Goto Tokujo, the fifth-generation head of the Goto main line, was the eldest son of the fourth master, Kojo. He was born in Tenbun 19 (1550) and died in Kan'ei 8 (1631). His common name was first Genjiro, later Shirobei, and his personal name is recorded as Mitsumoto and also as Masaie. Since the first master, Yujo, the Goto had served the Ashikaga shoguns. When the Ashikaga line ended in his father's time, Kojo and Tokujo served Oda Nobunaga, and after Nobunaga's death Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who charged them with three offices: the great gold coinage, the weights, and the carving of sword fittings. In Tensho 16 (1588) Tokujo made the great and small gold coins, struck them with a paulownia stamp known as the Tokujo-giri or Taiko-giri, and wrote his own name on them in ink. He remained in office under Ieyasu and Hidetada and in his last years received the rank of Hogen.
The published sources record his family in detail. He had five sons and four daughters. His eldest son, Eijo Masafusa, succeeded as the sixth head; the second son died young; the third son became the seventh head, Kenjo; and the fourth and fifth sons, Takujo and Kyujo, founded branch houses. His daughters married into the family, the gold-mint house of Goto Shozaburo Mitsutsugu, and the Kano family. Through these ties the Goto house stood at the centre of the craft lineages of the period.
His work is executed above all on , the minute, dense that underlies the Goto formal repertoire. His principal technique is with gold , the gold applied thick, often with silver and a gilt reverse. For he carves in with in'-ne roots. The published sources describe the modelling as usu--dashi with a deep underside, the pressing from the front and the high-and-low change of the modelling standing out, and they call it highly refined. His subjects include crawling dragons, the lucky gods Hotei and Idaten, and the house's formal designs.
Among his formal designs the paulownia crest is the most celebrated. The published sources write that Tokujo's paulownia is famous under the names Taiko-giri and Tokujo-giri, and that 「麦鏨と称される特殊タガネは十個打っている」, the special barley chisel struck ten times. They read the slightly narrow width of one of his as a mark of the age. Like the other early Goto heads, his work is mostly unsigned and attributed by the and gold-inlaid appraisal signatures of later heads, above all the thirteenth master Enjo Mitsutaka. A self-signed piece is rare: of a of Hotei signed Goto Tokujo with a , the published sources write that 「自身銘は特に珍稀である」.
The published sources describe his work as conveying the bold, sumptuous spirit of the age, with a dignity proper to the Goto main line. Of a three-piece set of Hotei they write that the robes and bags are varied between the , and and that fine chisel work reaches every joint, so that the work lets one fully appreciate 「御家彫後藤家の技術の確実さ」, the sureness of the official Goto house carving. Another set they call 「品格を兼ね備えた後藤家の面目躍如たる作品」, a work of dignity that shows the Goto house at its best, judged from its to be one of the few sets of his own making. He set the standard of authority and richness against which the main-line Goto work of the following generations is measured.
His designated record stands at thirty-two . Several of his works descended in great houses, the Hachisuka family and the Osaka merchant house of Konoike among them, and the Nabeshima family appears in the recorded provenance as well. No current institutional holder is recorded against them. Because his work is almost wholly unsigned and much of it kept as complete sets, a piece by Tokujo comes to light only occasionally, and a signed one is among the rarest things a collector of Goto work could encounter.