* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Shinogi Tōshirō
鎬藤四郎
Also known as: Shinogi Toshiro / The Yoshimitsu tanto treasured by the Date clan
Description
A Yoshimitsu tanto passed among the unifiers of Japan
The Shinogi Tōshirō is a tantō forged in the mid-Kamakura period by Awataguchi Yoshimitsu, known by the nickname Tōshirō, and is listed in the Kyōhō Meibutsu Chō register of celebrated blades. Its cutting edge measured roughly 8 sun 8 bu (about 27 cm). Most of Yoshimitsu's tantō are made in the flat hira-zukuri construction, but this one is said to have been forged in shinogi-zukuri, with a ridge line running between edge and back — a construction so unusual for the smith that it became the sword's name.
From the Hosokawa to Oda, Toyotomi and Date
The blade first appears in the hands of the Hosokawa, deputy shoguns of the Muromachi bakufu, and after passing through several families came into the possession of Oda Nobunaga. According to the Shinchō Kōki, in 1581 Nobunaga distributed celebrated blades among his sons and gave this one to his third son, Oda Nobutaka. It later went to Hōjō Ujinao, was purchased by Kuroda Josui and presented to Toyotomi Hidetsugu, and thereafter entered the collection of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. When Hideyoshi died in 1598 the tantō was sent to Date Masamune as a memorial bequest, and the Date family kept it as a treasure in a sumptuous maki-e lacquer box.
Presentation and destruction
In 1636 Date Tadamune, Masamune's heir, presented the blade to the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, who in 1650 passed it to his heir Ietsuna. The blade was destroyed in the great Meireki fire of 1657 along with many other celebrated swords kept in Edo Castle, and it no longer survives. Only the lacquered storage box remains; it was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1952 and is deposited at the Tokyo National Museum — a rare case of a meibutsu whose container outlived its blade.
The smith Yoshimitsu
Awataguchi Yoshimitsu, known as Tōshirō, worked at Awataguchi in Yamashiro province in the mid-Kamakura period. Very few tachi by him survive; his reputation rests on his daggers, and later ages ranked him with Masamune of Sagami and Gō Yoshihiro of Etchū as one of the "three great smiths." Many of his surviving tantō — the Atsushi, Gotō and Hirano Tōshirō among them — are National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, and from the Sengoku era into the early Edo period such blades stood at the very top of the hierarchy of gifts exchanged among daimyo. That the Shinogi Tōshirō travelled through the hands of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Masamune and the shoguns is a direct consequence of the authority carried by Yoshimitsu's name.
Legends & Stories
Toyotomi Hidetsugu's final act
The best-known anecdote attached to this blade concerns the death of Toyotomi Hidetsugu. Kuroda Josui had bought the tantō and presented it to Hidetsugu, and when the regent took his own life on Mount Kōya in 1595 he is said to have "cut his belly cleanly with the Shinogi Tōshirō he had received." The story captures the double nature of Yoshimitsu's daggers, prized at once as art objects and as instruments of a warrior's death.
Date Masamune and the shogunate
Date Masamune, who received the tantō as Hideyoshi's bequest, treasured it above almost anything else. When the shogunal house asked him to surrender it, he is said to have refused vehemently on the grounds that it had been given to him by the Taikō himself. Only after his death did his son Tadamune present it to Iemitsu — and barely two decades later the Meireki fire swept Edo Castle and reduced the celebrated blade to ashes.