Tachi Sword (signed Moromitsu of Osafune in Bishu; dated 1402, the rest illegible)

One Sword, an Important Cultural Property since 1950

Tachi Sword (signed Moromitsu of Osafune in Bishu; dated 1402, the rest illegible) (太刀, Tachi) is a Muromachi-period craft object owned by Kitano Tenmangu in Kyoto Prefecture, designated an Important Cultural Property on 29 August 1950. The quantity is one sword and the designation number is 01363.

The maker is recorded as Moromitsu of Osafune in Bishu. The date is the ninth year of Oei, 1402 by the Western calendar.

The Agency's commentary reads: a work of the Muromachi period. This is the thirteenth one-sentence commentary among the properties covered here.

The Title Is the Inscription

The title of this property copies out the inscription cut into the blade.

The first part gives the maker's name, the second the date.

Among the paintings covered here, the angle brackets of a title held artist and form. The screens of pines and flowering plants left the space before the slash empty to show that no artist was recorded, while the Ippen biography carried its painter's name.

With swords, what stands inside the brackets is the inscription. Who made it and when are both cut into the object itself, and the title transcribes them.

The maker field carries the same name, matching the title. Because a signature exists, the maker is fixed.

The Rest Illegible, Written into the Title

What repays attention is how the title ends.

The ninth year of Oei, the rest illegible. The year can be read; what follows cannot. That it cannot be read is written into the title itself.

The Gobu Shinkan scroll carries the note that its opening is missing, and a painting of an outing beneath blossoms notes that two panels of its right screen are missing. In both, matter is gone.

This is different. The blade is not damaged. Only the characters cut into it cannot be read. What the title records is not loss of substance but a limit of reading.

A date is usually cut with month and day following the year. A related property, a sword by Morimitsu of Osafune dated the twelfth month of the twenty-third year of Oei, shows the usual form. Here only the year can be made out.

Two Ways of Marking What Cannot Be Read

Among related properties, another form appears for unreadable passages.

One sword is titled with the inscription reading Osafune in Bishu, the rest illegible, attributed to Moromitsu, dated the year of Meitoku, with squares standing where characters should be.

A square marks a single character that cannot be read. Two squares mean the year within the Meitoku era is unknown and one further character beyond it is unknown as well.

The phrase the rest illegible, by contrast, marks everything from that point on as unreadable together. Where characters can be counted, squares; where they cannot, the phrase.

That property also carries the note attributed to Moromitsu. Since the maker's name in the inscription cannot be read, the work is only held to be his. Here the name is legible, so no such qualifier appears.

A Month's Difference Makes a Separate Property

Two swords by one maker stand among the related entries.

Both are signed Morimitsu of Osafune in Bishu and dated the twenty-third year of Oei: one to the twelfth month, the other to the eighth.

Maker and year agree; only the month differs. Each is recorded as its own property.

Because month and day are cut into the blade, swords made in one year can be told apart. The effect of a title that transcribes an inscription shows here.

Kitano Tenmangu, in Kyoto Prefecture, owns the sword. It is a shrine holding and not on permanent display, and plans can change, so check before travelling.