A signed inscribed Bishū Kageyori, designated in the 51st session, fixes this Kageyori in the school of at the close of the period, where the published sources place him traditionally as a son of Kagehide, active around the Einin era. The name itself is one of the problems of late . The reference works enumerate more than one smith signing Kageyori in the province, listing the name among the group, the late offshoots of , the school, and the founders of the Yoshii line, so that a Kageyori blade is read by its own and ha, the form of its signature, and the very shape of the character yori (依) before it is assigned a hand. This Osafune Kageyori is the most fully readable of them, his signed and dated record carrying the old-Bizenjigane and utsuri into the choji manner of late Osafune, with the calmer suguha of the same circle running beside it.
The Osafunetachi is the richest statement of his hand. The sugata is somewhat wide with a pronounced taper from base to tip, suriage yet keeping its koshizori, with a chū-kissaki. The temper is a chōji base mixed with gunome, kataochi-like gunome, and togariba, lower and more straight-tending toward the machi, the whole running saka-gakari. Within it ashi and yō enter, the line is nioi-dominant with ko-nie and in places rougher nie, and fine kinsuji and sunagashi play through a bright nioiguchi. The published sources read the rounded-headed choji crossed with kataochi-gunome as the very character of late-KamakuraOsafune work, and single out the pointed teeth as inherited from his father: 「尖り刃は父景秀の遺風を想わせる」1, the conspicuous togariba in the ha recalling the bequeathed manner of Kagehide. It is this togariba in a choji-gunome field, and not a plain late-Osafune clove, that ties the blade to the Osafune line.
The jigane is old Bizen carried into Osafune. Over a well-packed ko-itame, in places mixed with mokume and on the longer tachi inclining to stand a little, he sets a dust-fine ji-nie, delicate chikei, and a midare-utsuri standing clear in the steel. On the gaku-meiwakizashi the reflection takes a streak-like form, with the patchy jifu-utsuri of old Bizen visible in the lower half, the forging there tightly wrought and refined. The bōshi answers the temper rather than templating it: on the Osafunetachi it is midare-komi, yakizume-like on the omote and turning back with a pointed tendency on the ura; on the suguha pieces it goes straight into a ko-maru. He carves bō-hi on the wakizashi and, on one tachi, a plain suken on the omote with gomabashi on the ura.
Beside the flamboyant choji runs a second register, the calm suguha of the late-KamakuraBizen circle. The gaku-meiwakizashi, signed Kageyori saku and read from its overall workmanship as a late Ko-Bizen offshoot of around the Kōan years, tempers a suguha-chō with an extremely shallow notare, mixed with ko-gunome, into which saka-gokoroko-ashi and yō enter, the nioiguchi tight and ko-nie adhering. The published sources call its ji and ha a thing that recalls Osafune work of the late Kamakura period, refined in feeling, and prize the piece for documenting the working range of the name, noting that it is 「資料性も高い」, high too in its documentary value. The most striking of the suguha blades is an ubutachi the published sources assign, from the style of ji and ha, the small finely chiseled characters, and the form of the character yori, to a Nitta-no-shō smith whose surviving works are extremely few. Notably long, with a high koshizori and funbari, it shows a ko-itame with ko-mokume standing overall, a dark steel color, and a faint midare-utsuri; the suguha mixes slight ko-gunome, the habuchi frays in fine nie-hotsure, the nioiguchi tightens and sinks toward shizumi, and the temper drops in yakiotoshi above the machi.
The range of the name is best seen against itself. The bright Osafunechoji and the sunken, yakiotoshi-bearing suguha are the two faces of the late-Kamakura Kageyori, the one read as 「鎌倉時代後期の長船物らしさ」2, the look of late-KamakuraOsafune, the other carried so far from it that the published sources judge the Nitta tachi, with its crepe-like dark jigane and subdued straight temper, 「一見古青江の上作を思わせる」3, recalling at first glance a superior Ko-Aoe work. What holds the hands together is the old-Bizenjigane beneath both, the well-packed ko-itame with its ji-nie, chikei, and standing midare-utsuri, and it is the jigane and the form of the signature, far more than any single temper, on which each attribution rests. The earlier Ko-Bizen Kageyori, known by a boldly cut large two-character signature over a nie-dekiko-midare, stands a generation back from this Osafune hand, the same name read across the whole arc from old Bizen into the Osafune school.
Kageyori survives in a small but high designated record. The Tōkō Taikan values his work in the mid range, and Fujishiro assigns him no grade. Two signed tachi and the gaku-meiwakizashi are designated JūyōTōken, one tachi given to the Osafune Kageyori said to be Kagehide's son, the other the ubu Nitta-no-shō tachi noted for its rarity; two further tachi were recognized as Jūyō Bijutsuhin before the war, one bold-signed and judged Ko-Bizen, the other placed around Einin. There are no National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties on this code's record, so the name lives entirely within the upper designated tiers rather than in museum patrimony. The recorded provenance is private and sparse, the prewar Bijutsuhin tachi held in the Tokyo collections of Kodama Sawako and of Yasuda Yoshihiko, with a Tsuchiya-family blade among the denrai. Across the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tiers only the three blades are recorded, and the most distinctive of his hands, the Nitta-no-shō tachi, is by the published account extremely few in survival, so a signed Kageyori in private hands is among the rarer encounters in early Bizen, appearing, when it appears at all, only with patience.
Historical importance
Where Kageyori stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.