of the late is the second generation of the Yamashiro line in the 's own numbering, the smith whose dated work carries the Eitoku, Shitoku and Meitoku years. The published sources set out the line plainly: a first generation of the Enbun and Jōji years, a Ryōkai-descended Kyō smith who, they write, "is said to have studied under Sadamune of as well"; after him, in the late , "the of the next generation"; and in the early the Ōei , Saemon-no-jō and Shikibu-no-jō. The 's older Kenmu founder is set aside because no work of that date survives. Several blades in this record are appraised in exactly that position, as "a standing between the mid- first generation and the Ōei ".
He works in three manners. Two he carries forward from the first generation. The first is a refined of , the tight and clear, with fine and a faint , most at home on the , and . On a dated Shitoku 2 the published sources call it an elegant straight temper that "faithfully inherits the manner of the ancestors", and a dated Meitoku 1 is read the way. The second, and the one most often met in his corpus, is a mixed with , laid thickly in , with , and conspicuous . The sources name the two together, as a straight temper in the Kyō tradition and a inheriting the manner of Sadamune.
The third manner is his own, and it arrives with the , which his generation makes in number. It is a lively -based mixing , and -like heads, and its tell is named again and again: pairs of "linked by a low, small ", taking on a , arrow-notch, profile. A dated Eitoku is described as showing " set two side by side", a work that "well shows the character of the of this period". On the most animated blades , and enter, and the runs with .
Under every temper the is an that stands and flows, at times with , with thick and frequent , the trace of the study his line inherits. The hereditary carving goes with it. , , , and the invocation of recur across the corpus, and the published sources call this "carving that could be called the family art, and skilful as one would expect". A small habit of the signature belongs to this generation as well: the date is cut low on the tang, well below the smith's name, which the sources describe as "seemingly a habit of the of this period".
The published sources keep him distinct on both sides. Against the first generation, the dated late- and are prized as reference material, since the founder's signed work survives only as and . Against the Ōei , they note that the late- hand breaks the down in a more cursive manner, and they use this point to separate the generations. They are also candid that the name was shared: "there appear to have been several smiths of the signature in the period as well". A Meitoku 3 signed Genzaemon-no-jō is by a different hand from the two-character of the year.
His record holds two and twenty-nine , thirty-one blades in the and tiers, with a prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin and Kōchū attached to several. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties. Of recorded whereabouts, a is held in the Samurai Art Museum in Berlin, and provenance runs to the Hisamatsu Matsudaira family, the Ōta collection and, for one blade, the Imperial Family. None of his work is locked away as designated patrimony, so a signed example does pass into private hands from time to time; it comes only seldom, and a dated, carved of the late- is a landmark when it does.
