Tachi Sword (inscribed Kagemitsu of Nagafune, Bizen

A signed, dated blade from the spring of 1334

In the second month of 1334, a swordsmith in the Bizen village of Osafune finished a tachi and cut his name into the tang: Bizen no kuni Osafune ju Kagemitsu, "Kagemitsu, resident of Osafune in Bizen Province." On the reverse he added the year. The blade runs 73.3 centimeters along the cutting edge, with a curvature of 2.7 centimeters and a body that widens near the hilt, the older long-sword profile that warriors of the day still favored.

Its formal designation is the Tachi signed Bizen no kuni Osafune ju Kagemitsu, dated the second month of Genko 4. The Agency for Cultural Affairs files it as a work of Kagemitsu's later years.

The year on the reverse reads Genko 4. Around this time the court was replacing the Genko era name with Kenmu, so the inscription keeps a name that was already passing out of use, a small detail that helps fix the blade to early 1334. The national database also transcribes the year "four" as a doubled "two," one way smiths of the period incised the numeral.

Kagemitsu and the Osafune workshop

Kagemitsu led the third generation of the Osafune workshop, the most productive line of smiths in the history of the Japanese sword. The workshop grew up along the Yoshii River in Oku District, in what is now Setouchi City in Okayama Prefecture. Its effective founder was Mitsutada; his son Nagamitsu carried the work forward, and Kagemitsu, Nagamitsu's son, took charge as the third head. He sometimes added the court title Sahyoe-no-jo to his signature.

Smiths of this period are remembered for particular habits of the steel, and Kagemitsu's were admired above the rest of his own school. He worked a tight ko-itame grain, a fine wood-like pattern across the body of the blade, and over it raised a vivid midare-utsuri, the cloudy reflection that floats above the hardened edge when the sword is tilted into the light.

He is best known for a tempering pattern called kataochi-gunome, a row of half-collapsed humps that lean in one direction. This blade is quieter. The hardened edge stays close to straight, with pointed peaks rising at wide intervals, and the boshi turns back in a small round at the tip. The agency reads the temper as the manner of his final years.

One feature counts for more than its plainness suggests. The tang is ubu, never shortened, so the original signature and date survive together. Many tachi of this age were cut down in later centuries to suit changing fashions in mounting, and lost their makers' names in the process. A signed, dated, unaltered Kagemitsu gives scholars a fixed point against which to measure other work.

An Important Cultural Property whose location is no longer known

The sword was recognized early under Japan's older protection law, in records that give the year 1941. When the present Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties took effect, the blade was carried over and registered as an Important Cultural Property on August 29, 1950, under designation number 01213.

Its recent history is harder to trace. The blade belongs to a private owner, and its present location is not known. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists it among the nationally designated properties whose whereabouts have been lost, a register the agency maintains in the hope that such pieces will resurface. Older location records place it in Tokyo, while the agency's missing-property listing notes the owner's prefecture as Fukuoka. The agency does not record the blade as stolen, only as unaccounted for, and it asks anyone with information to contact its cultural properties division.

For a visitor this comes down to a plain fact: you cannot go and see this particular Kagemitsu. What you can do is see the closely related work that fills out his story.

Where to see Kagemitsu's swords today

The most celebrated surviving Kagemitsu is the tachi known as Shoryu Kagemitsu, the "little dragon" Kagemitsu, a National Treasure held by the Tokyo National Museum. Dated 1322, it takes its name from a small kurikara dragon carved into the groove near the hilt, with a Sanskrit character behind it. Tradition links the sword to the fourteenth-century commander Kusunoki Masashige, and its later owners are said to have included the Ii family and, in the Meiji era, the imperial household, with Emperor Meiji carrying it in a saber-style mounting. The museum brings it out roughly once every one to three years, so checking the current display schedule before a visit is worth the trouble.

In Nishinomiya, near Osaka, the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures holds another Kagemitsu tachi designated an Important Cultural Property, shown during the institute's seasonal exhibitions. A Tokugawa hollyhock crest worked into its collar points to a spell in that family's keeping.

The Token World Foundation owns a Kagemitsu tachi dated 1316, once an older-system national treasure, displayed at its museums. Closer to Tokyo, the Sano Art Museum in Mishima, Shizuoka, also holds a Kagemitsu blade and rotates swords through its galleries.

To understand where these swords came from, the surest trip is to Osafune itself. The Bizen Osafune Sword Museum in Setouchi City sits on the ground where Kagemitsu worked, with around forty Bizen blades on view and a working forge on the property. On one Sunday each month, smiths heat tamahagane steel past 1,200 degrees and fold it by hand in a public demonstration that draws sword followers from overseas.