MINO SEKI KANEYUKI

Tenmon period CA: 1532

This Tanto has both a Sayagaki by Dr. Kanzan Sato and papers of the NBTHK expressing the importance of this blade historically.

Mino Tradition

This school began at the end of the Kamakura period around 1300 to 1333. After the splitting up of the Emporers court into two courts - the Northern dynasty and the Southern dynasty. In the previous period, great changes in the shape and construction of the sword had already occurred from a delicate deep curvature to the shallower more robust sword due to the adverse experience of the two attempts by Kublai Khan to invade and conquer Japan. Both attempts failed and the two Emporer courts were once again reunited into one.

The founder of the Mino school has been credited to one Shizu Saburo Kaneuji who it seems came from and was basically trained in the Yamato tradition. He left there according to historical fact to become a student of Soshu Masamune before establishing the Mino tradition of sword making in the Province of Mino.