A Shikkake Katana (尻懸)

The Shikkake school is one of the five great Yamato schools, founded by Norinaga – a smith whose earliest surviving signed works are tanto dated Bunpô 3 (1319) and Ryakuô 3 (1340), placing his active period across the late Kamakura and early Nanbokuchô transition. Later generations continued the name through the Muromachi period. The school is immediately identifiable by its structural signatures: a notably high and wide shinogi, an itame with nagare and masame, and a hamon rooted firmly in the suguha tradition of Yamato – sometimes running pure, sometimes mingling with ko-gunome in a manner that adds quiet drama to the otherwise austere character of the work.

This blade carries those Shikkake hallmarks with conviction. The sugata is lean and robust: narrow mihaba, high shinogi, thick kasane, shallow sori, and a somewhat elongated chû-kissaki – the shape of a sword built for use. The kitae is an itame flowing into nagare with areas of masame, thick ji-nie throughout and jikei moving through the grain. The hamon opens as a suguha-chô with shallow notare, the lower half punctuated by ko-gunome, and as it approaches the monouchi the yaki deepens and widens dramatically – filling with deep nioi, good ko-nie, nijûba, sanjûba, uchi-noke, yubashiri, kinsuji, sunagashi, and tobiyaki. This intensification at the cutting zone is one of the most striking features of the blade, and the NBTHK singles it out as particularly powerful. The bôshi is deep and ichimai-like, with heavy hakikake running to yakizume – a decisive, characteristically Yamato finish.

The shirasaya carries a sayagaki by Dr. Homma Junji (Kunzan), the pre-eminent sword scholar of the twentieth century and long-serving director of the NBTHK. Kunzan was renowned for the economy of his inscriptions – he chose words with deliberate precision, and brevity from him was never a sign of faint praise. Written in February 1977, his assessment here is three characters: kasaku kore – “this is fine work.” From Kunzan, that is a powerful endorsement.