SIGNED TSUTA ECHIZEN NO KAMI SUKEHIRO, AND DATED KANBUN KYUNEN HACHIGATSU BI (1669.8)

The first generation Sukehiro (d.1655) was born in Tsuta in Harima, and went to Osaka to study under Kunisuke (see Christie's, London, Important Swords from the Museum of Japanese Sword Fittings, Part I, 10 November, 2004, lot 39). Sukehiro's pupil was the maker of this sword. He married his master's daughter, thereby succeeding to the name Sukehiro at the age of only nineteen on the death of his father-in-law, and receiving the title Echizen no Kami at the age of twenty-one. Following his employ under the steward of Osaka Castle, Aoyama Inaba (no) Kami Munetoshi, in 1667, he made many fine blades. He died at the young age of forty-two in 1682. Much of his earlier work was in choji or gunome, in the Ishido style of the first generation, but he later made blades with a broad undulating hamon like this piece, although he is better know for the characteristic toramba ("billowing" hamon) which his pupil Sukenao (see Christie's, London, Important Swords from the Museum of Japanese Sword Fittings, Part I, 10 November, 2004, lot 42) continued. His blades are all of robust form with the shallow curve common to Kanbun-era shinto.