A Chikanori Sunnobi Tantô (水府住藤原近則)

Here is a blade with a heroic story built into every fitting. Swordsmith Chikanori descends from the Zenjō school lineage and trained under the great Taikei Naotane in Edo before returning to his home of Suifu – present-day Mito, Ibaraki prefecture – where he became a retained smith of the Mito Domain. The hirazukuri (flat-shaped) form places this technically at the boundary of wakizashi and tanto: at 30.7cm it exceeds one shaku by a fraction, and is properly regarded as a sunnobi tanto, an extended tanto, rather than a short sword.

The blade itself rewards close examination. The jihada is an active mix of itame and masame, alive with jinie, while the hamon combines gunome and notare midare with sunagashi and flashes of kinsuji running through the temper line. Fujishiro ranks Chikanori at Chū-jōsaku – above average – a sound assessment for a Shinshintō smith working in a demanding tradition.

The Edo-period koshirae is the true centrepiece. The fittings pay tribute to peasant farmer Sakura Sogoro (1605–1653), a local hero who defied the feudal lord of the Sakura domain over crushing taxes during a period of drought, petitioned the Shogun directly, and was executed for it. He is enshrined as a selfless gimin (martyr) at Tōshoji temple in Narita, and his story has been made into countless plays and stories. A copper tsuba inlaid with farming tools – yoki (axe) and kama (sickle) – together with a kozuka signed Nōshū ju Kaneharu depicting a peasant looking skyward, make this an unusually narrative and moving set of fittings.