Noda Hankei

Profile

Hankei (繁慶), also known as Noda Hankei, came from Mikawa and inherited the trade of gunsmith from his father. He trained at Hachiōji, the gunsmiths' centre Tokugawa Ieyasu set up in 1590, and signed his matchlocks Kiyotaka (清堯), with dates from 1610 to 1615. He followed Ieyasu into retirement at Sunpu in Suruga, where he took up blade forging, probably alongside Yasutsugu and Nanki Shigekuni. After Ieyasu's death in 1616 he settled in Edo and, around 1620–1624, adopted the name Hankei; he is thought to have lived until about the middle of the Kan'ei era. His work is a personal reading of the Sōshū tradition, above all of Norishige (則重): wide blades with an elongated kissaki and a sharp mitsu-mune; a coarse itame with masame, ample ji-nie and thick chikei, the so-called hijiki-hada (ひじき肌); and a hiro-suguha or notare hamon in nie with gunome-ashi and sunagashi, its habuchi often indistinct. His thickly cut signature appears in two forms, ro-mata (ロ又) and ru-mata (ル又), the latter from his final years. His students included Hanjō (繁昌) and Masayoshi (正慶), both from Suruga.