Miyaguchi Yasuhiro
靖広 (Yasuhiro)
A Tokyo smith (1897-1956) of the Ikkansai line, a pupil of Kasama Shigetsugu and one of the first two smiths of the Yasukuni Shrine forge, where he received the name Yasuhiro.
Profile
Miyaguchi Yasuhiro came from Sugamo, in Tokyo, according to a 1933 magazine, although other sources make him a native of Shizuoka, and he came from a family with three generations of smiths. He learned from his father and then from Kasama Ikkansai Shigetsugu, and like his teacher he signed with the gō (art name) Ikkansai: his first smith name was Toshihiro. The Token Society of Great Britain gives his dates as 1897-1956; the age that the 1933 magazine attributed to him would put his birth a year earlier.
In July 1933 the Minister of the Army, Araki Sadao, launched the Nihontō Tanrenkai, the forge of the Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo, and Miyaguchi was one of its first two smiths, with Yasunori. The minister gave him the name Yasuhiro (靖広), with the character yasu (靖) of the shrine, which all the smiths of the forge received. The Token Society of Great Britain estimates that he made there some five hundred of the roughly 8,100 blades that came out of the forge in twelve years.
Later he worked at the Ōkura Tanrenjo, the forge on Baron Ōkura’s estate in Tokyo, where he also signed Kunimori. The 1933 magazine considered him a good engraver of blades. Among his pupils is Miyaguchi Tsunetoshi.