Kantei

Saga · the family of the Tadayoshi

Life and times

Little more is known of Masahiro’s life than what his blades say and his place in the family of the Tadayoshi, the great school of Saga.

On this page
  1. The family of the Tadayoshi
  2. Ōmi Daijō Tadahiro
  3. The dates
  4. The date of the title
  5. What tradition says

The family of the Tadayoshi

Japanese Wikipedia calls him grandson and pupil of the first Tadayoshi, Musashi Daijō Tadahiro, founder of the Saga school; in another article it calls him only his pupil. According to the NBTHK (Sword Journal no. 808, 2024), the first Dewa no Kami Yukihiro was born in 1618, the second son of Yoshinobu, adopted son of the first Tadayoshi, and Masahiro was his elder brother: the two versions fit if Masahiro was a grandson by adoption. In that issue, the NBTHK presents the two brothers as the representatives of the side branches of the Hizen swordsmiths, alongside the main line of the Hizen Tadayoshi.

Ōmi Daijō Tadahiro

According to Japanese Wikipedia, when the first Tadayoshi died, in 1632, his son Ōmi Daijō Tadahiro, born in 1614, took the name Tadahiro and received the guidance of several swordsmiths of the school, among them Kawachi Daijō Masahiro.

The dates

Birth and death
1607–1665, according to the record of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York HD
Title
Kawachi Daijō, in 1628 (Kan'ei 5), according to the Tokyo National Museum HD
Dated blades
1639 (Kan'ei 16), signed without the title, and 1653 (Jōō 2) HD
Generations
He is the first; the second signed with the title Kawachi no Kami (河内守), as on a katana in the Tokyo National Museum HD

The date of the title

The Tokyo National Museum holds a katana of his signed 肥前国佐賀住正広 (Hizen no kuni Saga jū Masahiro), without the title, and for that reason dates it before 1628, the year in which, according to the museum, he received that of Kawachi Daijō. The NBTHK (Sword Journal no. 818, 2025), however, studies a katana with the same signature without the title dated the second month of 1639 (Kan'ei 16). None of the sources consulted explains how the two facts fit together.

What tradition says

According to Japanese Wikipedia, 武市半平太 (Takechi Hanpeita), the Tosa samurai who was the sword master of 岡田以蔵 (Okada Izō), had a sword by Kawachi Daijō Masahiro. It is not recorded where that sword is.