Tachi (inscribed Masatsune)

A Retirement Gift Six Centuries Old

On October 19, 1745, Tokugawa Yoshimune stepped down after nearly three decades as Japan's eighth shogun. Among the gifts he sent to mark his retirement was a sword bound for the Owari Tokugawa family in Nagoya, received by Munechika, the young heir who would later become the domain's ninth lord. The blade itself was already an antique of staggering age: a tachi forged in Bizen province around the twelfth century, signed with two bold chisel strokes reading "Masatsune."

That sword, designated a National Treasure of Japan in 1954, now belongs to the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation and is kept at the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya, the institution that preserves the heirlooms of the Owari Tokugawa house. Its formal registered name is Tachi, Signed Masatsune (tachi mei Masatsune).

A tachi is the older of Japan's two principal long-sword forms. Unlike the katana, which samurai of later centuries thrust edge-up through the sash, a tachi was slung edge-down from the waist, a fashion suited to fighting on horseback. Blades of this type dominated the Heian period (794 to 1185), and the Masatsune tachi shows the classic proportions of that age: a blade length of 71.8 centimeters, a pronounced curve of 2.7 centimeters concentrated near the hilt, and a slender taper from a base width of 2.9 centimeters to just 1.7 centimeters near the small tip.

Masatsune was one of the founding names of the Ko-Bizen school, the earliest documented group of swordsmiths in Bizen province, in what is now Okayama Prefecture. Together with Tomonari, who by tradition forged a sword for Emperor Ichijo, Masatsune stands at the head of a lineage that would make Bizen the most prolific sword-producing region in Japanese history. Surviving blades signed Masatsune vary enough in workmanship and date that specialists now believe several smiths used the name across the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, possibly as father and son.

Why This Blade Became a National Treasure

The Japanese government designated the sword an Important Cultural Property on November 14, 1953, and elevated it to National Treasure status only four months later, on March 20, 1954. Five tachi signed Masatsune hold National Treasure rank today, and connoisseurs have long singled out this one for the archaic elegance of its signature. The two characters were cut with an unusually thick chisel below the original peg hole, in a style the national cultural-property register describes as the most antique among blades bearing the name.

The quality of the steel matters just as much. The official record notes that the forging grain here is even tighter and cleaner than on comparable works by Tomonari, Masatsune's celebrated contemporary. The hamon, the crystalline temper line along the cutting edge, is a narrow pattern of small irregular waves mixed with ko-choji, miniature clove-bud shapes that became the hallmark of later Bizen work. Streaks of bright nie crystals, called kinsuji, flash within it like threads of lightning.

There is also the matter of provenance. The sword's documented journey, presented by a retiring shogun to one of the three senior Tokugawa branch houses and kept by that family ever since, gives it an unbroken chain of custody rare even among National Treasures. It never passed through the art market. It moved once, as a gesture of state, and then stayed put for nearly three centuries.

What to Look For in the Gallery

Stand close to the glass and follow the curve first. The deepest point of the bend sits low, near the tang, a configuration called koshizori that lets the rest of the blade rise in a long, almost straight line toward the tip. Combined with the firm spread of the base, known as funbari, it produces the poised, slightly austere silhouette that sword scholars associate with the Heian aristocratic age.

Then look into the surface of the steel. The forging grain is itame, a fine wood-grain figure, dusted with minute reflective particles called jinie. Under the gallery lights a faint cloudy band, the midare-utsuri or "wild reflection," hovers in the body of the blade above the temper line. This misty shadow is one of the defining beauties of old Bizen steel and notoriously difficult to photograph; it rewards a slow, angled look in person.

The tang, when displayed visibly, has its own story. Its lower edge narrows in a shape the Japanese call kijimomo, "pheasant's thigh," a contour typical of Heian tachi. Three peg holes record successive remountings over the centuries, and beneath them sit the two thick-cut characters of the signature itself.

One practical note: the Tokugawa Art Museum rotates its sword holdings rather than showing everything at once. The Masatsune tachi appears periodically in the permanent Meihin Collection galleries and in the museum's frequent sword-themed exhibitions. Checking the exhibition schedule on the museum's website before a visit is the surest way to time your trip to its display.

Around the Tokugawa Art Museum

The museum occupies part of the former Ozone residence of the Owari Tokugawa family in Nagoya's Higashi ward, about ten minutes on foot from Ozone Station on the JR Chuo Line, Meijo subway line, and Meitetsu Seto Line. City buses from Nagoya Station also stop nearby at Tokugawaen Shindeki.

Directly beside the museum spreads Tokugawaen, a strolling garden built around a pond, at its best during the peony season in spring and the maple color of late November. The Hosa Library, which holds the books and documents of the Owari lords, shares the same compound and often mounts joint exhibitions with the museum. A short walk west begins the Cultural Path (Bunka no Michi), a district of preserved Meiji- and Taisho-era residences linking the area toward Nagoya Castle, whose reconstructed Honmaru Palace makes a natural companion visit for anyone tracing the world of the Owari Tokugawa.

The museum building itself, opened in 1935, is worth a pause: its weighty masonry entrance hall belongs to the same generation of purpose-built private museums as the Nezu and Okura collections in Tokyo, and the galleries inside recreate settings such as a daimyo tea room and a Noh stage to show the collection in context.