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1606-00-00
Edo
About 16 min read
The first-generation Echizen Yasutsugu is recorded as having been born in Tenbun 23 (1554) and having died on the ninth day of the ninth month of Genna 7 (23 October 1621), spanning the Azuchi-Momoyama period and the opening years of the Edo period. His origins are not entirely clear; one tradition holds that he descended from the Akasaka Senjuin school of Mino Province. His birthplace was Shimosaka in Omi Province (present-day Shimosaka, Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture), and he is said to have been either the son or the younger brother of Shimosaka Hachirozaemon, a retained smith of the Shimosaka clan. His personal name was Shimosaka Ichizaemon, and his early blades bear signatures such as "Higo Daijo Shimosaka" and "Daijo Shimosaka." He is said to have received the honorary title of Higo Daijo during the Bunroku era (1593-1596). Before he took the name Yasutsugu, in other words, he was simply one smith among the Omi Shimosaka group.
For a swordsmith of this era, whether or not one secured the patronage of a powerful warrior house determined both the quality of one's work and whether one's name would survive. Ichizaemon's life turned decisively when, at the beginning of the Keicho era, he moved to Echizen.
Early in the Keicho era (from 1596), Ichizaemon relocated to Echizen and, according to tradition, became a retained smith of Yuki Hideyasu, lord of Kita-no-sho in Echizen. Hideyasu was the second son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, granted the whole province of Echizen after the Battle of Sekigahara and installed at Kita-no-sho, later known as Fukui. Some accounts state that Ichizaemon was granted a stipend of forty koku as a retained smith. He became the central figure of the Shimosaka school in Echizen.
Entering the protection of Ieyasu's own son set the stage for the next leap. On Hideyasu's recommendation, around Keicho 10 to 11 (1605-1606) — though some accounts place it later, around Keicho 18 (1613) — Ichizaemon was summoned by the "two Gosho," Ieyasu and Hidetada, and ordered to forge blades in Edo. It was the moment a provincial smith was raised to something close to direct service under the rulers of the realm.
His work in Edo was highly esteemed. What he received in consequence was treatment at samurai rank with a fifty-man stipend, the character "Yasu" (康) taken from Ieyasu's own name, and permission to cut the hollyhock (aoi) crest of the Tokugawa house into the tang of his blades. He changed his name to Yasutsugu, and from then on his swords carried the aoi crest on the nakago.
The tang of a blade is, by convention, the place where the maker inscribes his own name. That the shogunal family's crest was permitted there means Yasutsugu was treated not as a craftsman filling commissions but as a figure embodying Tokugawa authority. Because of this privilege he was known as "Gomon Yasutsugu" (Yasutsugu of the Crest) and "Aoi Shimosaka," and his blades could be identified at a glance as the work of a shogunal smith. His terms of service were unusual as well: he was ordered to serve in alternating years between Echizen and Edo — simultaneously a retained smith of the Matsudaira house of Echizen and an official smith of the Tokugawa shogunate.
One surviving blade records this grant in Yasutsugu's own voice: a wakizashi dedicated to Atsuta Jingu, designated an Important Cultural Property. The tang reads "Honno Bishu Atsuta Daimyojin" on one side, and on the reverse: "Ryo-Gosho-sama ni meshi-idasare, Bushu Edo ni oite ken o tsukuri, gomon Yasu no ji o kudasare, makari-nobori kizami-komeru Echizen Yasutsugu" — that is, "Summoned by the two Gosho, I forged swords in Edo in Musashi Province, was granted the crest and the character Yasu, and came up to inscribe this: Echizen Yasutsugu."
It is uncommon for a tang inscription to narrate its maker's own career in the first person. The wakizashi bears carvings of bamboo and plum branches, and stands out not only for its quality as a work but for its documentary value in confirming the grant. The fine horimono frequently seen on Yasutsugu's blades are thought to be the work of the Kinai school of carvers of Echizen.
Having become a shogunal smith through the grant of the crest, Yasutsugu was entrusted with work that came to no other smith. According to the Sunpu-ki, on the sixteenth day of the intercalary sixth month of Genna 1 (1615), at Nijo Castle, he was charged with searching out and retempering the famous blades that had been burned when Osaka Castle fell. It was the enormous task of reviving, through re-hardening, the celebrated swords seized by the Tokugawa after the Summer Campaign.
Among them, tradition holds, were the Ichigo Hitofuri by Awataguchi Yoshimitsu and other meibutsu associated with Sadamune and Munechika. Of the Ichigo Hitofuri, the Sunpu Seiji-roku records that Shimosaka was summoned from Kyoto on the sixteenth day of the second month following the castle's fall to re-harden the damaged blade. In the course of that retempering, the blade, originally two shaku eight sun three bu, was shortened to two shaku two sun three bu, and its signature was converted to a gakumei (inlaid inscription plate). The sword was later kept at Nagoya Castle and, in Bunkyu 3 (1863), presented by the Owari lord Tokugawa Mochinaga to Emperor Komei; it has since been transmitted within the imperial household as a gyobutsu.
This commission changed Yasutsugu's own style. His native manner had been a Seki-influenced itame grain with a hamon of notare mixed with gunome and sunagashi. But handling the finest blades in the realm, and beginning to produce copies of them, brought into his work a marked absorption of the Soshu tradition, above all of Soshu Sadamune. Many of these copies bear the ownership inscription of Honda Narishige, who is thought to have been an important patron of Yasutsugu.
Another distinguishing feature of Yasutsugu's work is his use of nanban-tetsu, imported "southern barbarian" iron. He is said to have been the first swordsmith to use it, and many of his blades carry the supplementary inscription "i nanban-tetsu" ("using nanban iron"). One representative work, designated an Important Art Object, is the katana signed "(aoi crest) Oite Bushu Edo Echizen Yasutsugu / I nanban-tetsu masse no takara futatsu-do" — a single blade concentrating the crest, the Edo provenance, the imported steel, and a cutting-test inscription.
Incorporating iron brought in through the Nanban trade into the traditional forging of Japanese swords reflects the atmosphere of the Keicho era. If the grant of the aoi crest was a political honor, the adoption of nanban-tetsu was an expression of technical curiosity.
The name did not end with a single generation. The second Yasutsugu (died on the fifteenth day of the second month of Shoho 3), Yasutsugu's heir, was named Shimosaka Ichinojo and took the priestly name Kanetsu. He associated with hatamoto such as Mizuno Narimasa and Abe Masayuki, but his skill was genuine: Shogun Hidetada prized his talent, settled him permanently in Edo, and rewarded him with a residence in Kanda Kon'ya-cho. His style closely followed the first generation's, and both the first and second generations appear in later rankings of cutting-quality blades.
After the second generation's death, his heir Umanosuke (later Ichinojo) was still young, and a succession dispute arose with his uncle Shiro'emon, the first generation's third son. Because the house had been "raised up by the Gongen-sama" (Ieyasu), the elders of the Echizen Matsudaira house and Abe Masayuki mediated: Umanosuke succeeded to the Edo Shimosaka house as the third Edo generation, while Shiro'emon founded a branch as the third Echizen generation. The Edo Yasutsugu line continued to a twelfth generation around the Meiji period, and the Echizen line to a ninth generation at the end of the Edo period. Their work, however, differed little from ordinary shinto production, and from the fourth generation onward both houses produced few blades and are judged inferior in skill.
The grant of the aoi crest around Keicho 11 (1606) is more than the success story of one smith. It marks an early stage in the transformation of the early-modern sword from battlefield consumable into an emblem of the order of the shogunal-domainal state. The triple hollyhock cut into a tang declared, without need of an appraisal document, under whose authority the blade had been made.
At the same time, Yasutsugu's life maps out a route by which a shinto-period smith could survive: become the retainer of a powerful daimyo, be recommended to the shogunate, receive a name, and endure as a house. That path became a template for later shogunal smiths. Together with his technical flexibility — the adoption of nanban iron, the absorption of the Soshu tradition through retempering famous blades — Echizen Yasutsugu embodied the sword itself at the turn from Azuchi-Momoyama to Edo.