Tsuba Style?

[Andi B.]

Hello,

 

I often see these kind of tsuba:

 

Iron, with a carved landscape (mountains, riverbanks etc.) and a scenery with people and animals.

Here e.g. I have a peasant with a horse carrying bundles of brushwood and on the other tsuba you can see the picture no. 6 of the "Ten Bulls Herding" series: Riding the Bull Home.

 

I suppose these are common and unspecific tsuba but I'm interested, how a tsuba expert would describe tsuba of this "style" in "tsuba terminology"?

(...and are these tsuba completely carved in iron and only the soft metal parts are inlaid?)

[Pete Klein]

Hello Andi -- I will have others fill in the descriptives as I've always been somewhat poor with Japanese terminology, but what I will offer is 'why' the tsuba is designed in this manner. All tsuba in this style go back to '金家', Kaneiye (Kaneie), master of the school by this name from the latter sixteenth century. He was the first to incorporate landscape designs lifted from Chinese and Japanese history/mythology and place them upon tsuba. Here is an excellent link:

 

http://www.shibuiswords.com/one-way-of-looking.htm

 

Balance in design is a simple yet fundamental component to these pieces. You will notice that the primary motif is to the right. This is because the sword and it's furniture is always aligned with the more important to the outside (omote) and the lesser to the inside (ura). This is also the case for the majority of mei, although the Hizen Tadayoshi reversed this (as I am not a sword researcher I will not attempt to elaborate as to why). In any case, design elements will tend to be to the omote, and the the rank of fittings also follow this the majority of the time (the kogai is on the outside, the kozuka the inside; the primary menuki the outside, etc).

 

Pretty cool, what?

[John A Stuart]

When traveling in the east, one thing I have noticed, especially in China, was wall hangings (calenders abound with them) that had as themes; gods/esses, bucolic and landscapes. San sui landscapes are often on tsuba, containing the three elements of the genre; Road, Door, Heart or Pathways (meandering never straight, land or water), Threshold (mountain, shadow or sky) and Heart (the single defining point of interest). Even in this modern age they are ubiquitous. It is this everday association with this art style, initiated, as Pete says, by Kaneie, that I believe had/s made it popular on other media, including tousogu. John

[Pete Klein]

Thanks John -- I just learned something! LOL You're never too old and better not be too above... !

[runagmc]

Iron/steel parts can be inlayed the same as the soft metals...