A of the Eight Views of Ōmi, carved in high relief and coloured with many metals, carries an inscription that places its maker at Nakayabu in Hikone. The maker is Mogarashi Sōten, named in the published sources as the founder of Hikone-bori and its representative master. Citing the Kishō, they record that he was originally a man of Kyoto who later lived in Hikone in Ōmi. Taken into the service of the Kawakita family among the Hikone domain's retainers, he changed his surname to Kitagawa, and he is said to have first signed Hidenori (秀典), with the common name Zengorō. The name was carried by two generations. Works with age inscriptions show that the first generation was born in Jōō 1 (1652) and worked from the early into the middle period.
His training is uncertain. One source in the published record cites the Sōran for works signed as by "Kitagawa Hidenori, a disciple of the Gotō", yet the same commentary adds that his work shows no marked feature of Gotō training. Other entries describe him as a representative Hikone master who came out of . They say that both a Gotō and a character can be seen in his better works, and one guard is called the clearest expression of his manner.
His art is above all the iron plate, the material he uses most often, generously proportioned and filled across both faces with figures in deeply modelled high relief. His subjects are warriors, the subject most often met in his iron work, together with immortals, elegant gatherings of sages and the Eight Views of Ōmi. He colours them in inlay and with many kinds of metal, and even the gold is of several kinds. Of a guard of sages at their pastimes among flowers the published sources write that the chisel is broad and unhurried and draws the viewer into a world of yūgen. The Eight Views guard is judged frankly: it lacks refined elegance, but it overflows with force.
The published record says repeatedly that his best work is not the openwork of the school. Most Hikone guards are cut in openwork, with warriors or the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, but his masterpieces are the solid plates in high relief and coloured inlay. Of a plate with cranes over waves and plovers on the reverse, the commentary writes that comparatively superior works are found among his unpierced plates. In he fills the whole face with dense subjects: a guard of seaweed and shells with some shells coloured half gold and half silver, and another with the twelve zodiac animals worked in several golds.
That bustling, brilliant unfolding is what the published sources call his true forte. They grant that so animated a guard can tip into excess, but hold that in Sōten's own hand it is remarkably free of excess and gains dignity besides.
All ten of the guards on record are , and two of the later designations carry his age inscriptions, which the published sources value as documents. They also warn that because his name became so famous it was cut onto much later Hikone-bori, even onto souvenir-grade pieces. A guard with his own signature and his full, dense high relief is therefore what a collector looks for, and one comes to market only from time to time.