Goto Yujo, the first generation of the Goto house, is called in the published sources "the progenitor of Japanese metal carving" and "a chisel master without equal, past or present." He served the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa and took part in the Higashiyama culture of his court, and many of his works were taken up among the Higashiyama treasures of the shogunal collection. For that reason, the writes, the celebrated metalworkers of later ages all took Yujo of the Goto house as their model. The prevailing view places his birth in Eikyo 12 (1440) and his death in Eisho 9 (1512) at the age of seventy-three. One commentary adds that he served as a close attendant of Yoshimasa, received a fief of three hundred cho within Sakamoto in Omi, and was raised through the rank of to that of hoin. The same commentary describes the Goto as the first house of sword-fitting metalwork, serving the shogunate, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shoguns from Yujo through seventeen generations to Tenjo.
His subjects are the formal ones of the house, the lion and the dragon above all. The published sources say that the dragon is the traditional subject of Goto house carving and that its manner is held to have been devised by Yujo himself. His are carved in the round in solid gold or in , and his and carry a gold crest in high relief on a , the reverse covered in gold. The commentary returns again and again to the same description of the chisel: the rounded, ample modelling has depth of flavour, and "the chisel work is bold and truly powerful". A with a gold crest of an ox is said to prove the manner described as "high peaks and deep valleys."
The published sources also set out the features by which his hand is judged. On his dragons the figure-eight wrinkles of the brow join at their tips, the scales are cut in a -beshi lattice, the claws grip the jewel sharply, and the wrists and ankles rise in a swelling peculiar to him, with five namekuri strokes; the horns carry firm triangular chisel cuts. On his lions the ears show no kirikake chisel cuts, which the commentary calls Yujo work true to the canon. The reverse of the is the other test. Several have the paired -ne posts with an added root, the so-called futatsu-ne, which the says is seen only rarely on work of the mid period or earlier, and of which it writes that "within the Goto house, Yujo alone has this feature," and even then only rarely. Other show notches cut in the reverse edge, signs of their age, and a kukuri-dashi modelling drawn in at the hem.
Nothing of his is self-signed. His work is known through the appraisals of the later heads, who cut and issued : the seventh head Kenjo with Mitsunobu and the ninth head, Teijo in the Shoho and Keian years, Renjo, who assembled crests and into , Tsujo, Jujo, Enjo and Keijo, whose valuations reach one thousand and twelve hundred . One monkey pair records the limits of that tradition. Teijo's states that the is by Yujo and that he carved the himself, and the commentary finds his skill uncommon yet says the difference shows in the turn of the edge and in the reverse. On a rhinoceros pair completed by Kenjo, with a by Joken modelled on it, the published sources see the difference of period and rank plainly, yet find that Yujo's pride in house carving passed securely to later generations.
Within the house, the commentary groups him with the upper three generations, whose lions have a peculiarly fierce power, and it records a later head copying a Yujo for a matched , showing how the Goto kept their manner by taking early work as their model. A dragon of a single colour is compared with the famous Marukibashi and the Nuregarasu , the works in which Yujo approached an austere, unadorned realm; its "state of wear, rich in the feeling of age," is said to confirm its strength further. A gold lion at the rank is called "a work that displays the very essence of the Goto house."
His designated record is forty-one works: four at the rank and thirty-seven at , with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them. Their provenance is unusually full. Two sets descend from the main Tokugawa house, several from the Konoike family, the Osaka merchants, and others from the Satake, the Tsugaru and the Nabeshima; one carries a note that it passed from Yanagisawa Dewa-no-kami to Sakai Saemon-no-jo. The commentary on one lion pair notes that the Yujo lions of the Maeda collection are famous. Of a gold lion pair it writes simply that the modelling has depth of flavour and that the workmanship is excellent. A Yujo comes to light only rarely, and a set whose crests and all show his features is called by the extremely scarce.