Hachimanyama Kiyohira
八幡山清平 (Hachimanyama Kiyohira)
Kanewaka school smith, son of the first Kanewaka of Kaga, who worked in Edo and Odawara in the second half of the 17th century.
Profile
Kiyohira, whose personal name was Tsujimura Gorōemon, was the fourth son of the first Kanewaka (兼若), the smith who established the Kanazawa school in Kaga. Towards the end of the Keian era, around 1651, he moved east. He worked in Edo, where he mixed with the city's swordsmiths, and in Odawara in Sagami province, where by tradition he served the Inaba, lords of the castle. The name Hachimanyama (八幡山) comes from the place in Odawara where he lived: he signed Sōshū Odawara Hachimanyama jū (相州小田原八幡山住), sometimes adding his full name, while other blades state that they were made in Edo (於武州江戸, Oite Bushū Edo). To his family's manner he added elements of Edo taste: a well-forged ko-itame kitae with plenty of ji-nie, and a notare hamon with small gunome and pointed togari-ba elements in ko-nie, with ashi and a bright, clear edge. A katana of his dated 1678, made to order as an offering to the Iwashimizu Hachimangū shrine, is a designated cultural property of Ishikawa Prefecture and is kept at the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art.
Rankings
- Wazamono (good) (Kaihō Kenjaku, 1797)
Swords available
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Hachimanyama Fujiwara Kiyohira
Shintō katana of 72.1 cm, signed on the front and dated on the back to the second month of Jōkyō 5 (1688), with an unaltered tang and a period mounting in black lacquer. Kiyohira, civil name Tsujimura Gorōemon, was the fourth son of the first Kanewaka of Kaga. Born in Kaga in 1621, he moved down to Edo around 1652 and entered the service of the Inaba house when Inaba Masakatsu received the Odawara fief, signing there as “Sōshū Hachimanyama Kiyohira”. When the Inaba moved to Takada in 1685 he returned to Edo, and this blade was forged there in 1688, in his sixty-seventh year. It measures 72.1 cm nagasa with 1.8 cm sori, showing a well-forged itame hada and a gunome-midare hamon in nioi with nie; the originating seller places it very close to his father's work. The photographs show a sound tang with even patina and no visible retouching, a kurijiri end, one mekugi-ana per face, the long signature on the front and the date 貞享五年二月日 (Jōkyō gonen nigatsu hi) cut on the back. NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon certificate. It comes with a restrained Edo-period koshirae whose saya is finished in black rō-iro lacquer.
67.9/100
€7,820
