Izu no Kami Masafusa
伊豆守正房 (Izu no Kami Masafusa)
A Satsuma smith of the early Edo period, bearing the title Izu no Kami; Yamato no Kami Yasuyuki, of the Naminohira school, learned the Sōshū tradition from him.
Profile
Masafusa worked in Satsuma province, in southern Kyūshū, in the early Edo period, and bore the honorary title Izu no Kami (伊豆守, “governor of Izu”). The published sources give neither his dates of life nor any dated works.
What is known of him comes through a pupil. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Yamato no Kami Yasuyuki, of the Naminohira school (波平, Naminohira), entered his workshop by order of Shimazu Iehisa, lord of Satsuma, to learn the Sōshū tradition (相州伝, Sōshū-den), the way of forging of Sagami province.
Rankings
- Maegashira (West) in Tomita Kiyama’s ranking of shintō smiths (1935)