{"product_id":"antique-japanese-katana-sword-signed-tsunahiro-with-gold-dragon-menuki-russet-lacquer-saya-nbthk-hozon","title":"Antique Japanese Katana Sword signed Tsunahiro with Gold Dragon Menuki, Russet Lacquer Saya - NBTHK Hozon","description":"\u003c!-- Katana 88 — Tsunahiro 綱廣 (Yamashiro) — NBTHK Hozon 3036707 — Enpō era, Shintō — Tokyo Nihonto --\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"product\"\u003e\u003cheader\u003e\u003c\/header\u003e\n\u003csection id=\"specs\"\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSignature (Mei):\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e綱廣\u003c\/span\u003e Tsunahiro (omote, two characters; ura unsigned) — carved in the classical \u003cem\u003ekyūjitai\u003c\/em\u003e form, transcribed \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e綱広\u003c\/span\u003e on the NBTHK paper\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSwordsmith:\u003c\/strong\u003e Tsunahiro of Yamashiro — certified by the NBTHK as \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e綱広（山城・延宝頃）\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSchool \/ Tradition:\u003c\/strong\u003e Yamashiro (Kyoto) — Shintō-period Kyoto workmanship\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePeriod \/ Province:\u003c\/strong\u003e Edo period, circa Enpō era (1673–1681) — \u003cem\u003eShintō\u003c\/em\u003e classification \/ Yamashiro Province (modern Kyoto)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eCertificate:\u003c\/strong\u003e NBTHK Hozon Tōken (保存刀剣) No. 3036707 — issued 28 May Reiwa 7 (2025)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eJapanese Registration (Tōroku-shō):\u003c\/strong\u003e Tochigi Prefecture No. 44145, issued 22 August Shōwa 61 (1986)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMounting:\u003c\/strong\u003e Complete katana koshirae — russet-brown lacquered saya, black silk tsuka-ito, gold dragon menuki, copper-alloy sukashi tsuba\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBlade Length (Nagasa):\u003c\/strong\u003e 62.1 cm (2 shaku 0 sun 5 bu)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eCurvature (Sori):\u003c\/strong\u003e 1.1 cm — shallow, typical of mature Shintō geometry\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMekugi-ana:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1 — \u003cem\u003eubu\u003c\/em\u003e nakago, unshortened, signature intact\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eShape (Sugata):\u003c\/strong\u003e Shinogi-zukuri, iori-mune, chū-kissaki\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eHamon:\u003c\/strong\u003e Gunome-midare — large, rounded, openly spaced heads with a broad nioiguchi and nie in the valleys\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBoshi:\u003c\/strong\u003e Midare-komi with a rounded turnback\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eHabaki:\u003c\/strong\u003e Gold-foiled (kin-kise) with neko-gaki file texturing\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003csection id=\"description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA \u003cstrong\u003eNBTHK Hozon-certified katana\u003c\/strong\u003e signed \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e綱廣\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e (Tsunahiro), placed by the NBTHK in \u003cstrong\u003eYamashiro province — Kyoto — around the Enpō era, 1673 to 1681\u003c\/strong\u003e. It measures \u003cstrong\u003e62.1 cm\u003c\/strong\u003e nagasa with \u003cstrong\u003e1.1 cm\u003c\/strong\u003e of sori, and the nakago is \u003cem\u003eubu\u003c\/em\u003e: original length, one mekugi-ana, the signature untouched. For an Edo-period blade to reach Hozon the shinsa panel must judge the mei genuine. This one did.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003ehamon\u003c\/em\u003e is the reason to look twice. It runs as a \u003cstrong\u003ebold gunome-midare\u003c\/strong\u003e of large, rounded heads set at generous intervals — an open, unhurried rhythm rather than the tight repetition of a workshop blade. The \u003cem\u003enioiguchi\u003c\/em\u003e is broad and softly luminous, with \u003cem\u003enie\u003c\/em\u003e collecting in the valleys between the heads, and the pattern widens confidently through the monouchi. This is tempering built to read at arm's length and across a room, which is precisely what a Kyoto smith of standing in the 1670s was being paid to deliver.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe geometry belongs unmistakably to its era. A \u003cstrong\u003eshallow 1.1 cm sori across 62.1 cm\u003c\/strong\u003e is pure Shintō: the deep battlefield curve of the Muromachi centuries had long given way to a straighter, more controlled profile suited to the drawing arts and to the flat, precise cutting favoured under the Tokugawa peace. The \u003cem\u003echū-kissaki\u003c\/em\u003e is compact and well proportioned, and the \u003cem\u003eboshi\u003c\/em\u003e enters it as \u003cstrong\u003emidare-komi\u003c\/strong\u003e, turning back roundly and continuously with the hamon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe polish is sound and the blade presents cleanly along its full length. Minor surface marks are visible in the ji and along the hamon under close studio light — three and a half centuries of careful ownership, not neglect.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003csection id=\"koshirae\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eKoshirae Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sword comes complete in a koshirae of unusual and confident colouring. The \u003cstrong\u003esaya\u003c\/strong\u003e is finished in glossy \u003cstrong\u003erusset-brown lacquer\u003c\/strong\u003e — a warm chestnut tone rather than the default black, catching the light along its full length — and fitted with a thick black braided \u003cem\u003esageo\u003c\/em\u003e. Against black fittings and black ito, the brown reads as a deliberate choice by an owner with an eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cstrong\u003etsuba\u003c\/strong\u003e is a copper-alloy plate with a rich brown-gold patina and the scattered green verdigris of age. Its design is architectural rather than pictorial: a raised central oval carrying the nakago-ana, framed by a border of small punched circles, flanked in turn by two large crescent \u003cem\u003esukashi\u003c\/em\u003e openings that leave the plate reading as three bold masses. The lobed outline and rounded rim complete a piece that works through mass and negative space rather than ornament — an approach that takes far more confidence than covering a plate in decoration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cstrong\u003etsuka\u003c\/strong\u003e is wrapped in \u003cstrong\u003eblack silk ito\u003c\/strong\u003e in \u003cem\u003ehineri-maki\u003c\/em\u003e over full panels of white \u003cem\u003esame\u003c\/em\u003e with large, crisply defined nodes. Beneath the crossings sit the finest fittings on the sword: \u003cstrong\u003egilt dragon menuki\u003c\/strong\u003e, their heads modelled in high relief with individually rendered scales, horns, bared teeth and clawed forelimbs, the gold still bright in the recesses. The \u003cstrong\u003efuchi\u003c\/strong\u003e carries a fine diagonal \u003cem\u003eneko-gaki\u003c\/em\u003e texture echoed exactly on the \u003cstrong\u003egold-foiled habaki\u003c\/strong\u003e — a matched treatment across two separate fittings, the sort of coherence that indicates a koshirae assembled as a whole rather than accumulated piecemeal. The \u003cstrong\u003ekashira\u003c\/strong\u003e is plain polished copper alloy, deliberately undecorated, letting the dragons carry the hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003csection id=\"smith-background\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Swordsmith: Tsunahiro \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e綱廣\u003c\/span\u003e of Yamashiro\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe nakago is signed in two characters on the omote: \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e綱廣\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, cut in the classical \u003cem\u003ekyūjitai\u003c\/em\u003e orthography that swordsmiths used throughout the Edo period. The NBTHK renders it \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e綱広\u003c\/span\u003e in modern script — the same character, the same relationship as \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e國\u003c\/span\u003e to \u003cspan lang=\"ja\"\u003e国\u003c\/span\u003e — and has judged the signature genuine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe certificate places Tsunahiro in \u003cstrong\u003eYamashiro province — Kyoto — around the Enpō era, 1673 to 1681\u003c\/strong\u003e. That is a considered attribution: the shinsa panel read the steel and the tempering and identified the hand as a Kyoto one. For a collector, it is also the most prestigious address in Japanese swordmaking. Kyoto was the imperial capital and the oldest forging centre in the country, and by the seventeenth century it was where the rest of Japan came for recognition — the Kyoto houses administered the granting of honorary court titles to smiths in every province.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA Kyoto smith of the Enpō years was working at the height of the Shintō period, in a city with a forging tradition already seven centuries deep and a clientele of court nobles, temple patrons and senior samurai who could tell refined work from ordinary. This blade shows what that environment produced: a broad, generously spaced gunome-midare carried on a controlled quench, on a sugata of quiet correctness. Signed, unshortened, and certified — the three things that decide whether an Edo-period katana is a documented work or an anonymous one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003csection id=\"school-history\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eKyoto Swordmaking in the Shintō Era\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKyoto in the 1670s was not the Kyoto of the Kamakura masters, and understanding the difference is what separates a buyer who knows what he is holding from one who does not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe city that produced Awataguchi Yoshimitsu and the Rai school had been the imperial capital and forged for the court. By the Shintō period it had been remade. In 1593 the Mino smith \u003cstrong\u003eKanemichi\u003c\/strong\u003e moved from Seki to Kyoto with his four sons — Iga-no-kami Kinmichi, Rai Kinmichi, Tanba-no-kami Yoshimichi and Etchū-no-kami Masatoshi — and founded the \u003cstrong\u003eMishina school\u003c\/strong\u003e, which together with the \u003cstrong\u003eHorikawa\u003c\/strong\u003e school of Kunihiro and the workshop of \u003cstrong\u003eUmetada Myōju\u003c\/strong\u003e dominated Kyoto swordmaking for the rest of the Edo period. The four brothers became known as the Kyō-go-kaji, the Five Smiths of Kyoto.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheir influence went well beyond the forge. Iga-no-kami Kinmichi was granted the right to sign \u003cem\u003eNihon Kaji Sōshō\u003c\/em\u003e — head of the swordsmiths of Japan — and his house came to administer the awarding of honorary court titles to smiths across the entire country. Kyoto in this period was where a provincial maker went to become \u003cem\u003eIse-no-kami\u003c\/em\u003e or \u003cem\u003eTanba-no-kami\u003c\/em\u003e. The Mishina line also carried the imperial chrysanthemum crest on its tangs and perfected the distinctive \u003cem\u003esudareba\u003c\/em\u003e, the bamboo-blind hamon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKyoto work of the era is recognisable by a finely forged ko-itame jigane and a refinement of finish inherited from the old capital's courtly tradition — elegance rather than brute power, in contrast with the muscular Sōshū and Edo styles. This katana sits in that world: signed, ubu, Hozon-certified, dated to the Enpō years, and mounted in a coherent koshirae that has stayed with it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"Tokyo Nihonto","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57040165273924,"sku":"KATANA88","price":5300.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/4080\/8516\/files\/Katana88_330K_0038_GenerativeFill3.jpg?v=1784992373","url":"https:\/\/tokyo-nihonto.com\/products\/antique-japanese-katana-sword-signed-tsunahiro-with-gold-dragon-menuki-russet-lacquer-saya-nbthk-hozon","provider":"Tokyo Nihonto","version":"1.0","type":"link"}