Hankei (繁慶), the Tokugawa gunsmith who became a swordsmith in , left not a single dated blade, a lack the published sources say makes his study resist precision. Born in and called Noda Zenshiro Kiyotaka (野田善四郎清堯), he was a gunsmith retained by the Tokugawa house; after Ieyasu's death in Genna 2 (1616) he went to and turned swordsmith. The places him beside the first Yasutsugu, calls him "a pioneer of sword-making" (江戸鍛冶の先駆者), and counts him "one of the early smiths who modeled themselves on the tradition and succeeded." No teacher is recorded; the texts venture only that he may first have studied under the first Yasutsugu, or, in another theory, Tsunahiro. In place of dates his chronology hangs on two anchors: a matchlock of Keicho 17 (1612) signed with his gunsmith pre-name Kiyotaka (清堯), kept at the Izumo shrine that holds his dedication , and the document of 'ei 10 (1633) for a sword he presented to Kongobu- on Koyasan.
The published sources repeat one sentence across his record: his ideal is said to have been Masamune, but in the work itself it is rather Norishige. The work shows a with a name of its own: the forging is mixed with , and flowing , standing strongly; lies thick, at times coarse; black, thick enter ceaselessly until the surface becomes what the texts call (ひじき肌), and the steel color tends blackish. One paper explains the image outright, "hijiki is a kind of seaweed"; other notes call it Hankei- or . The texts trace it to the gun forge: "the mixed-steel forging was his forte, known in the world as or ," hard and soft steels mixed as he had mixed them for guns. And the word belongs to him: across the designation literature it appears only in his own papers and, borrowed, in those of his pupil Hanmasa.
Over a shallow mixed with and the runs deep and the lies thick and strong, rough clumping in patches. and mix at the edge; sweeps the whole length, and and run long and frequent. Above all the sinks, in the formula repeated across more than twenty of his papers, "until the border of and is no longer distinct" (匂口が沈んで地刃の境が判然としない). In this he presses past his model: his stands more strongly than Norishige's, his runs rougher and his sinks deeper, where the master keeps a brighter, clearer . The construction states the debt openly: the standard Hankei is with a whose upper surfaces fall steeply, read blade after blade as a deliberate echo of Norishige in which his intent shows. The build is wide or standard with little taper, the thick, the shallow, and despite his Keicho years the often does not extend; the is swept with , frequently into flame shapes.
The texts mark registers rather than periods. A few swords signed with his first sword name, the gunsmith Kiyotaka, survive; certain calm Hankei blades, the forging tightened, the a gentle or tone, the bright and clear against his usual sunken one, are read as "passing into the style of his early works signed Kiyotaka" (清堯銘の作域). The quiet register finishes, in the sources' words, "in an altogether calm, settled manner," with dignity and an antique air; the flamboyant register lets large erupt "large, showy and complex," in works the texts call full of spirit and force. The flat-built pieces are rarities of form: and are scarce, only three seen, and the texts divide the shapes into three types, the wide and , the stubby kitchen-knife form (庖丁風), and the slender elongated one. A single bag-socket survives, tempered in a uncharacteristically calm for him, and a with a dragon in openwork within pierced is the only such carving in his work.
The signature is a study of its own. Where ordinary smiths cut their , his is carved out in relief with a thick chisel, a bold two-character 繁慶 set on a the texts judge "his own invention, the cut with a carving chisel and special to him": the tip -shaped, the filing on the and reversed on the , the cut deep. Homma records the tradition that the deep and the carved were "a precaution against the blade being shortened and rendered unsigned in later ages." The also carries his chronology: the 又 form is held to be the signature of his prime and the ル又 form of his late years, blades signed above the are rare. His surname is recorded both ways, Noda and Ono; the dedication at Hinomisaki Shrine in Izumo bears the shrine (奉納出雲国日御崎霊神) over the signature Ono Hankei (小野繁慶); the sources describe him as a smith of strong faith who presented swords and guns of his own making to shrines and temples across the provinces. One Bijutsuhin carries a maxim he himself cut into the (惡焉危無誠兵惡焉安神器精), on the peril of arms without sincerity. Downstream, established scholarship counts Izumi no Kami Kaneshige and Hanmasa among those who carried his manner; Hanmasa's designation papers borrow the very word . The measure of the upstream debt is a judged to press "into the realm of Norishige he aspired to," though the texts also mark where the imitation stops: his take a shallow and do not reproduce Norishige's peculiar bamboo-shoot curve (筍反り).
He is Sai-jo in Fujishiro's grading, and his record is signed through: of fifty-one designated works on record, fifty are signed and none unsigned. Three blades are Important Cultural Properties and six are Bijutsuhin; beneath them stand forty-one blades in the and tiers. Nine works carry recorded provenance: the Arima house, which held the the texts single out as the finest of his work, the Shimazu house, the Saijo Matsudaira house and the Imperial Family, while the Hinomisaki dedication remains at its shrine. One bears the record of a three-body cutting test by Yamano Kaemon before Nagai Shinano no Kami, another the gold-inlaid owner inscription of the Maebashi elder Miyabe Moseki. The Important Cultural Properties and the shrine dedications are patrimony, preserved where they stand; what a collector may realistically encounter is the and tier, and even there a Hankei comes to market only from time to time. When one does, it carries the man whole: , sunken , carved on the invented .