Hōan (法安) signed his iron with the two characters of his name alone, and the published sources give him a full biography. He was an armour and weapon smith (bugu-kaji) of Kiyosu in Owari, whose personal name was Kawaguchi Saburōemon. Retained as a craftsman by the Asano family, he lived first at Fuchū in and then at Wakayama in , and he died on the twentieth day of the fifth month of Keichō 18 (1613), with the posthumous name Honpōin Sōan Nisshin Koji. His son-in-law Hisatsugu and others moved to Hiroshima in Aki with the Asano transfer in the Genna years, and the family graves are therefore at Kokuzen- in Hiroshima. The five designated guards under his name date from the end of the period into the age.
The published sources place him with Yamakichi and Nobuie among the Owari makers who left signed work and whose manners have much in common. Of the three they write that his work is somewhat more technical than Nobuie's and a step more polished than Yamakichi's. Wheel openwork (kuruma-) is often seen in both Hōan and Yamakichi, and in both the iron bones () are revealed with a bold, vigorous effect. The commentary adds that his name stands high because of his fine wheel-openwork guards.
His art begins in the plate itself. His iron is so famed for its toughness that it carries the nickname uwabami-tetsu, giant-serpent iron (「うわばみ鉄」と異称されるほど手強さに定評がある). On the designated guards it is described as viscous and dense, with the forging texture coming up here and there with a lively movement. A round wheel-openwork guard of twelve openings has a thick rim in the manner of a dote-mimi and shows the beauty and strength of well-forged iron, with appearing at many points. The published sources note that the openwork is cut by an unforced, straightforward carving method.
His particular technique is -kusarashi, a fired and deliberately corroded finish that sets the design in a living texture. On a vertical-round guard the Six-Character Invocation is raised on one face and the Seven-Character Daimoku on the other, in what the published sources call the kusarashi- manner, while the hammered surface and small openings deepen its elegance. On a wheel-openwork guard he uses the same method to show a long-eared rabbit at the rim, with a touch of gold inlay. Elsewhere it brings shifting effects across the flat of the plate.
Amida-yasuri, file marks radiating from the centre, is his other device. On one round guard the parts not pierced with the wheel are filed in Amida-yasuri. The published sources find the balance between the two delightful, call both composition and carving outstanding, and note the gloss and moist lustre particular to Hōan, together with a large, solid . A variant eight-lobed guard with the Daimoku is filed in Amida-yasuri overall, and its richly varied rim becomes a landscape in its own right. Of it they write that within one a world particular to Hōan is brought into being.
All five of his designated works are , signed with the bare name. The published record gives no provenance for them and names no institution that holds them. They were designated from private collections, and an example comes to market only occasionally. The published sources recite the same Kiyosu biography for every signed piece and do not divide the name into generations. A collector meets him in the wheel-openwork guards on which his reputation rests and in the corroded, Amida-filed plates that show his technique.