NIHONTO.COM:ABOUT SWORDS

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BIZEN KANEMITSU

Bizen Kanemitsu was the son of Bizen Kagemitsu who was the son of Bizen Nagamitsu and he grandson of the founder of the Bizen Osafune School, Mitsutada. The current thinking is that there were two generations of smiths who used the name Kanemitsu. The first generation is known as O-Kanemitsu. A blade dated 1331 is he oldest dated example of the work of O-Kanemitsu. His work resembled that of his father, Kagemitsu, whose sugata shows features typical of the late Kamakura period with hamon that are uniformly kataochi gunome consisting of nioi.

Beginning in the Bunna era (1352-1356), the workmanship of Kanemitsu changed remarkably. In this period, the smith known as Kanemitsu is called Enbun Kanemitsu, and because of the change of the style of workmanship, he is said to be the second generation Kanemitsu. While this is the current thinking, as more study is done and findings are uncovered, the thinking may swing back to a single generation of Kanemitsu in the future. After all, since both generations worked in a very close time frame it is not beyond the realm of possibility that there was only one generation and he changed his sword making characteristics to comply with the changing times as the Nanbokucho Era came into being.

Tomomitsu, Yoshimitsu, Yoshikage, Hidemitsu, Motomitsu, Masamitsu, Toshimitsu, and Shigemitsu belonged to the school headed by the second generation Kanemitsu. The work of each member of this school had some distinctive features, but the basic characteristics of the second-generation Kanemitsu's work are outlined below.

SUGATA:

The ubu swords of this period came to have the longest nagasa in Japanese sword history. Most of the remaining examples are o-suriage (shortened) and mu-mei (unsigned). The mihaba is wide, with almost no difference in width at the bottom and the top. The kissaki is large, with a fukura, which is not rounded. Hira-niku is scarce. The shinogi is high and the shinogi-ji is narrow. In tanto, the nagasa ranges from 30 cm to 35 cm, the mihaba is relatively wide, hira-niku is scarce and the kasane is thin.

JITETSU:

The jigane is well forged and soft. The hada is itame hada combined with mokume hada. Utsuri appears in the pattern of namazu-hada with thick chikei.

HAMON:

The hamon is narrow, but when kataochi-gunome is present, the pattern is larger than Kagemitsu's. O-midare with nie and mixed with kataochi-gunome, and notare midare with small hataraki are also seen. In work by later smiths of this school there are ko-midare, ko-gunome midare hamon.

BOSHI:

His distinctive boshi, called "Kanemitsu boshi", is midare-komi and is tapered with nioi at the top, resembling a candle flame.

HORIMONO:

In addition to the hi, such horimono as ken-maki-ryu (dragon winding around a sword),bonji, tsume-tsuki-ken (a sword hilt with claws), dokko-tsuki-ken (a sword with a handle), and the names of the gods and deities are skillfully engraved. Tomomitsu (Rin Tomomitsu) engraved a simplified ken-maki-ryu that looks like kara kusa.

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