Masamune

The most famous swordsmith.

Masamune worked in Kamakura around 1300 and is considered to have made the finest Japanese swords ever. Much about him is legend.

Masamune, also known as Gorō Nyūdō Masamune, lived c. 1264–1343 and worked in Sagami province near Kamakura, the seat of the shogunate. According to tradition he was a pupil of the smith Shintōgo Kunimitsu. Very little is known for certain about his life, and many of the stories about him are legends.

Masamune developed the so-called Sōshū tradition. He forged together steels of different hardness, producing swords that were both strong and flexible. What is most admired is the hardening pattern along the edge, the hamon, and the glittering crystals in the steel known as nie and nioi. In Masamune's work they form lively, irregular patterns resembling clouds or waves.

Few of the swords attributed to him are signed, and many attributions were made by later appraisers, including the Hon'ami family, who were sword experts. Around 1900 some Japanese scholars even claimed that Masamune might never have existed, but that view has not taken hold. Legends of contests between him and the smith Muramasa are invented.

In the 16th century his swords became highly prized status symbols, and warlords such as Toyotomi Hideyoshi gave them away as rewards. The most famous, the Honjō Masamune, belonged to the Tokugawa family but disappeared after the Second World War. Masamune is still regarded as the greatest swordsmith in Japanese history, and several of his swords are National Treasures.