Kantei

The Ōkanehira and other tachi

Famous works

A National Treasure that the official register calls the finest sword in Japan, and several signed tachi in collections and museums.

On this page
  1. Ōkanehira (大包平)
  2. The Ōkanehira
  3. Other signed tachi
  4. In the old lists

Ōkanehira (大包平)

Tachi signed 備前国包平作 (Bizen no kuni Kanehira saku), with the meibutsu name 大包平 (Ōkanehira). Designated in 1936 under the old law and National Treasure in 1951, in the Tokyo National Museum. The official record describes it as a flawless masterpiece of the Ko-Bizen Kanehira, said to be the finest sword in Japan, recorded in the Kyōhō meibutsuchō and kept in the Ikeda house of Okayama as the favourite sword of Ikeda Terumasa.

According to Japanese Wikipedia, the name alludes to its exceptional length, and with the Dōjigiri Yasutsuna it is called “the two yokozuna of East and West”, an expression attributed to Satō Kanzan. The State bought it from the Ikeda house in 1967, and since then it has been in the Tokyo National Museum. That Ikeda Mitsumasa obtained it at the urging of Kumazawa Banzan is tradition: Japanese Wikipedia points out that it may have been in the house since the days of Terumasa. Before that, legend makes it a shrine offering, as at the Ōyamazumi.

Other signed tachi

In 2021 the NBTHK showed in its exhibition 珠玉の名品展 (Shugyoku no meihinten) two tachi signed 包平 (Kanehira), from private collections and dated to the end of the Heian or the beginning of the Kamakura: the one of the Itō house of Obi, in Hyūga, of 80.9 cm, and the one of the Satake house of Kubota, in Dewa, of 78.7 cm.

The unsigned tachi of the Tsuchiura City Museum, attributed to Kanehira, came to the Tsuchiya house as a gift from Yanagisawa Yoshisato on behalf of Matsudaira Mino-no-kami (Yoshiyasu). The other tachi with the long signature is in the Mori Memorial Shūsui Museum, in Toyama, according to Japanese Wikipedia. The museum’s record could not be consulted.

A tachi blade with a gilt habaki on a white cloth, next to a label with text in Japanese and English.
Tachi signed 包平 (Kanehira) in two characters, from the Satake house of Kubota, in Dewa, according to its label; 78.7 cm. SLIMHANNYA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

In the old lists

The Ōkanehira is recorded in the Kyōhō meibutsuchō (享保名物帳, Kyōhō meibutsuchō) under that name. Kanehira does not appear in the list of wazamono given by Japanese Wikipedia, which covers later smiths.