The Swordsmith Okazaki Goro Masamune

The Swordsmith Okazaki Goro Masamune is an 1843 print by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 to 1858), an Edo ukiyo-e designer better known for the landscape print but who also produced figure subjects, historical scenes, and warrior images across his career. The subject is the legendary swordsmith Goro Nyudo Masamune, active in the early fourteenth century and traditionally regarded as the greatest sword maker in Japanese history. Working in Sagami Province, Masamune developed methods of pattern-welding and tempering that produced blades of extraordinary cutting power and beauty, and his name became synonymous with the highest achievement in Japanese swordsmithing. By the Edo period he had passed firmly into legend, with stories accumulating around his forge and his rivalry with the swordsmith Muramasa. Hiroshige treats the subject in the historical-figure mode that occupied a portion of the Edo print market, depicting the smith at work or in pose appropriate to his legendary status. The 1843 date is significant in that it coincides with the height of the Tenpo Reforms, the shogunal program that restricted prints of contemporary actors and courtesans and pushed designers toward historical and didactic subjects. Such historical figure prints became one of the available routes for production in this period, and Masamune, as a respected craftsman of ancient lineage, made an acceptable subject. The impression is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Within Hiroshige's broader output it stands as evidence of the diversity of subjects he undertook beyond the landscape work that dominates his modern reputation.