Kantei
The dark tang with three holes and, at the base of the blade, a groove with an engraved dragon and a Sanskrit character beside it.

Tokyo National Museum, via ColBase · ColBase terms of use

Bungo · 1205 · Sadahide

Life and times

No document of his life survives: what is known comes from his blades, and the rest is tradition.

On this page
  1. His times
  2. What tradition says
  3. His legacy

His times

  • He worked in Bungo province, today Ōita, on Kyūshū, between the end of the Heian period and the start of the Kamakura.
  • One of his tachi, an Important Art Object (重要美術品, jūyō bijutsuhin), bears the date Genkyū 2, that is, 1205: this fixes his activity. It is not the Kokin Denju no Tachi, which is undated.
  • Markus Sesko classes him among the Ko-Kyūshū and Ko-Naminohira smiths of the early Kamakura, from 1185 to 1232.

What tradition says

  • He was called “Kishin Taiu”, a nickname, according to the English translation of the NBTHK’s Sword Journal.
  • He is said to have been a monk, and the pupil or the master of 定秀 (Sadahide), which in on reading is read Jōshū. Sadahide is said to have headed a large shugendō (修験道, shugendō) dōjō on Mount Hiko (英彦山, Hikosan), in neighbouring Buzen, and to have been both a monk and a smith. The styles of the two are very alike, but very few works by Jōshū survive.
  • One theory makes him an ascetic, and would see his faith in his engravings.
  • The stories of a demonic being that helped him and of several banishments do not appear in the sources consulted.
A whole tachi on a black background, with the tang and its holes on the left and an engraving at the base of the blade.
Tachi 銘豊後国行平作 (mei Bungo Koku Yukihira saku), whole. Tokyo National Museum, via ColBase · ColBase terms of use · source

His legacy

The NBTHK notes that some engravings by Nobukuni, already in the Ōei era, such as a kurikara inside a groove or a bōhi with peculiar ends, may have been influenced by him.