For the Yamashiro fans: Enju, Awataguchi, neither?

[Sukaira]

Also found this - which might seal the deal...that or they are both Kagenaga...https://www.aoijapan.net/katana-mumei-enju-49th-nbthk-juyo-paper/

[Ray Singer]

There are several Enju examples in the link below. 


 

 

[Jussi Ekholm]

You have a nice sword(s), congratulations.

 

Now this following might sound elitist but that is not my intention at all. Just when doing research and studying items I think the ideally reference works used should be zaimei works. If using mumei works as a reference (even historically attributed and important works) there is always room for opinions and errors.

 

Enju school has relatively many signed works by various smiths, I just checked and I should have c. 100 signed swords by them in my references.

 

Some Enju school works are very high quality. Earlier this week I was lucky to see very good tachi by Enju Kuninobu, the Jūyō Bunkazai of Mitsui Museum.

 

Awataguchi Yoshimasa on the other hand is compeletely different case. Seems like I have 0 swords by him among all of my references. If someone can point me to a sword by him I would be happy. That also brings us to the second thing, how can workmanship and features of the smith be evaluated when there are no, or extremely few signed swords left?

 

[Sukaira]

Totally. My thinking really is along the same lines, which is why I wanted to open this blade up for discussion, as it gets kind of murky here with limited references. However it seems his works might be mis-attributed, given the number of times he changed his name, and the fact that Fukunaga seems to point out or think that his style is a mixture of Enju, Rai, Awataguchi and Oei Bizen.

 

It might also be true that Yoshimasa only used this name when he was a student of Yoshimitsu. I will go out on a limb here and say that might be the reason there are no referenced works under the Awataguchi Yoshimasa name, because he (maybe?) was not signing blades at that time as a student (maybe someone can prove that wrong?). He then moves to Inaba to start the Inaba Kokaji and changes his name to Kagenaga, and that smith signature we definitely do have reference works of somewhere, both Shodai and Nidai and I think even beyond that generation. Kagenaga 1 and 2 as well as Awataguchi Yoshimasa are all listed in connoisseur's book of Japanese swords (with descriptions of their hataraki), and Fukunaga's Japanese Sword Encyclopedia has a section on the characteristics of his blades, as well as Markus Sesko's writings on Awataguchi mentioning him in passing.

 

So I have to believe someone, somewhere has seen these blades

https://nihontoclub.com/smiths/KAG112

[Jussi Ekholm]

You have done good research. 😊 To be honest I was pretty much clueless about this smith Awataguchi Yoshimasa, however if he potentially is 1st Kagenaga then it changes things a bit.

 

I think also for Inaba Kagenaga even the experts have hard time deciding on generations. And the works I have recorded in references go from late Kamakura to early Muromachi. Unfortunately the only work I have seen in person is the 1402 dated tachi of Yasukuni jinja.

 

Japanese scholars of course have the real life knowledge of actually seeing and handling these swords. While I've seen them in museums only and in limited amounts. And of course all my references are written by Japanese scholars. Unfortunately my data is purely collected and not actual knowledge.

 

Perhaps the scholars also sometimes want to throw curveballs, so they put it to an obscure smith instead of a well known one.

[Sukaira]

There does seem to be confusion around the Inaba Kokaji in regards to Kagenaga 1, some sources site him being son of Yoshimasa, some Yoshimasa himself, similar to a few other situations. I did find this 4th gen Kagenaga with a sayagaki from Tanobe (German site): https://www.juwelier-strebel.de/asienkunst/Japan/762-katana