Yari — Kawai Hisayuki, dated 1861

This is a spear that tells you exactly when it was made, and by whom.

The nakago, or tang, is signed on both faces. One side carries the maker’s signature: it was made to the order of a patron named Gen’ei, by the smith Kawai, whose given name reads as Hisayuki, and he records that he was seventy-six years old when he made it. The other side gives the date, the twelfth month of the first year of Bunkyū, the year of the Rooster, which falls in 1861. Three things agree with one another there. The era name, the zodiac sign cut beside it, and the smith’s stated age all point to the same year, and that quiet internal consistency is exactly what you hope to find on a genuine, contemporary signature. This was a personal commission made in the closing years of the samurai age, barely seven years before the Meiji Restoration swept the old order away. The signature also carries a short dedicatory phrase whose full reading is uncertain, and we have left it as such rather than guess at it.

The blade itself is a su-yari, a straight spear point with no side branches, ground with a clear central ridge (shinogi) running down each face to a fine, bright tip. It holds a bright, competent polish, with beautiful hamon and metalwork.

What lifts the piece is the mounting. The upper shaft is dressed with a long panel of abalone-shell mosaic, hundreds of small iridescent chips set into black lacquer so the surface catches the light in shifting greens and pinks as it turns. Bands of red lacquer ring the pole above and below the panel, and the base is capped with a metal butt ferrule worn smooth with age. This is the language of a presentation or procession spear, the sort carried in a lord’s formal train rather than taken to war. A working weapon was never dressed like this. There are some losses to the shell inlay, small dark gaps where chips have gone over the last century and a half, which is entirely normal for old work of this kind and is plain to see in the close photographs.

What you are buying is a complete, dated signature that agrees with itself, set on an unusually fine mounting. It was made for a particular person, on order, which gives the blade a documented character that anonymous production work never carries. Should you wish to firm up the attribution, the piece would be a good candidate for formal appraisal in Japan.

It comes from a private UK collection and stands roughly 1.8 metres overall; we will confirm exact measurements on request. If you would like further photographs, or better images of the blade under raking light, please get in touch.