Gojo Kanenaga is recorded in the published sources as a son or grandson of a provincial disciple of Munechika. Together with Kuninaga, described variously as his younger brother or his son, he is said to have lived in the Gojo district of Kyoto, the place-name by which he is known, and his date is given as the late period. His surviving record is small. Verified signed works are, in the repeated phrase of the published sources, extremely few: one entry counts only several , another notes examples of both and , and the benchmark against which every attribution is read is a designated an Important Cultural Property and held by the . The rest of his designated work is greatly shortened and unsigned, appraised as his on the strength of the old Kyoto manner.
The temper is the centre of that manner. It is a small-irregular worked in , often on a tone, with and mixed into it. and enter frequently, and run through the , and the is bright on the better pieces. The published sources return again and again to the archaic character of this temper. Of the signed they write that "the small irregular temper in carries an antique fragrance," and of an attributed that "the small- is likewise elegant and classically refined." One blade, tempered in small with slight , is set against the work of his reputed teacher: "while it has an archaic flavor, it is more orderly than the work of Munechika."
The is , on some pieces a tight . It tends to stand somewhat, and in places the grain flows; on the signed a large appears on the . Fine attaches across the . is recorded on two blades only, a on the and a on the with an inlaid appraisal signature. The turns back in a , running straight or with a slight droop, at times with or a touch of . Where shortening has left the legible it is slender, the still comparatively high, the a small or a compact . One entry reckons that a shortened was originally a of about two six .
The record falls into two registers. The first is the handful of signed . On the only the character "" survives at the tip of the , and the published sources make the chiseling itself a point of recognition: in this smith's signatures the "" is cut with a fine chisel, somewhat vertically elongated and comparatively large, while the "naga" is habitually compressed and small. A second entry records the same habit, a two-character signature with the "" large and the "naga" somewhat smaller. A signed recognised as a in 1934 is called slender and handsome, its mixed with showing an archaic tone. The second register is the larger body of greatly shortened unsigned blades. On the the attribution is accepted because, within part of the , points can be discerned that connect it to the Important Cultural Property . A carries a four-character appraisal reading Yamashu Kanenaga, and there it is the lower half of the that connects to the benchmark; on that blade the becomes especially showy toward the base.
So thin is the signed record that his name marks a manner as much as a single hand. The prewar entries preserve the reservations of the connoisseur Honma: one attributed "appears to be a celebrated Kyoto blade, yet is not by the same individual as the previously listed signed Kanenaga," and another, though a celebrated blade appraised as , "cannot be conclusively identified as Gojo Kanenaga." Within early Yamashiro his work is set apart by its own features, a somewhat standing and a in that runs through most of his blades, both recorded far less often on the and blades in the same catalogues.
Kanenaga is rated Jo-jo by Fujishiro and valued at 2,000 in the Toko Taikan. Ten designated works stand on record: two Important Cultural Properties, one and four blades, and three of the prewar period; no is among them. The provenance recorded against his blades runs through houses and the shogunate. One broad, powerfully built was transmitted in the Owari Tokugawa house as his work; it is said to have come from Tokugawa Ieyasu, carries a Kochu of Shotoku 4 (1714), and remains with the Tokugawa Reimeikai. The , according to the record attached to its old scabbard, was presented by Rokugo Iga no Kami Masakiyo to Shogun Tsunayoshi and later bestowed by the shogunal house upon the Satake. The published sources sum up the as "in every respect truly elegant in the manner of old Kyoto work." A signed Kanenaga is among the rarest things a collector could encounter. The attributed in the and tiers are held, of recorded whereabouts, largely in private hands, and one comes to market only rarely.