Niō Kiyozane

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Kiyozane (清実) is a name that occurs more than once in the Niō (二王) school of Suō, present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture. School tradition places a Kiyozane among its founders, around the Hōen era (1135–1141), and makes him the father of Kiyotsuna, although those dates do not fit Kiyotsuna's own and no work by him is known. The surviving blades bearing the name belong to later smiths, among them one active in the Eikyō era (1429–1441). The school worked in close contact with Yamato smiths, owing to the estates the Tōdai-ji held in Suō, and its work shows it: itame hada with masame, a narrow suguha hamon with hotsure and ko-gunome, and often a whitish shirake utsuri. The school's name is linked to the Niho-no-shō (仁保庄) estate where its smiths lived; the story that explains it through a temple gate is told as a legend.