Archived Nihonto.ca (Yuhindo.com): Mino Kanefusa

Mino Kanefusa

The Kanefusa line of smiths worked in the late Muromachi period in Mino province. They are not easy to distinguish between as they feature identical workmanship, so generally scholars will label a piece as Kanefusa and leave it at that.

According to Fujishiro:

There are many hirazukuri ko-wakizashi, hamon is gunome midare with a bit of nioi utsuri, and has a unique appearance that is popularly called Kanefusa midare. Beside this, there are notare midare, o-gonome ha nado […]The latter period of late Seki, in other words, at the time of Kanefusa, Kanekage and Kaneharu nado, was the period of the best development of late Seki. However, the fact that few of the products were katana and that there were many sakizori tanto was probably for the purpose of augmenting the insufficient sakizori tanto that had survived.

Mino smiths, and Seki in particular, were famous for making robust and very sharp blades for the warriors of the time. Kanefusa bears a rating of Ryo-wazamono for a very high degree of sharpness in his blades.

This particular sword is a naginata naoshi, and maintains the beautiful shape quite well after having been restructured into katana form. It is accompanied by WWII vintage naval koshirae in a nice state of preservation, and they can be seen in the slideshow.

The hamon is gunome midare in nioi, as is typical for this line of smiths. The jigane is a tight ko-itame, and there are naginata hi on the lower half of the sword. In a couple of places on the ji can be found tobiyaki.

This sword also bears on its shirasaya a sayagaki by Tanobe Michihiro sensei of the NBTHK. It is unusual that Tanobe sensei chooses to perform sayagaki on a sword of less than Tokubetsu Hozon rating. I have been told that he makes this exception for swords that are of high enough quality to pass Tokubetsu Hozon if submitted.