Mondo no Shō Masakiyo

Profile

Masakiyo, of the Miyahara (宮原) family, worked in Satsuma from the late 17th century into the first decades of the 18th, and died in 1730. He trained under Maruta Masafusa (丸田正房) and in his early years signed Yoshikage (吉景) and Kiyomitsu (清盈). In 1721, at the order of the shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune, he forged at the Hama-goten (浜御殿) in Edo together with his fellow Satsuma smith Ichinohira Yasuyo (一平安代); he was then permitted to engrave a single leaf of the Tokugawa aoi (葵) crest on the tang, and later that year received the title Mondo no Shō (主水正). His usual signatures are Sasshū jū Fujiwara Masakiyo (薩州住藤原正清) and Mondo no Shō Masakiyo, sometimes with the aoi leaf above them. His blades tend to be wide and thick with a shallow curve, an itame or ō-itame hada with chikei, and a coarse-nie hamon of notare and gunome crossed by long bright lines known as imo no tsuru (芋の蔓). Masachika (正近) and Masamori (正盛) came out of his workshop.