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Before the forge
He was born in 1968 in the city of Ōita. He finished high school in 1987 and in 1992 graduated in Political Science and Economics from Meiji University. He worked for a chemical company in Tokyo, and left it after seeing a katana by Masamune at the Tokyo National Museum.
With Miyairi Kozaemon Yukihira
In 1994 he became a live-in apprentice at the forge of Miyairi Kozaemon Yukihira (宮入小左衛門行平), in Sakaki, in Nagano prefecture. He had met him at an exhibition of the Miyairi school; at first he was not admitted, and he was taken on some six months later. In 1999 he obtained his licence from the Agency for Cultural Affairs. He himself has told, in an interview and in a 2021 video, that his master once expelled him (破門, hamon); we have not seen in full how that ended.
His Misato workshop
In 2003 he set up on his own and opened the 晶平鍛刀道場 (Akihira Tantō Dōjō) in Misato, in Saitama prefecture. He is a director of the Zen Nihon Tōshōkai (全日本刀匠会, Zen Nihon Tōshōkai) and chairs its Kantō branch, and from 2013 to 2019 he was on the jury of several new-sword exhibitions. For more than ten years he has organised appreciation sessions (鑑賞会, kanshōkai) of modern swords.
Events and publications
- 2007: a votive sword for the Hodosan shrine.
- 2009 and 2018: public forging at the Yasukuni shrine; in 2018, for its 150th anniversary.
- 2016: the guardian sword (お守り刀, omamori-gatana) that the ambassador of Poland received.
- 2020: a tantō for the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police (警視総監, Keishi Sōkan); he publishes the book Tenouchi, munenouchi: katanakaji toshite ikiru koto (双葉社, Futabasha) and appears on the NHK programme “SWITCH Interview”.
The workshop
His Misato workshop at dusk. Photo: the smith himself 
The bed of the hearth, with the embers. Photo: the smith himself 
The fire of the hearth during forging. Photo: the smith himself 
The red-hot steel on the anvil. Photo: the smith himself