Morisuke signs his blades Bishu Morisuke in six characters, often adding a date, and one of his carries on its reverse a Joji 2 (1363) inscription that fixes him squarely in the late period. He was an smith, but his line within that great workshop cannot be clearly drawn. The published sources count him among the , the slightly-curved-sword smiths, and place him probably in the lineage of Moriie and the group, with the further note that his work can also be appraised alongside the Yoshii-mono of the province. The reference books list a Morisuke succession of several generations, the first in Ryakuo, the second in Enbun, the third in Eitoku, then a fourth in Oei and a fifth in Bun'an, and the surviving signed pieces are judged to fall in the late around Eitoku. Signed work by his hand is exceedingly rare, so each of the blades on record is valued less for fame than as material for knowing a smith of whom little else survives.
The hand that recurs across his blades is a small-patterned temper, and it is this that the published sources name as the clearly expressed mark of workmanship. Over a base he mixes , , , pointed teeth and angular squared-off elements, the whole never resolving into the large round of the Kanemitsu-derived mainline but staying compact and busy, a ko-moyo. Into it run and ; gathers well along the edge; in places the loosens into , and and play conspicuously through the tempered area. On his finest , the Eitoku-era piece in particular, the published record calls the result a blade rich in and 「覇気に充ちており」, filled with vigor, while remaining sound in both and . The is not fixed to one shape: on the and work it enters in and points at the turn, while on the it runs straight to a small round return, so that the temper of the tip tracks the form of the blade rather than carrying a single signature.
The is read through the standing of the grain. He forges an that tends to stand open, and mixing into it, with fine attaching, passages of -like texture, and dark -toned steel entering on the best pieces. Over this rises the reflection that places him a , not a , hand of the period: a on the broad , broad and straight low on the blade and breaking into irregularity higher up, and on the wide a standing along the edge side. The reflection is named on most of his recorded blades, and on the long it rises clearly enough to be one of the surer tells of his work. It is the and its , more than any one shape in the , that anchor the appraisal of so sparsely documented a smith.
His range divides into two registers without changing its essential manner. The first is the , of which the most arresting is a long of wide , high and evident running to a , a piece the published sources call 「南北朝時代の大太刀の典例」, an exemplary model of the great of the age, and prize the more because it survives , signed and dated; on it the temper opens into a with -style . The second register is the wide and , where the compacts into close-set with and a tendency, the tightening or sinking, the entering in and pointing. Of one such the published record says he was 「互の目を得意としている」, especially proficient in , and on these smaller pieces a is carved on both faces close to the . The dating of his work carries a historical interest beyond the smithing: his blades bear both the Southern Court Enbun years and the Northern Court Joji and Teiji years, and because many are dated Joji the judges reason that he was at that time a smith aligned with the Northern Court. The published sources draw from this the larger picture that 「当時の備前が、南北両朝の間に右往左往していた」, that of the day was pulled back and forth between the two courts.
What the name means has been explained in many ways since old times and resists a clean definition, but the published sources treat it as 「兼光と師弟関係の無い刀工の一括した呼称」, a collective designation for the late- smiths who, while not in a master-disciple line with Kanemitsu, worked in a manner descended from his. Morisuke belongs squarely to that body, and the observes of his shortened signed that 「この作は此の工のみならず小反りの典型的作風を示している」, that it shows not only this smith's own characteristics but the typical style of the group as a whole. A Morisuke blade thus reads as a standard of its kind: his bright over a standing and his small-patterned, busy set him within the manner rather than the round- line of Kanemitsu proper, and distinguish him in turn from the -leaning hands of the decades. His lineage to Moriie and is offered by the published sources only as a probability, and they are candid that his place within is not securely established.
Morisuke is not a smith of National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties; his record stands at seven blades that have reached the rank, with no and no higher designation, and no provenance to a house is preserved among them. His standing rests instead on the scarcity of his signed work and on the quality of the few pieces that carry it: the dated held an exemplary , the Eitoku a blade of conspicuous vigor, and the small dated and valued as documentary evidence of a hand whose signed output is, in the words of the published record, exceedingly few. These are designated cultural property held in private and institutional hands rather than objects of the market, and an authenticated, signed Morisuke comes before a collector only rarely, the more so for being both signed and dated. For the student of its interest is precise: not a famous name but a clear, datable window onto the workshops of the late , and onto a province caught between the Northern and Southern courts.
