Tachi (signed Sukekane)

A Tachi Signed Sukekane, National Treasure since 1957

Tachi (signed Sukekane) (太刀〈銘助包〉) is a Kamakura-period long sword in Osaka Prefecture, designated a National Treasure in 1957, on 19 February. It had become an Important Cultural Property on 16 December 1931. The quantity is one sword, the category applied arts, and the designation number 00212.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the maker as Sukekane and the period as Kamakura. Both the year field and the Western year field are blank, so no specific year is recorded, and the commentary runs to a single line: a work of the Kamakura period.

Descriptions placing the sword in the Genryaku era, 1184 to 1185, or in the late Heian period appear elsewhere, but the Agency's period field reads Kamakura. This article follows the Agency.

The Recorded Form

Cultural Heritage Online describes the sword as follows.

Ridged in section with a pitched back and the curvature set toward the hilt. The ground shows a fine wood-grain pattern with an undulating reflection standing in it. Within the edge the line runs straight with small irregularity mixed in, the misty crystalline band deep, granular crystals gathering, and legs running out. The point turns in a shallow irregularity and returns slightly. A golden line runs on the front. A straight groove is cut through on both faces. The tang is unaltered, the end rounded, the file marks slanting, with two peg holes.

An unaltered tang means it has not been worked on. It has not been shortened, and this is why the signature survives and the maker's name can be read.

The blade is 73.3 centimetres long with a curvature of 2.4 centimetres. Curvature set toward the hilt is a mark of the older tachi.

The Vocabulary of Edge and Ground

The terms in that description are the technical vocabulary of sword appreciation.

A fine wood-grain pattern describes how the forging shows in the surface of the steel. An undulating reflection is a pale shadow-like figure standing in the ground. Both concern the metal itself rather than the hardened edge.

The misty band and the granular crystals are two ways the particles of the hardened edge appear: the first runs together like haze, the second reads as individual grains. Both are recorded here, so the edge carries the two together.

A golden line is a linear activity within the edge, and legs are streaks running from the edge pattern toward the cutting edge. The point is described as turning in a shallow irregularity and returning slightly.

The straight groove is a long channel carved into the blade and cut through on both faces, lightening the sword and serving as ornament at once.

The Records of Designation Differ

Accounts of the Important Cultural Property designation do not agree.

The Agency's National Cultural Properties Database gives 16 December 1931. Cultural Heritage Online, recording the same sword, gives 29 August 1950 and leaves the National Treasure field blank.

Two databases in the same Agency system differ by nineteen years on the earlier designation and disagree on whether the later one is recorded at all. This article follows the National Cultural Properties Database and notes the discrepancy.

The date 29 August 1950 is when National Treasures under the older law transferred as a body to Important Cultural Property status on the coming into force of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. The Cultural Heritage Online entry may be recording that transfer.

Seeing It

The Agency records the owner as a private individual and leaves both the location field and the holding institution field blank. The present place of keeping cannot be read from the official record.

A National Treasure in private hands is not necessarily shown on any regular footing. Seeing it means waiting for a loan to an exhibition.

Swords repay comparison: the differences emerge when works by the same smith or the same school are set side by side. If several appear together in a museum's sword display, the recorded terms for ground and edge give something to look for.

The prefecture recorded is Osaka. Any planned showing would be announced through museums there or through special sword exhibitions.