Kantei
A long, slender tachi without mounting, lying on a black background, with the point to the right.

Tokyo National Museum, via ColBase · ColBase terms of use

Chikatada · Osafune · Nobunaga

Life and times

The first great name of the largest school in Japan: a smith without certain dates, from whom come Nagamitsu, Kagemitsu and the whole of medieval Osafune.

On this page
  1. The de facto founder of Osafune
  2. Three datings
  3. The origin of the school, under discussion
  4. Oda Nobunaga’s Mitsutada

The de facto founder of Osafune

The Tokyo National Museum says that Mitsutada lived in Osafune, in Bizen, in the mid-Kamakura, and that he is considered the de facto founder of the Osafune school. The Japanese Wikipedia and the 大辞泉 (Daijisen) dictionary say the same: Osafune lies in the Yoshii basin, in today’s Setouchi, and its school produced smiths throughout the Middle Ages.

The Heibonsha encyclopaedia explains why “de facto”: the old texts name his father, Chikatada, as founder, but no work of his survives. From Mitsutada the line continues with his son Nagamitsu (長光, Nagamitsu) and with Nagamitsu’s son, Kagemitsu (景光, Kagemitsu); the Osafune school was the largest in Japan until the end of Muromachi.

NBTHK Sword Journal no. 717 also mentions another son of his, Sanenaga, with work in the Ko-Bizen style.

Three datings

  • The Kokon meizukushi: the Hōji to Kenchō eras (1247–1256), the one repeated by the Japanese Wikipedia.
  • The 日本国語大辞典 (Nihon Kokugo Daijiten): the Hōji to Kenji eras (1247–1278).
  • Markus Sesko: from about the Ryakunin era (1238–1239) to the beginning of the Bun’ei (1264–1275).

Mitsutada has no dated blade; his son Nagamitsu has one of 1274, which helps to place his activity.

The origin of the school, under discussion

In NBTHK Sword Journal no. 717 (October 2016), Ishii Akira summarises Tanobe’s conclusion in Meitō Kanshō no. 528 (2001): the Osafune school existed before the Ko-Bizen school or at the same time, because the Honchō kaji-kō says that the school of Ko-Bizen Masatsune stayed in the Osafune area and that one of its descendants is Mitsutada. This is Tanobe’s thesis, not a consensus, and it does not say that Mitsutada came from Masatsune.

Oda Nobunaga’s Mitsutada

Oda Nobunaga gathered more than twenty blades by Mitsutada. The one he prized most, the Jikkyū Mitsutada (実休光忠, Jikkyū Mitsutada), which had belonged to Miyoshi Jikkyū, killed in battle, was lost in the fire at the Honnō-ji (本能寺, Honnō-ji) in 1582. In an anecdote told by Sesko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi speaks of the Uesugi’s twenty-five Mitsutada; it is an anecdote, not an inventory.