Minamoto no Masao

Lineage and Career

Minamoto no Masao, also known as Suzuki Masao, was a late-Edo-period swordsmith. A native of Mino Province (southern present-day Gifu Prefecture), his given name was Suzuki Jirō. He moved to Edo, lived in Shitaya Okachimachi (near present-day Ueno, Taitō Ward, Tokyo), and was a fine smith who studied under Minamoto no Kiyomaro, whose skill stood out even among the smiths of the shinshintō era. Kiyomaro is counted, together with Suishinshi Masahide and Taikei Naotane, among the Edo Sansaku (Three Great Smiths of Edo).

Work in Hakodate

In 1857, when the Tokugawa shogunate began building the Goryōkaku fortress and an ironworks in Hakodate (present-day Hakodate, Hokkaido), Masao was invited by the Matsumae domain and crossed to Hakodate, where he forged swords. His forging in Hakodate, from 1858 to 1860, is well known. Works of this period are said to have used iron sand from various parts of southern Hokkaido, including Ugaura on the outskirts of Hakodate as well as Chikishinai, Yoshioka, and Shiriuchi, and this period of working with Ezo materials forms a distinctive chapter in his career.

Style

Masao's work is distinctive even within the Kiyomaro school, characterized by a shallow curvature, broad blade width, and an extended, strong kissaki. He tempered midare hamon in the Sōshū manner centered on rough nie, and particularly excelled at low hamon in large gunome-midare with squared-off peaks.

A "Katana signed Minamoto no Masao, Bunkyū san-nen hachi-gatsu hi" held by the Touken World Foundation has been certified Tokubetsu Hozon Tōken (Especially Worthy of Preservation); it measures 70.3 cm in length with 1 cm of curvature. A late-Edo shinshintō work, it inherits his master Kiyomaro's style while showing Masao's own character.

Reputation

Masao's working career was short, from about 1853 to 1866, and his surviving works are considered precious. His signatures are all remarkably fluent, and he is said to have had exceptionally fine handwriting. The year of his death is not known in detail. The well-known smith Hayama Enshin was his pupil. He is ranked jōsaku in the shinshintō rankings. As one of the representative smiths of the Kiyomaro school, he carried on his master's bold style and is also notable for having forged swords in Hakodate during the era of Goryōkaku's construction.