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With Kiyomaro
Kurihara Nobuhide was born in 1815. The Japanese Wikipedia names him among the pupils of Minamoto Kiyomaro, together with Fujiwara Kiyondo (藤原清人), also known as Saitō Kiyondo, and Suzuki Masao (鈴木正雄), and presents him as the representative of the school in Sōshū-den. For Markus Sesko he was one of the master’s best pupils.
The master’s death
According to Sesko, Nobuhide left in writing that Kiyomaro had ruined his health with alcohol: he often could not manage the hammer and spent on sake what he was paid in advance. He also wrote that in the end, on the 14th day of the eleventh month of Kaei 7, he committed seppuku because he no longer knew what to do. An adopted daughter of Nobuhide later said that the master suffered from chronic chest pain. The Japanese Wikipedia records that Nobuhide and Kiyondo finished the swords Kiyomaro had left on order and paid off his debts.
His signatures and his places
His dated blades trace his career: a katana of 1853 (Kaei 6) signed at Uraga, on the bay of Edo; another of 1855 (Ansei 2) with the signature 栗原謙司 (Kurihara Kenji), and another of 1865 (Keiō 1) already with the title of Chikuzen no Kami (筑前守). The record of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, describes a katana of 1870 (Meiji 3) made for Uesugi Yoshinori. The NBTHK published a katana of his of 1876 (Meiji 9) signed 栗原筑前守平朝臣信秀 (Kurihara Chikuzen no Kami Taira no Ason Nobuhide): he was still forging in Meiji. The Honolulu Museum of Art gives him as active around the 1880s.
His dates
Sesko gives him the dates 1815-1880 in an article of 2020; in the 2013 one on Kiyomaro he wrote 1815-1867, which does not fit his blades of 1870 and 1876. None of the sources consulted gives the year of his death from a document.
Who he is confused with
No second generation of Kurihara Nobuhide is recorded in the sources consulted. He should not be confused with Kurihara Akihide (栗原昭秀), who in 1933 founded a centre for training smiths, the 日本刀鍛錬伝習所 (Nihontō Tanren Denshūjo), according to the Japanese Wikipedia. The sources consulted do not make them relatives.