Masahide Curiosity

[seattle1]

Hello:

 A few days ago Aoi Art posted for sale a sword by Masahide, AS16153, starting price of 3,500,000 JPY and signed "Suishishi Masahide Saiba" and they add ('Saiba' meaning for 'engrave are done by himself'). That was a puzzle for me as I had thought "saiba", like "yakinaoshi", meant a retempered blade. A Google and glossary search, and an inquiry of another collector didn't help.

 Last evening I was re-reading The Early Famed Works of the Kyoto Smiths (Kyomono no Ko-Meisaku) by the late Yoshikawa Koen and published in translation by the JSS/US. Just as a plug I should point out what a terrific example of scholarship educational information it is. Anyway in the first essay a Kiku Gyosaku from the Imperial Collection is discussed, and it is explained that such works are made by Emperor Gotoba with the assistance of such luminaries as Awataguchi Hisakuni and Ichimonji Nobufusa. Gordon Robson's very able translation points out that the tempering of these blades is referred to a "saiha", meaning "tempering the edge". While not said in so many words it seems that the famous smiths assisting did the forging and the Emperor did the tempering of the edge. The same kanji for saiba are used by Robson as are found on the Masahide example at Aoi.

 Does anyone know if "saiba" refers to engraving as well as tempering, or both? Could it perhaps be misused in referring to engraving and Masahide was actually tempering a blade forged by a student? Does anyone know of a reference in the literature that clarifies?

 Arnold F.

[Pete Klein]

Perhaps ask Gordon?  He is on Facebook.  A link to the Aoi page offf the item (Japanese language page) might assist.

[Markus]

The engraving part is actually one of Aoi Art's notorious glitches when it comes to the English website. On the Japanese site, the mei is (correctly) quoted as:

 

水心子正秀淬刃（刻印）

Suishinshi Masahide yakiba/saiha (koku'in)

 

Now the koku'in part in parenthesis - i.e. the "hot stamp" as we know, literally "engraved seal" - became "engrave" on the English site, probably because the blade also has engravings.

 

Saiha/saiba with the characters (淬刃・焠刃) means "hardened by..." in this context, in short, the blade was forged by Sadahide and hardned by his father Masahide. I feature one of them in my Shinto & Shinshinto Kantei Zenshû (page 548). Now the saiha/saiba reading of these characters is surely correct but in a kantei session with Tanobe sensei where we had such a joint Masahide/Sadahide work on display, he told me that he rather reads the very term as yakiba because the (焠) character also has the reading yaku, i.e. like yaku (焼) in yakiba. 

 

In other words, (淬) and (焠) do both read sai but the latter one also reads yaku and as both were sometimes used interchangeably, and instead of (焼), in period documents, Tanobe suggested to just read them all as yaku/yaki. 

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Thank you Markus for the clarification.

 Arnold F.