The oldest fixed point in Kaneyasu's record is a small signed Bishu-ju Kaneyasu and dated the third month of 2, that is 1369, the signature cut in five characters down the center of the and the date on the reverse. He was a swordsmith of Bingo, of the Hokke Ichijo group that worked in Ashida district, and the published commentary derives the line from the Kokon Meizukushi Taizen, which holds that it belongs to a body of Ashida work standing apart from the better-known tradition and traces its founding to Sukekuni. That distinction is the first thing to understand about him. He is not, despite the directory label, a smith proper but a member of the neighboring Hokke line, repeatedly set against in the very texts that designate his blades; the group was active from the era into the period, and alongside Ichijo, Yukiyoshi, Shigeyasu, Shigeie and Nobukane, Kaneyasu stands among its leading hands, named directly after the founder-figure Ichijo in the roll of survivors.
His hand is the school's hand, and it is a quiet one. Over an that flows toward along the edge, with worked in here and there, he tempers a low, gentle straight temper, a chu- or that at times carries the faintest and runs alongside a linked string of small . The temper is -dominant with gathered along it, the tight and inclined to sink rather than to glow, with fine and entering and breaking the in places. The published sources put the school manner plainly as a low, calm , or a -toned pattern accompanied by a continuous run of , and Kaneyasu's blades hold to that base almost without exception. He is a smith read not by any flamboyant flourish but by the restraint and evenness of a straight edge that never works itself up into a , the small a recurring punctuation along an otherwise still line.
The is where his school marks itself most clearly. The stands rather than lying flat, the grain visibly raised (肌立ち), and the steel takes on a whitish cast over which a faint rises (白け映り), the iron tone running somewhat dark; on the broader forms and thick enter the standing grain. This pale, slightly adhesive , with flowing turning to and a frequent close to the , is what the judges have in mind when they call the work of the line one in which a Yamato temperament can be discerned, summarizing the school as forging mixed with flowing grain whose may be finished as , in which 「帽子は焼詰めることもあるなど、大和気質の窺えるもの」. The itself is read in two forms that the school keeps in parallel: one that runs straight to a finish, the Yamato tell, and one whose point grows pointed and turns back long, and a given blade is placed in part by which of the two it shows.
Kaneyasu's surviving work falls cleanly into two registers, and the rarer of them is the one signed. The signed pieces are confined to and , wide in the body and thin in the , bearing the Bishu-ju Kaneyasu signature and dates; they are exceedingly few, the commentary noting that 「兼安有銘の作は経眼したものは僅かに五指を掘するに過ぎず」, no more than can be counted on one hand. One such 2 is praised for showing 「典型的な作風を示して、銘振りも極めてよい」, a typical manner with an exceptionally fine cutting of the signature, and a single signed is called 「すこぶる珍らしく貴重」, exceedingly rare and valuable, since a -form signature from this hand is almost unheard of. The far larger register is the of grand shape, with the tending high, wide-bodied with an or , attributed Hokke Kaneyasu. It is on these unsigned, greatly shortened blades that his name now chiefly rests, the attribution resting on the standing whitish , the and the quiet mixed with that he and his school share. The sword-signature compendia, working from the dated signed pieces, variously assign his activity to Enbun (延文), Shitoku and Oei, but the dates on his own blades fix him securely within the passage.
What sets him apart is best stated through his own traits rather than against another school's. One is described as one that 「一見備中青江物に似た作風を示している」, resembling work at first glance, yet it is kept for Kaneyasu by the elevated of its construction and a forging that mixes in large , the judges naming these the features that mark it as his. The lesson is the school's whole identity in miniature: a pale, standing, Yamato-tempered straight-temper hand that can be mistaken for its and Bingo neighbors and is separated from them by particulars of and construction, not by drama of temper. His over a whitish, -tending , with the , is the manner the Hokke line carries from into , and the Yamato character read in that and that grain is precisely the trait that the texts use to hold the Ashida line apart from the work to which it is forever being compared.
Kaneyasu is a connoisseur's name rather than a collector's quarry, and the record is honest about its scale. The Fujishiro appraisal places him at Chu-jo , and his blades on the official record number a dozen, every one of them at the Important Sword tier; there are no National Treasures, no Important Cultural Properties and no among them, and the designation record carries no recorded or named former owners to roll out. What this offers a collector is a clear and attainable thing rather than a famous one. A signed Kaneyasu, an or with the five-character and an date, is among the scarcer encounters, the survivors counted on one hand and a signed rarer still. The attributed to him are the more findable face of his work, several of them designated and praised as 「同派極めの優品」, excellent representative pieces of the school in which the standing pale and the quiet, sinking are well shown. These reach the market only from time to time, and when one does it offers the patient student of the schools a sound and characteristic example of a Bingo Yamato-influenced hand, the kind of grounded, undramatic blade on which a careful is built rather than a famous signature acquired.