A beautifully crafted sword with outstanding hada in a rare shape with longish kissaki, this blade is signed ” BUNGO JU FUJIWARA NORIYUKI”.  The blade is a longish wakazashi which is ubu with one hole and signed. A signed Shinto wakazashi that has a hoso-suguha hamon with hataraki. A nice well worked mokume with much ji-nie.  A good blend of activity can be seen and appreciated within this blade in the Shinto fujiwara takada tradition. The Nakago is a very nice Iriyama-gata in shape. There is a silver foil habaki  This blade comes with a paper from the nthk authenticating the age and maker.  It is in an older polish with a very high end Japanese shirasaya accentuated with horn throughout with an ivory mekugi trim. The pictures do not do justice to this sword and is striking in hand.  It has some hataraki and ko-nie appear.  The hada is well forged with an appearance  of mokume with Ji-nie. The boshi is ko-maru and a bit longish . This wakazashi has an elegant shape and is very well balanced. It is very rare to find an U-no-kobu-zukuri of this length. 

This sword would be a good project sword to mount in fittings some day.

A great family of Takada smiths whose blades were once sought after by many samurai. They were collectively known as the 3 “YUKI’S”. A family lead by the grandfather Sadayuki then to the father Masayuki and most prolifically the son Noriyuki who is the creator of this blade. A rare shape and reminds one of the Hizen works which greatly influenced this group of smiths.

“In Shinto times the Takada school, founded by Tomoyuki in the Nanbokucho period, still had a good number of smiths and was thriving. Members of the school are also known as the Fujiwara Takada because most used Fujiwara as a family name in their signatures.” Those makers in Takada school during the Muromachi age used the named prefix Taira 平 whereas after the Shinto period, most of the sword makers added a name of clan Fujiwara 藤原 and used a suffix YUKI 行 in their smith name. The NORIYUKI 則行 lineage performed 5 major traditions very well and had been succeeded throughout Edo period until the 9th generation to meet with transformed preferences from Samurai class. This magnifiscent wakazashi was most likely made by the 1st generation NORIYUKI 則行 who was active during Kanbun era (1661-), real name Abe Saburo’emon 阿部三郎右衛門 and was apprenticed to Aizawa MASAYUKI 藍沢正行. He followed the example of HIROMASA 広正 or TSUNAHIRO 綱広 from Soshu tradition, using powerfully forged steel chiselled as true folded 真鍛 for the most durable blade construction and this blade proves supreme sharp performance.The Fujiwara Takada are the new Momoyama group in Bungo. Powerful swords and beautiful Hamon tell us of the artistic resurgence following the long strife before Oda, Hideyoshi Unification.
Powerful early shinto Sugata.   This was the time of Hideyoshi’s Unification. A new pride swept the country as the 100 year wars ended. The great artists were free to travel and create new schools and new works, these
pieces show the strong, robust spirit of the time.