The earliest blade gathered under this Morikage attribution is a signed the published sources read as no later than the close of the period, the oldest-dating work of the Morikage, of which the surviving examples are held extremely few. The commentary states it directly, calling the piece "the most time-ascending work among those of the line's Morikage", and adds that its and "also differ from the later -school and -name works", closing that it is "of remarkable documentary value". Morikage is the representative smith of the group, a line the published sources trace to the remote ancestor Kunimori, said to have moved to from Inokuma in Yamashiro. On this short but distinguished record of six designated blades, signed and , the signed anchors the line's history while the rest carries it forward into the height.
His characteristic hand is a Sōden-Bizen temper read not as the clove-flower of mainstream but as a -bearing whose elements shift from blade to blade. The most-cited manner is a mixed with and a pointed tendency, and entering, adhering, fine running through the . On the wide-bodied the judges read this temper, a kuzure mixed with , as one in which, though unsigned, "Morikage's manner is well discerned", and they call the heavy, imposing build forceful in the hand. A pointed-blade tendency recurs across the range, running through the and surfacing again at the florid extreme, a quiet tell that sets the hand apart from the -dominant mainstream of his day.
The is the constant beneath that range, and on this code it is written from the standing . Over an mixed with , the grain tending to open and stand, he lays a and , with a rising on the signed and the alike. The signed keeps the older, finer measure, a with , set and the standing, its temper a with and intermingled, the bright and clear with , entering thickly and appearing here and there, the turning to a small round. On the later wide-bodied work the stands but the grain opens further, with and patches of , and the runs to a small round or a pointed tendency with . A is most often carried through both faces.
What the published sources stress is the breadth of the range. They describe Morikage's -iki as wide, taking in -dominant work, a changeful florid with and mixed in, work centred on angular , and a in an manner. The florid extreme is well seen on one unsigned whose temper is broad and -prevalent, as the main motif with and a pointed tendency lively and undulating, the heads of the tempered so high that part of them reach the -line, and there the commentary says "the group's character is well shown", holding the blade sound in both and and of fine workmanship. The converted gathers the many-kinded temper of his middle range, , and pointed elements intermingled, of which the judges remark that "Morikage's points of interest are well displayed". A modern scholarly question hangs over the name itself: on shared workmanship and the reverse-chisel forms of his signature characters, the published sources record a theory, now widely entertained, that the long-signature Morikage may belong instead to an collateral line connected to Chikakage and Yoshikage, and that the smiths who cut bold, large two-character signatures may be the true hands. The matter is left open for further study.
The other face of this record is the attributed to him. These are wide-bodied, the shallow and the extended in the archetypal shape, the temper a kuzure or a mixed with and small , the attribution resting on era, school and the standing with its rather than on a single flamboyant trait. The published sources affirm them as Morikage by these features and place him by contrast, holding his bright and -mixed, sometimes subdued temper apart from the leading names. On the -signed , where the stands with and the runs to a with conspicuous , they call its thick in and frequent in , bright and clear, "the best-forged among his works", so that the kinship to the front rank of Sōden-Bizen is read off the forging rather than asserted.
For the collector this Morikage is a thin but securely documented presence. The six blades gathered under the code are all at , signed and together, with no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties on this record. Its weight lies in the signed the commentary calls the oldest-dating Morikage and of remarkable documentary value, a blade carried in the Hisamatsu-Matsudaira house, the line of the Matsuyama . Because such designated blades stay in long-held collections and the signed early work is, by the judges' own account, of extremely few surviving examples, an Morikage of this rank comes to light only from time to time, and a privately held one is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, a securely documented witness to the broad and skilled hand at the head of the school and to its earliest dated reach into the late period.
