Kuniyoshi worked at Kumafu in the Kikuchi district of Province from the very end of the period into the , the leading hand named first among the smiths of the school. The published sources trace the line to Tarō Kunimura, recorded as a son of Senjūin Hiromura of Yamato and as a maternal grandson of Kuniyuki of Kyōto, and they place Kuniyoshi beside Kunitoki, Kuniyasu, Kunitomo, Kunisuke, Kuninobu and Kunitsuna as one of the representative makers of the group, transmitted as either a son or a younger brother of the founder. From that double descent the school took its character, and the judges describe its work as one that generally resembles the school of Yamashiro, refined in yet carrying a Yamato cast inherited through the Senjūin side. Because the individual differences among smiths are slight, his many shortened and unsigned blades are affirmed from era and school as much as from any personal mannerism.
His characteristic hand is a quiet straight temper laid over a flowing steel. The temper is a hoso- or into which small and enter, the fraying into , with fine and and adhering, the most often tight. Within that calm line two activities are the tells the judges return to: , the broken-edge effect, and above all a doubled running along the edge and into the . Of one signed and shortened the published sources write that the way the in particular stands out clearly manifests the school's characteristic traits. The runs straight to a small round, at times to a larger with a shallow turnback, occasionally finishing or with .
The is where the school is read first. Over an , often a closely packed , the grain flows toward the edge into , with , entering, areas of , and a whitish standing clearly across the surface. This cooler, mistier reflection, paired with the conspicuous , is what the published sources name as the principal point separating from the tighter from which it descends. The record is candid about the cost of that descent: compared with true the and run somewhat weaker, the steel can look whitish and thin, the quiet and the subdued. Kuniyoshi is the smith in whom that baseline is most often surpassed rather than merely met.
His record divides cleanly by form. The body of it is the slender , usually shortened and several reduced to , on which the and appear in their representative state. Against these stand the , somewhat wide and thick in the , their mixing and flowing , the here taking on a shallow with a deeper , and carrying the school's Buddhist carving, a above a on the and a -bi with accompanying groove on the reverse. The signatures are bold two-character , and the judges read them by a single calligraphic tell: within the enclosure of the character the right-hand element is cut in an ear-shaped form, so that the cutting of the right half inside the enclosure in an ear shape is the inscriptional point of this school, a manner they say does not become confused with other schools and which separates him from the Kuniyoshi who shares his name.
What distinguishes Kuniyoshi within his own school is brightness. The published sources single out his signed for escaping the weaknesses entirely, lacking the whitish thinness of the and the subdued , and presenting instead a and that are bright and clear in both, the most refined example among works of the school. Where the school is read for , and a quiet line, his finest work keeps those marks while raising their clarity, the sharp and the steel well refined. The name continued through several generations into the period, a Hishū Kikuchi-signed read as a later Eitoku-era hand, so the is set apart from his namesakes by date and by the quality of his make.
Fujishiro records no grade for him, and the Tōkō Taikan values his work at four hundred and fifty. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through two blades at and nineteen at , with an Important Art Object and works appraised in gold inlay, gold powder and red lacquer as well as signed and unsigned. The provenance roll is unusually grand for a provincial: two were transmitted in the Owari Tokugawa family with Kōon , one selected into that house's highest "jin" rank; one shortened passed through the Tokugawa shogunal house; a court mounting with its blade descended in the Ichijō regent family; and a blade is recorded at the Shrine. Of one unsigned the published sources say it is a rare piece, sound in both and , firmly attributable to Kuniyoshi. With twenty-one blades across the and tiers and almost none held outside private and institutional collections, a signed Kuniyoshi comes to market only seldom; when one does, it is the rare chance to hold the leading hand of the school, the manner carried south and made bright.
