Sword〈Meishu-Ya〉

A Bizen Masterwork the Tokugawa Refused to Part With

The single name on the tang, Moriie, belongs to a swordsmith of the Hatakeda school in Bizen province, the eastern part of present-day Okayama Prefecture and the most prolific sword country in all of Japan. He worked in the Kamakura period of the thirteenth century, when Bizen blades set the standard for the whole craft. This tachi has long been regarded as one of Moriie's finest surviving works.

The blade measures about 72.4 centimetres along the edge, with a curve of roughly 2.7 centimetres. Its temper line is a small irregular pattern crossed with clove-shaped chōji outlines, the lively, blossoming hamon for which Bizen became famous. A groove is cut into the lower body of the blade, near the waist.

The sword belongs to Kishū Tōshōgū in Wakayama City and is held on deposit at the Wakayama Prefectural Museum.

Why It Matters

Bizen produced roughly half of all Japanese swords designated as national treasures or important cultural properties, and within that vast output the Hatakeda school occupies a respected niche. Moriie ranks among its leading names. A blade praised as his masterpiece shows the Bizen aesthetic at full strength: a clean, well-forged steel surface and a temper line that rises and falls in confident waves of clove pattern.

The sword passed down through the Kii branch of the Tokugawa family. There is a play on the smith's name that captures its standing among them: Moriie can be read as "guarding the house," and the warriors who held it are said to have kept it to the last as a blade they would never surrender. It was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1928. The attached itomaki no tachi mounting is dressed in the Tokugawa manner, its gold-lacquered scabbard and dark fittings scattered with the hollyhock crest.

What to Look For

Like the other Kishū Tōshōgū blades, this sword is seen mainly in special exhibitions at the Wakayama Prefectural Museum, which assembled the shrine's swords in 2024.

When it is on view, the temper line is the thing to study. Bizen chōji reads almost like a row of buds opening along the edge, brightest where the light catches the boundary between hardened and softer steel. Compare it with the quieter straight temper of the shrine's Heian-period Hōki blades, and the difference between the oldest western style and the flowering Bizen manner becomes plain to the eye.

The shrine itself stands above Wakanoura bay at the top of the 108 stone steps of the Samurai Slope. Its 1621 halls, carved and brilliantly painted, earned the name the Nikkō of the West. The grounds are open without charge; entry to the inner shrine carries a small fee.