His names
The Japanese Wikipedia gives his birth in 1558 (Eiroku 1) and his death on the eighteenth day of the fifth month of 1631 (Kan'ei 8). Markus Sesko deduces the year of birth from the ages he left engraved: 61 years on a tantō of 1618 (Genna 4), 72 on a katana of 1629, 73 on another of 1630 and 74 on a straight sword of 1631, counted in the Japanese way. According to Kotobank, he was of the Tachibana clan (橘氏, Tachibana-shi); 明寿 (Myōju) is his religious name and 鶴峯 (Kakuhō), his artist’s name.
His earliest dated work is a spear of the eighth month of 1597 (Keichō 2) signed 城州埋忠宗吉 (Jōshū Umetada Muneyoshi), which appears in the list of works of the 2020-2021 “Umetada” exhibition. Sesko places in 1598 the change from Muneyoshi to Myōju, when he is supposed to have become head of the house, at the age of 41, and thinks that the tachi of that year was made for the occasion.
The Umetada house
According to Sesko, the Umetada house worked by inheritance for the Ashikaga shogunate as swordsmiths and engravers (彫物師, horimono-shi): it made habaki and seppa, shortened blades (磨上, suriage) and, on commission from the Hon'ami house, inlaid in gold their attribution (金象嵌銘, kinzōgan-mei). After the fall of the Ashikaga, in 1573, Myōju worked for Toyotomi Hideyoshi and for his nephew Hidetsugu. The workshop moved from the Sanjō quarter to that of Nishijin when Myōju was twelve. The Sekai Daihyakka Jiten records the tradition that he served Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the Toyotomi and the Tokugawa; the Britannica, that Hideyoshi, Hidetsugu and Tokugawa Hidetada dealt with him.
The genealogies of the house make his father, Umetada Shigetaka, also called Myōkin, a descendant in the 25th generation of the Kyoto swordsmith Sanjō Munechika. The Nipponica encyclopaedia says that the Umetada family tree asserts this, but that it has no credibility at all.
The workshop
According to the Japanese Wikipedia, the record of the workshop’s jobs between 1605 and 1660, with impressions of the blades, survives in the 埋忠刀譜 (Umetada tōfu). The “Umetada” exhibition at the Osaka Museum of History (from 31 October to 14 December 2020) and at the Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo (from 9 January to 21 February 2021) focused on that other activity: remaking famous old swords, inlaying inscriptions in gold, making the metal fittings of the mounting and recording the famous swords.
His pupils
According to Sesko, the lord of Saga, Nabeshima Naoshige, sent the first Hizen Tadayoshi (忠吉), the one who signed Musashi Daijō Tadahiro from 1624, to Kyoto in 1596 to train for two years with Myōju and with his father, and Horikawa Kunihiro (堀川国広) spent some time in the workshop, at no known date. The Sekai Daihyakka Jiten counts Aki Teruhiro (輝広) among his pupils. A katana by the first Tadayoshi, of 1629 and signed Tadahiro, in the Tokyo National Museum, bears a carving by Myōju, made at the age of 72, and the inscription 此忠広埋忠明寿弟子 (kono Tadahiro Umetada Myōju deshi): “this Tadahiro is a pupil of Umetada Myōju”.
The patriarch of shintō
The Japanese Wikipedia calls him the patriarch of the shintō swordsmiths and attributes to him the origin of 水減し (mizu-heshi), a technique of shintō forging. The Nipponica encyclopaedia explains the title by his role as a forerunner, who moved from the sword for use to the sword for contemplation, but says that forging was a secondary activity for him and that his worth lies in his tsuba; the Sekai Daihyakka Jiten is of the same opinion.