Mumei katana, attributed to Taira Takada — Bungo Province, Eiroku era (1558–1570)
NTHK kanteishō, no. 1925, issued 23 June 2024 — shōshin

The Takada school of Bungo occupies a particular place in the affections of collectors who care about swords as swords. The distinction that dates a Takada blade is one of signature: kotō smiths of the line signed with the Taira clan name, adopting Fujiwara only from Keichō onward. A blade judged Taira Takada is therefore a kotō piece by the school’s own convention — and the NTHK has narrowed it further, to the Eiroku era, which places this katana in the hardest-used decade of the school’s history. Bungo in the 1560s was Ōtomo Sōrin’s province at the height of its ambitions in Kyushu, and Takada forges were supplying the swords those ambitions consumed. This is a blade made when the demand was real.

Itame carrying masame-nagare is the Takada jigane — the flowing straight grain drawn through the ji is close to a school fingerprint, and it is what separates Bungo work from the Bizen and Mino idioms it otherwise borrows from. Against that ground the smith has set a notare, an unhurried undulating hamon rather than the gunome-midare that Takada is more often associated with, closing in a sugu ko-maru bōshi. The combination points to the Sōshū-influenced side of the school’s repertoire, and it is the harder choice to bring off: notare gives a smith nowhere to hide behind activity. What it offers instead is breadth and a certain calm in the ha, the temper reading as a slow wave along the length of the blade rather than a series of incidents.

Bō-hi with maru-dome cut through both sides does real work here. Beyond lightening a blade meant to be carried, the paired grooves give the sugata a lean, drawn-out line, and the rounded terminations are cleanly executed. Two mekugi-ana and katte-sagari yasurime tell the rest of the story: this katana was mounted, remounted, and carried, and at 68.8 cm it retains a thoroughly practical working length. Unsigned Muromachi katana of this class are survivors of use rather than objects preserved from it, and that history is legible in the piece rather than concealed.

The koshirae continues the character, and the habaki deserves separate notice — gold-foiled and worked to a nugget-like texture, the surface broken into a granular field that takes light unevenly and warmly. It is a treatment that requires genuine skill to execute cleanly, and a habaki of this quality is a fair index of the regard in which the blade was held by whoever last had it mounted.

Papered, in mounts, in a full-length kotō katana from a school with a real reputation for cutting — this is a well-judged entry point for the collector building a study group of provincial kotō work, and a sword that rewards handling rather than merely display.