Hitachi no Kami Muneshige
常陸守宗重 (Hitachi no Kami Muneshige)
Ōsaka shintō smith and pupil of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, active in Settsu in the last third of the 17th century.
Profile
Hitachi no Kami Muneshige (常陸守宗重) worked in Ōsaka, in Settsu province, during the last third of the 17th century. He is listed among the pupils of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, alongside Yamato no Kami Hirochika. School tradition holds that he came from Harima and moved to Ōsaka to train with the Sukehiro workshop. His work belongs to Ōsaka shintō: solidly shaped blades with a fine, tightly forged hada and a deep nie hamon, mostly a broad gunome midare mixed with notare or in a tōran manner, though he also tempered suguha, beginning above the machi with the gentle yakidashi typical of Ōsaka. On some blades he added the phrase Motte Nanbantetsu saku kore to the signature, stating that imported nanbantetsu steel was used. Tradition recognises more than one generation working under the same title, and their blades are not always easy to tell apart.
Rankings
- Wazamono (good) (Kaihō Kenjaku, 1797)
Swords available
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Hitachi no Kami Muneshige
Shintō blade from Settsu of the Kanbun era, forged in nanban-tetsu by a pupil of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro. With period koshirae and shirasaya. NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon. Signed 常陸守宗重 以南蛮鉄作之 (Hitachi no Kami Muneshige, nanban-tetsu o motte kore o tsukuru), “Hitachi no Kami Muneshige, made with nanban-tetsu”, this shintō blade from Settsu belongs to the Kanbun era, around 1670. Muneshige, known as Tada Uhei and later Sohei, was the father of the second Munehide of Himeji; he moved down to Osaka and joined the school of Tsuda Echizen no Kami Sukehiro, living between Himeji and Obama. The original seller holds that he worked as daisaku for Sukehiro and sees the proof in this blade: a clear, lively ko-mokume hada and a suguha whose edge he compares to torn hōsho paper, with kinsuji inside the temper. It is forged in nanban-tetsu, the imported iron also used by Echizen Yasutsugu and extremely costly at the time. The shape is the typical Kanbun-shintō outline with little sori: 69.2 cm nagasa, 1.1 cm sori, motohaba 3.07 cm and sakihaba 1.96 cm. The photographs show the whole tang from both sides, with a single mekugi-ana, a symmetrical kurijiri nakago-jiri and the signature set well clear of the hole, all features of an ubu tang. Koshirae, shirasaya and NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon papers are included.
66.8/100
€6,980
