Yoshitsugu 吉次 is a blacksmith from Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture 熊本, on Kyushu. This is the former province of Higo, known for being ruled by the Hosokawa clan, great warriors and swordsmen. This is also where Miyamoto Musashi wrote the treatise on the five wheels (Gorin No Sho).

This province of Higo, located in the far west of Japan, opposite Korea and China is historically known for forging Japanese swords since the Kamakura era. But there are traces of even older furnaces, without having any documentation or remaining productions.
Officially, it was with the arrival of the blacksmith Hiromura 弘 村, at the end of the Kamakura period, around 1319-1321, that the manufacture of swords in Higo began to be recognized. Hiromura was a blacksmith of the Yamato (Nara) tradition, who then studied the Yamashiro (Kyoto) tradition with the famous Rai Kuniyuki 来国行. It was around 1320 that Hiromura settled in Higo province in Kyushu and officially founded the first school of forging in Higo, the Enju school, which later gave rise to the Dotanuki school.
However, there are no remaining productions of Hiromura, so his son Kunimura 国村 is considered as the founder of this school.

Yoshitsugu, of his civil name Yamada Junji (山田純次), was born on April 15, 1931. At the age of 21, in 1952, he began forging with Tanigawa Moriyoshi (谷川盛吉), a blacksmith who was classified as an important cultural asset in Kumamoto province and named Mukansa (best blacksmith in Japan) in 1985. Yoshitsugu received the Doryoku-Sho prize (3^rd prize) and won the Nyusen prize 15 times (accepted in competition). He is a talented blacksmith, renowned for his works in the spirit of Kiyomaro 清麿, considered the best Shinshinto blacksmith, of which this blade is an Utsushi copy.
Kiyomaro 清麿 was an exceptional blacksmith, having had an intense but short life (1813-1855), he ended his days at the age of 42 only by seppuku. Due to the extraordinary quality of his works, he was nicknamed 'The Masamune of Yotsuya'. He mastered the traditions of Soshu, Bizen and Mino, and concentrated on the reproduction of works from the Shizu school of Kaneuji 兼氏 and the Samonji 左文字, both students of Masamune 正宗.

We find in this magnificent blade of Yoshitsugu all its influences, the wide temper in Nie, the proportions worthy of the blades of the late Kamakura, the Buddhist Horimono. This is a great piece !