Okachiyama Nagasada

Profile

Nagasada, whose family name was Matsui, was born in Fuwa district in Mino and died in 1869. He signed as a resident at the foot of Okachiyama (御勝山), a hill at Akasaka that tradition links with Tokugawa Ieyasu's camp before Sekigahara: Mino no kuni Okachiyama fumoto jū Fujiwara Nagasada (美濃國御勝山麓住藤原永貞). Tradition has him trained in the Akasaka Senjuin line and, once in Edo, also taught by Taikei Naotane (大慶直胤). He worked at Aoyama in Edo, where he dated blades in the mid-1860s, and he is said to have served the Tokugawa house of Kii for a time, with works made at Tamaru in Ise. His work is noted for a masame or muji hada and a hamon in suguba, ko-midare or gunome-midare; some see in it an affinity with the Kiyomaro school.