Archived Nihonto.ca (Yuhindo.com): Tairyusai Soukan

Tairyusai Soukan

Soukan was a pupil of Koyama Munetsugu. Fujishiro ranks him as Jo-saku for superior quality of workmanship. He engaged for Furukawa-han in Shimousa province ever since he was 17 years old (Seventh year of Ansei) and made swords exclusively for his master. He added title Tairyusai in the first year of Ansei and changed its character to a unique reisho-tai style.

This unique Katana would be made by a special demand for one of the Satsuma rebels. From it’s date of year, this is a work when Soukan was 42 years old. The entire blade and nakago were elaborately made and are healthy.

His normal style is a muji hada with gunome after the pattern of his teacher, but this sword is an exception. It shows that the smiths of this school had the ability to make whatever they want, and though in this day and age we tend to look down our noses at the muji blades, there must have been a reason behind their design and a demand for them among the warriors of the time.

This sword shows a very precise and uniform ko-mokume hada with ji nie, and a choji hamon in nioi which is very bright. There are ashi throughout. The sugata is particularly interesting as it is a slightly stooped uchi-zori.

When a blade is tempered, it gains curvature, so in order to make a perfectly straight blade a smith must start with uchi sori. This straight form of blade was in use between 700AD and the introduction of the curved sword right around 1000AD. Because they are all very old and have seen many polishes, what tends to happen to the sori is that the outward pressure of the yakiba is released as the blade is polished down and it will slowly return to its uchi-sori shape that the smith gave it before tempering.

A blade that has seen few polishes like this, showing a bit of uchi-sori, would be in my opinion intentionally done to properly evoke the feeling of these very old and classical tachi.

Overall, the blade is flawless with only a touch of o-hada showing in the shinogiji. It is very enjoyable, and a unique shape that saw its return as resistance to the Tokugawa shogunate expanded in the middle to late 1800s. A return to the straight blade was a mark of the royalists who demanded a return to the time of the rule of the Emperors.

The sword is in new shirasaya and recent polish by Nakamura, bearing a solid silver habaki. It is a very enjoyable and interesting blade by a top smith, a style found rarely over the history of the Japanese sword.