Yamashiro-no-kami Fujiwara Kunikane, the second of the Sendai line, was born in Keicho 17 (1612), succeeded to the house in Shoho 2 (1645) at the age of thirty-four, received the Yamashiro-no-kami title in 7 (1667), and died in 12 (1672) aged sixty-one. He was the eldest son of the founder, the Yamashiro-daijo Kunikane, who claimed descent from the late line of Yamato Hosho, served Date Masamune of Sendai, and by his lord's order went up to Kyoto to study under -no-kami Masatoshi before receiving the Yamashiro-daijo title in 3 (1626). The Kunikane name was the standing forge of the Date house, and across both generations its identity rests on a single inherited manner: the forging of the Yamato Hosho tradition, tempered in . The published sources call this his hereditary specialty, the family's transmitted Hosho-style at which he was particularly accomplished in the straight temper, and they rate the second generation a master of second only to his father.
His hand is recognized first in the . The blade is a with , the curvature shallow in the manner and the medium, and over its whole length runs a forged tight and well ordered, with laid and entering along the . This straight-grain is the first of the two Hosho marks, a forging almost no other school takes as its default, and the second mark is set into it: a frayed at the into , mixing and a tendency to , with and running freely along the , the deep and the bright and clear with . Where the and the both appear on every blade on record, the two together are the surest reading of the smith.
The runs straight, sweeping into , and closes as often in a without turnback as in a small round, a Yamato-Hosho habit that follows from the and the rather than against them. To this inherited core the published sources add a tell peculiar to the Kunikane hand, and name it as such: a rising from below the , a faint pale reflection that on the broad, slightly long late blades connects and runs as an -like aspect across the lower half. Of one they write that 「区下より水影が立っているが、初代同様二代にも見る手くせであり」, a habit seen in the second generation as in the founder, and they note alongside it that the file is sometimes finished as a plain, simplified , another of the points to watch in his work. On that wide blade the stands a little on the , the laid dust-fine and thick, the finely formed.
Against the calm the published sources record that the second generation also leaves a . On these the base mixes in small and a shallow , entering and the frayed, and one wide, long blade carries a that swells into a large, shallow undulation with and and a tendency. The sources frame this as the exception within a hand whose default is the straight temper, writing that 「家伝の保昌流の柾目鍍を得意とし」 he was particularly skilled at , with slight seen at times besides. A small register within the corpus carries the founder's own signatures rather than the second generation's, the go Yokei and the title Yamashiro-daijo: blades signed Yamashiro-daijo Fujiwara Yokei Kunikane, one dated Keian 1 (1648), in the Hosho idiom but read with a founder's accent, the -zori standing high with , the tending to stand, the a damp and frayed with following.
What sets his work apart within the broad world of is not a flourish but the consistency of the Hosho reading: the carried the length of the blade, the quiet laid over it, the swept , and the below the . The published sources keep his standing honestly relative to the founder. They write of one second-generation that it is in fact forceful and that its quality is 「殆んど初代に劣らない」, scarcely inferior to the first generation, and of his finest pieces that some approach the while his ordinary technique does not equal him. The signature itself is a connoisseur's field: in the second generation's the horizontal strokes are driven hard and pressed at their close so that they read like the character , and within the character 包 the inner element is cut in a distinctive form, both, the sources say, important features when reading a Kunikane signature.
Kunikane is rated Jo- by Fujishiro. His record is held entirely in the tier, ten of the second generation on record there, with two further blades under the founder's Yokei signature reaching the prewar Bijutsuhin. He holds no National Treasure and no Important Cultural Property, so the work that can be encountered is the designated , and these come to market only from time to time and with patience, a steady Sendai- name rather than a rarity locked wholly away. The published sources single out the well-forged, in-the-style pieces as typical and representative of the second generation, one of which, worn at the side of Shinbei, carries a gold-inlaid cutting-test inscription dated 11 (1671) and is valued as a documentary representative work. Of his quietest the sources write that it is 「上品に静温に仕上げている」, finished with refined elegance and a quiet warmth. Among recorded owners of his blades are Kurokawa Fukusaburo and the Kurokawa Institute for Ancient Cultures, which hold the two Yokei-signed Bijutsuhin, and Itaya Taneo.