Iga no Kami Kinmichi

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The fifth head of the Iga no Kami Kinmichi (伊賀守金道) house, the main line of the Mishina (三品) school in Kyoto, Yamashiro province. He worked in the second half of the 18th century; dated blades of his survive from the Meiwa and Tenmei eras, and the chronology handed down in the family places his appointment as Iga no Kami in 1763 and his death in 1792. Like his predecessors he inherited the title Nihon kaji sōshō (日本鍛冶宗匠), through which the house acted as intermediary at the imperial court when honorary titles were granted to other smiths. He signed Nihon kaji sōshō Iga no Kami Fujiwara Kinmichi, with the imperial chrysanthemum cut on the tang. School tradition holds that the characters raijo (雷除), 'warding off lightning', beneath the chrysanthemum were already granted to the second generation, yet they first appear on the work of the fifth. He is credited above all with ceremonial and presentation blades, showing a well-forged itame mixed with mokume, ji-nie, and a notare hamon in nioi with ko-nie.