The nidai Echigo no Kami Kanesada signed two dated Enpō 4 (1676), and both rose to , the pair the most highly placed works of his hand on record. He is the second generation of the Kanesada line of Ōsaka, working through the Enpō and Tenna years among the leading smiths of the Ōsaka . The published sources tell a single, consistent biography across his blades. He studied under the Echigo no Kami Kanesada, became his successor and adopted son, and at first signed Echigo no Kami Kanesada himself; but when the 's natural son Iwamatsu came of age, he yielded the Kanesada name to the boy and thereafter signed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane. A surviving blade inscribed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane, with Echigo no Kami Kanesada retired on the reverse and dated the second month of Enpō 8, fixes that change to about 1680. Of the man behind the two names the is direct: "the nidai Kanesada was a master who surpassed the ".
His hand is read first in the surging tōran-midare, the billowing-wave temper the published sources call his greatest forte, learned in emulation of Tsuda no Kami Sukehiro of the Ōsaka generation. The temper opens at the base from a straight and then rises into a large ō-gunome-midare, mixing , and -like teeth, that crests into the wave. Within it the judges single out a they treat as his own: "the katayama-, a distinctive to this smith", the one-sided, leaning wave he carries often with a run of three linked below the . Long enter well, the is deep, the thick, fine runs throughout and appear, the bright and clear, the to a small . Beside this he keeps the aligned of his background, and the recurring fine through the temper the sources read as "a feature of the Monju lineage that forms his background".
The is the constant beneath every manner. It is a tightly packed , sometimes mixed with , over which very fine lies thickly and fine enter well, the steel bright and clear. On the finest blades a rises at the . The published sources praise this forging as refined and of excellent quality, bright in steel tone, and it is the brightness of both and together that they repeatedly name as the mark of his work. The construction supports the as much as the activity does: the drops steeply, the is scant, the body broad with a - taper, points of make the judges note as his own.
His range divides into three faces the swordbooks list together. The earliest, carried on the two Enpō 4 , is the aligned with somewhat -like elements, a manner close to the 's but already brighter in and firmer in , the talent read as surpassing the teacher. The mature and most personal face is the tōran with its katayama lean, judged at its best as bolder, more varied and more dynamic than usual. The third is a quiet , comparatively uncommon on his signed work, which one reads as modeled on a high master of the tradition, particularly the manner of Gō Yoshihiro, the intention discernible above all in the state of the hardened edge. Dated pieces are few, so the Enpō 4 are valued as documentary material for placing the rest.
What sets the nidai apart from the wider Ōsaka school is exactly what the judges name as his own. His bright deep- tōran, with its leaning katayama form and the three linked below the , distinguishes him from the symmetrical wave of his contemporaries, while the steep and scant mark the make. The fine threading the temper carries the Monju descent forward into the Ōsaka idiom, and the rarer shows him reaching back to . He stands as the second pillar of the Kanesada house, the smith who took his father's manner and, in the judgment of the published record, carried it past him.
For the collector the nidai is a substantial but bounded name. Seventy-six of his blades stand in the and tiers, but only the two Enpō 4 reach the higher rank, so a top example surfaces seldom and a more typical from time to time, with patience. The published sources call one of the dated "one of his representative works" and another, of recorded whereabouts, "an outstanding piece within the second generation Kanesada's oeuvre". His blades are held in collections grounded in their own provenance: a signed Sakakura Gonnoshin Terukane, carrying his katayama- and the three linked , descends through the Yamauchi family of Tosa, and two of his works are recorded in the Imperial collection. A signed nidai Kanesada, bright in and and bearing his leaning wave, is among the more attainable of the first-rank Ōsaka names, not beyond reach, but a landmark when a fine dated example does appear.