* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Torikai Kunitoshi
鳥養国俊
Also known as: Torikai Kunitoshi / The Niji Kunitoshi carried by Ishida Mitsunari
Description
A ko-dachi by the smith of the two-character signature
The Torikai Kunitoshi is the work of Kunitoshi, a smith of the Awataguchi school in Yamashiro province active in the late Kamakura period. Because he signed his tang with only the two characters "Kunitoshi," his works are known collectively as Niji Kunitoshi, and this is one of the finest examples. The blade measures 1 shaku 9 sun 9 bu (about 60 cm), the length of a ko-dachi, though the Tokugawa Art Museum classifies it as a tachi. It shows the finely compacted ko-itame grain typical of the Awataguchi school and a dignified suguha-based hamon with small irregularities, and is listed in the Kyōhō Meibutsu Chō.
The name and a costly provenance
The name derives from an early owner, the Sakai townsman Torikai Sōkei. The blade was then bought for 150 kan by Hosokawa Yūsai, the warrior-poet, who passed it to his son Hosokawa Tadaoki. Tadaoki in turn sold it to Ishida Mitsunari for the considerable sum of 500 kan — a transaction that illustrates how the trade in celebrated blades served as both social currency and a display of wealth among daimyo.
Lost at Sekigahara, recovered for Ieyasu
Mitsunari wore this ko-dachi at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. After the defeat of the Western army and his execution the sword vanished, until Tomita Nobutaka, lord of Tsu Castle in Ise, tracked it down and presented it to Tokugawa Ieyasu. In the eleventh month of 1618 it was passed on as part of Ieyasu's bequest to Tokugawa Yoshinao, founder of the Owari Tokugawa house, and remained one of that family's treasures. It was certified an Important Art Object in 1941 and is held today by the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya.
The Awataguchi school and Kunitoshi
Kunitoshi worked in the Awataguchi school of Yamashiro province in the late Kamakura period. The school, which began with the six Awataguchi brothers — Hisakuni, Kuniyasu, Kunitomo and the rest — and produced the great dagger maker Yoshimitsu, was renowned for the exquisitely refined nashiji-hada surface of its steel. Blades signed with the two characters "Kunitoshi" are conventionally distinguished as Niji Kunitoshi from those signed "Rai Kunitoshi," though scholars disagree over whether the two signatures belong to one smith or two. Among the two-character works, the Torikai Kunitoshi stands out for the clarity of its documented provenance.
Legends & Stories
A celebrated blade that vanished at Sekigahara
What makes the Torikai Kunitoshi memorable is above all its turbulent journey. Ishida Mitsunari, who had bought it from Hosokawa Tadaoki for 500 kan, wore it into battle at Sekigahara. When the Western army collapsed and Mitsunari was executed at Rokujō-gawara, the sword disappeared somewhere in the chaos of the decisive battle — only to be found later by Tomita Nobutaka, lord of Tsu Castle, and presented to the victor, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Enshrining an enemy's sword
Ieyasu accepted it without rancour and left it as part of his bequest to Tokugawa Yoshinao of Owari. That a defeated rival's sword was not destroyed but preserved as a treasure of the senior Tokugawa branch says much about how the warrior class valued a blade's history as inseparable from the blade itself. Four centuries later, Mitsunari's sword is still kept and shown at the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya.