Ko-Bizen Nobufusa
信房 (Nobufusa)
A Bizen smith of the late Heian to early Kamakura period, one of the Ko-Bizen; one of Go-Toba’s rotating smiths, whom tradition places among the emperor’s forging masters.
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Nobufusa worked in Bizen between the late Heian and the early Kamakura period, and the dictionaries count him among the makers of the Ko-Bizen, the name grouping the oldest smiths of the province; other lists put him with the Ichimonji. He also signed with a different character for «Nobu», 延房 (Nobufusa), and so he appears in the most widely circulated list of the rotating smiths (番鍛冶, bankaji) of the retired emperor Go-Toba, which gives him the month of March.
According to tradition, Go-Toba learned forging from Awataguchi Hisakuni and from him, and granted him the title 日本鍛冶惣長者 (Nihon kaji sōchōja), «chief of the smiths of Japan». A biographical dictionary says that works of his are preserved in the imperial collection and among the national treasures and the important cultural properties, without saying which. Several smiths bore this name, and not every blade signed Nobufusa is his.