tsunetsugu cannot be assigned with certainty to one or the other. A biographical dictionary gives him those of the Kitano Tenmangū shrine in Kyoto and of the Honkō-ji temple in Amagasaki, both important cultural properties. The second is the Juzumaru, one of the five swords under heaven (天下五剣, tenka goken), which tradition gave to the Aoe Tsunetsugu and which recent research attributes to the Ko-Bizen one.
Notable works
- Tachi signed «Tsunetsugu» at the Kitano Tenmangū shrine in Kyoto: important cultural property since 1909; the sources give it to the Aoe smith.
- Tachi signed «Tsunetsugu» at the Tsuchiura Municipal Museum: important cultural property since 1937; the sources give it to the Aoe smith.
- Juzumaru Tsunetsugu, at the Honkō-ji temple in Amagasaki, one of the tenka goken: important cultural property since 1922; its attribution between Aoe and Ko-Bizen is debated.