Sword Culture of the Three Tokugawa Branches: Domain Swordsmiths and Mounting Aesthetics of Owari, Kii, and Mito

What Are the Gosanke? — The Three Great Daimyo Houses That Supported the Tokugawa Shogun Family

The Gosanke refers to three powerful daimyo domains established to ensure the succession of the Tokugawa shogun family bloodline in perpetuity. These were the Owari Tokugawa house (Nagoya Domain, 620,000 koku), the Kii Tokugawa house (Wakayama Domain, 550,000 koku), and the Mito Tokugawa house (Mito Domain, 350,000 koku). Each of these three houses held the rank to produce shogunal successors and occupied a special position in bakufu politics as "branches of the Tokugawa shogun family."

These three houses each possessed distinct geographical and cultural backgrounds and fostered their own unique styles and official sword smiths in sword culture. Owari absorbed sword smith culture from Mino and Yamashiro, encouraging sword forging that emphasized practicality. Kii favored magnificent mountings (koshirae) connected to the maritime trade culture of the Nanki region, while Mito, under the influence of Mito scholarship, maintained a keen interest in the "revival of old swords" (kotō). The differences in sword culture among the three houses directly reflected the cultural individuality of each region.

Owari Tokugawa House Sword Culture — The Inheritance of Mino Tradition and the Legacy of Masamune Imitations

The Owari domain was one of the daimyo domains with the most developed official sword smith system. The domain lord Tokugawa Yoshinao (the ninth son of Ieyasu and the first daimyo of Owari) possessed deep knowledge of swords and actively employed renowned sword smiths. The representative figures among them were the successors of the Shizu Kaneuji school from Nousu (Mino Province) and sword smiths of the Soshu tradition who later relocated to Owari.

The sword collection of Owari domain is currently preserved systematically at the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya and is known as one of the world's leading Japanese sword collections, containing numerous National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties. Particularly noteworthy is a tantō called "Shiro Izumi no Kami Masamune," said to be a work by Masamune that was transmitted through the Owari house and preserved as the supreme treasure by successive domain lords.

Owari domain sought to preserve within the domain the sword smith techniques of the Mino tradition, particularly the techniques of the Kanemoto (Magoroku Kanemoto) school known for the sanbon-sugi hamon. This exemplifies how the practical sword-making techniques mass-produced in Mino-Seki during the Sengoku period were repositioned as the legitimate traditions of Owari domain during the peaceful Edo period.

Kii Tokugawa House Sword Culture — Magnificent Daimyo Mountings and South Seas Sword Culture

The Kii domain was a great daimyo domain centered on Wakayama in the Kii Peninsula and was also a unique domain in that it held within its territory important religious centers such as Kumano and Koyasan. The characteristic feature of the Kii Tokugawa house's sword culture lay in the fusion of magnificence and religious context.

The domain lords of Kii generally encouraged martial arts, with a particularly strong emphasis on horsemanship, spear craft, and swordsmanship. For this reason, the swords demanded from the official sword smiths of Kii domain were characterized more as "practical blades capable of enduring martial exploits" rather than for beauty alone. The sword mountings (koshirae) of Kii domain were often relatively simple and unadorned in design, embodying a "practical martial aesthetic."

A notable historical fact is that Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth daimyo of Kii, later became shogun (the eighth shogun). In Yoshimune's Kyoho reforms, the emphasis on samurai frugality and martial virtue was prominent, and sword policy likewise prioritized "practical utility." Yoshimune's philosophy was cultivated during his time in Kii domain, and the "utilitarianism" of Kii sword culture can be said to have influenced bakufu policy itself.

Particularly notable among Kii sword smiths was a group of Echizen-born sword smiths who relocated to Kii Province, and records show that craftsmen of the disciple lineage of Echizen Yasutsugi were employed by Kii domain.

Mito Tokugawa House Sword Culture — Mito Scholarship and Passion for the Revival of Old Swords

Though Mito domain had the lowest kokudaka among the three (350,000 koku), it possessed outstanding intellectual and cultural influence. In particular, Mito scholarship, which developed from the mid- to late Edo period, profoundly influenced the loyalist activists of the bakumatsu period as a source of sonnō jōi ideology.

One characteristic feature of Mito scholarship was restorationism, with the motto "learn from antiquity." This philosophy directly extended to views on swords, and in Mito domain a strong tendency developed to value the "old swords" (kotō) of the Kamakura and Nanboku-chō periods more highly than the "new swords" (shintō) of the Edo period. The second domain lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni was the founder of Japan's first systematic historical compilation project, the "Dai-Nihon-Shi," and maintained a keen scholarly interest in old swords, encouraging sword collection and research within the domain.

Particularly notable among Mito domain's official sword smiths was the Mito school of sword smiths founded by Mito Masamitsu. The Mito school's characteristic style was consciously inspired by the Soshu and Yamashiro traditions of the Kamakura period, with its fundamental approach featuring ji-tetsu with well-formed boiling texture and a relatively straight hamon. The coincidence of the "old sword imitation" trend that became popular in the Shinshintō period (late Edo) with Mito scholarship's "restorationism" resulted in the Mito school smiths maintaining a certain level of support through the bakumatsu period.

What the Gosanke Sword Cultures Left Behind in Japanese Sword History

The sword cultures of the Gosanke exerted influence on Edo period sword industry and aesthetics from different directions. Owari functioned as a center for the transmission of Mino and Soshu techniques, Kii presented the aesthetics of practical samurai sword mountings, and Mito strengthened scholarly interest in old swords and the direction of old sword imitations.

The sword collections of the three houses are currently dispersed and preserved: the Owari house collection at the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Kii house collection at the Wakayama Prefectural Museum and Tokugawa Museum, and the Mito house collection at the Ibaraki Prefectural History Museum and elsewhere. All are significant as primary source materials for Japanese sword research. The fact that the Gosanke political framework also functioned as an institutional foundation for maintaining regional diversity in sword culture is a noteworthy fact even from the perspective of today.