Sōshū Tsunahiro

Profile

The first smith of the Tsunahiro line worked in Sagami around the Tenbun era (1532–1555), at the end of the Muromachi period, within the late Sōshū school associated with the Hōjō of Odawara. Tradition holds that he earlier signed Masahiro (正広) and that Hōjō Ujitsuna granted him the character tsuna (綱) in his name. He is documented by a tachi signed Sōshū-jū Tsunahiro saku (相州住綱広作), commissioned by Ujitsuna together with two others by Tsunaie and Yasukuni and dedicated in 1538 to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū shrine in Kamakura, where all three survive in their mountings as an Important Cultural Property. It is a long, wide blade in shinogi-zukuri with a deep curve and a large kissaki, an itame hada with ji-nie, and a gunome hamon with tobiyaki that becomes hitatsura (皆焼), with kinsuji and sunagashi, the manner of the school at that time. His successors carried the name for many generations, under the patronage of the Hōjō and later the Tokugawa, well into the Edo period.