Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

According to some authorities, the tsuba-shi or tsuba-kō (“guard artist”), by which is meant a craftsman devoting himself solely to the making of tauba, first arose about 1400 A.D., when the Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshinori (1394-1441) established private guard-makers at his court in Heianjō (Kiōto) and caused his artists to design guards with piercings (sukashi) of a more refined and decorative character than those of the earlier swordemiths and armourers.

These Heianjō-sukashi guards are usually circular, with rounded edges, and the designs are in positive silhouette filling nearly the whole of the field.

Owari-sukashi guards are similar, but thicker and less refined in appearance. Owari and its capital Nagoya dominated the central provinces, and Heianjō workers and others from the west seem to have settled there at an early date.

A well-defined early type goes by the name of Kamakura-tsuba, though quite unconnected with the medieval Shōogunal capital, Kamakura, or its period (1192-1333). These tsuba are thin and of rough appearance, with designs in very flanged relief accompanied by slightly flanged negative piercings.

None of the foregoing guards is ever signed, and no makers’ names are known.

Tembō-tsuba are named after a 16th-century artist working at Sanoda in Yamashiro and signing Ten-hō [Japanese text] of Yamashiro. Thick and rough-looking guards, they are peculiar in having die-etampings, generally of Chinese characters such as [Japanese text] and others, applied while the iron is cold.

Early Owari work also includes guards signed Yamakichi, Yamakichibei, or, in full, Yamazaka Kichibei [Japanese text] thick and of very irregular surface, with a few indefinite piercings.

A succession of artists bearing the family name of Hōan [Japanese text] worked otiginally in Owari under the Asano daimios, following in the latter’s train when they were transferred to the successive fiefs of Kōshū (1598), Kishū (1600), and finally Hiroshima in Aid (1619). They produce gurds of well-forged iron with flat reliefs or die-stampin often of Chinese coins.

Guards signed Sadahiro are fine pieces of forging, somewhat in armourers’ style.

It should be noted that work more or less in the style above described was continued, often by independent (and anonymous) imitators, as late as the 18th and even the first half of the 19th century.

“Kamakura” style

Heianjō-sukashi

Owari-sukashi

Daigorō guards

Early pierced iron guards, various

A series of chrysantehmoid guards

Miscellaneous designs

Yamkichi

Tembō