Hosokawa Tadamasa
細川忠正 (Hosokawa Tadamasa)
Lineage: the signature does not state the generation
Smith of the Hosokawa family of Sakura in Shimōsa who worked in Hyūga from around 1860 into the Meiji era.
Profile
Hosokawa Tadamasa was born in 1837, the eldest son of Hosokawa Tadayoshi (細川忠義), smith to the Sakura fief in Shimōsa, and grandson of Hosokawa Masayoshi (細川正義), a pupil of Suishinshi Masahide. He learned the craft from his father; a blade the two made together in 1850, when he was fourteen, survives, and family tradition has him finishing his training under his grandfather. By about 1860 he was in Nobeoka in Hyūga, working for the Naitō fief, and in 1866 he entered the service of the Itō fief of Obi. After a dispute with the family of a woman in Obi he asked for leave and disappears from the record until 1872, when he is listed in a register at Takanabe. He went on forging in Kyūshū in the Meiji era; his latest dated work is from 1896, and the year of his death is unknown. He signed Hosokawa Tadamasa saku (細川忠正作). His work is seen as close to his grandfather's: blades with a wide mihaba, a fine, tight ko-mokume hada and a nioi-based hamon with fine ashi.
Swords available
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Hosokawa Tadamasa
Signed and dated the eighth month of Keiō 4 (1868), with an ubu tang bearing a single mekugi-ana, NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon papers, and both koshirae and shirasaya. Hosokawa Tadamasa was the eldest son of Hosokawa Tadayoshi and worked as a smith for the Nobeoka domain in Hyūga province; the signature ties his activity to Shimōsa and to Nobeoka. The blade measures 72.1 cm of nagasa with a sori of 1.1 cm, giving a long, barely curved outline, and it is broad and substantial in weight: 920 g bare and 1,300 g when mounted. The tang remains ubu, unshortened, with a single mekugi-ana, so the signature survives in full. It is dated the eighth month of Keiō 4 (1868), the year of the Meiji Restoration, an uncommon detail that fixes the work to a precise moment. The blade carries NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon papers. It comes with koshirae and shirasaya, although the original seller gives no detail on the fittings of the mounting and makes no statement about the blade's state of preservation.
72/100
€7,820
