Sukaira

That is an interesting thought as well Rivkin

More pics

Type (Tachi, Katana, Wakizashi, Tanto, Naginata, Other) : Wakizashi Ubu, Suriage or O-Suriage : Ubu Mei : (Mumei, Signature) : Sasshu Ju Masayoshi - Anei 2 Mizunoto-Mi 2 Gatsu (Feburary 1773) 薩州住正良 安永二癸巳二月 Papered or not and by whom? : NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon Era/Age : Late Shinto - 1773 Shirasaya, Koshirae or Bare Blade? : Shirasaya Nagasa/Blade Length : 57.3cm Sori : 1.0cm Hamon Type : Niedeki Suguha with deep nioiguchi, notareba with small ashi and strays of ara-nie in the Satsuma style, along the habuchi and into the ji Jihada : ko-itame with jinie, storm gray glossed surfaced Other Hataraki Visible : Ara-nie sprays and boshi has deep nioiguchi Sword Location : USA Will ship to : Anywhere Payment Methods Accepted : PayPal Price and Currency : $4000 USD Other Info and Full Description : A huge wakizashi, basically the length of katana and flawless, with a width of 3.24cm at the hamachi, with a double bo-hi, one wide and one narrow. A great Satsuma piece. Imozuru (potate vine) in ha. The smith Masayoshi: Rated jōjō-saku Real name Ijichi Ji´emon (伊地知次右衛門), he also bore the first names Chūzō (仲蔵) and Heikaku (平覚), his smith name is in some sources also quoted as Masayuki, he signed in early years with Masahira (正平) and Suetsura (季陣) and was the son of the 2nd gen. Masayoshi (正良), he succeeded as 3rd gen. Masayoshi (正良) after the death of the 2nd gen. but with receiving the honorary title Hōki no Kami on the first day of the twelfth month Kansei one (寛政, 1789), he changed the character of “yoshi” and signed his name henceforth with “Masayoshi” (正幸), from the fifth year of Kansei (1793) onwards he signed with the supplement “Satsuma-kankō” (薩摩官工, about “official smith of the Satsuma fief”), he died on the 22nd day of the fourth month Bunka one (文政, 1818) at the age of 86, together with Motohira (元平) he is regareded as one of the best Satsuma smiths of the late Edo period, according to extant documents he trained more than 40 students, wide mihaba, dense kasane, plenty of hira-niku, shallow sori, that means altogether a magnificent and robust sugata, in early years he forged a neat itame mixed with masame, later an itame mixed with ō-hada, in any case with much ji-nie, the jihada is generally more discernible at Masayoshi than at Motohira, the hamon is a vivid notare-midare and gunome-midare with a wide yakihaba, in his early years he also applied a suguha-hotsure, the yakigashira show nie which make them look pointed, there are plenty of hataraki found like sunagashi, nijūba or imozuru, the bōshi is round and shows hakikake or nie-kuzure, often a bōhi with kaki-nagashi is cut, the tang has a bulbous cutting-edge side which tends to funagata and tapers to a narrow kengyō-jiri, the yasurime are kiri.

Just as the topic says - anyone here know of him or examples of his work? I can't find anything online.

I indeed would have dumped 1.2m on that. Kissaki geometry is really interesting.

Just opening this up as I have not seen many blades with this level of intensity on the itame. Is it bad, good, uniform, non-uniform? Looking for anyone who might be familiar with this as I do not have much context on this style. This is a blade I just acquired.

Im hoping so! If you saw it in hand, you would definitely agree something is "off" with the polish as is

what the....

@Rivkin yeah that's why I am excited to have it properly polished, as the jihada itself looks like it has great potential. This one is Koto and Soshu

Yes it is hitatsura

The jihada itself is great, underneath this crazy polish are good "bones" for sure, at least IMO

Might be hard to tell from my photo, but the polish is definitely not good at all.

I probably could return it, but I think the blade is good enough to polish into something really nice, so I am keeping it and having it re-polished with Moses. I can't link the blade since Tsuruta removes the page once it is purchased. However check the pics below:

This might be a known thing, and lesson learned for me in the future...however for anyone that is on the fence about purchasing online from Aoi Art - ask for real photos/video. I recently purchased a seemingly nice wakizashi (right under $10k) that was displayed in the image scans as having a nice milky sashikomi-ish style hamon with a pleasing jihada, rated with Tsuruta's "jyojyosaku" rating. Received it a few days ago and knew something was off immediately, polish was weird, jigane was very white and blurry, a world away from the image scan. I sent it over to Moses Becerra and seems the entire blade was acid washed/etched. Needless to say its getting entirely repolished with him now, but wanted to give anyone new to here or that website that this was extremely misleading.