Yoshikane signed his blades Chikushu-ju Minamoto Yoshikane, used the common name Sukezaemon, and died in Genroku 6 (1693), the year his son Shigekane turned twenty-one. He worked in Hakata as one of the representative smiths of the group, the -period branch that the published sources trace back to the Kyoto line and that served the Kuroda house of Fukuoka as retained smiths (kakae-kaji) from the Keicho era down to the early Meiji years. The line is set out in the commentaries with a clear shape: its effective founder Yoshisada answered an invitation from Kuroda Nagamasa and moved from Buzen to Hakata, after which the headship passed generation to generation, and the representative makers are named as Yoshisada, Yoshimasa, Yoshitsugu, Yoshikane and Shigekane. Yoshikane was the son of Yoshitsugu, and from the period it had become customary for the group to take as a surname and style each member " so-and-so," which is why his five designated all carry the personal name within a boldly cut long signature.
Two deliberate manners run through that small body of work, and the more striking of them is a reach toward -. Over an that flows and leans strongly toward , with adhering and fine entering, he forges a mixed with , angular elements among it, the deep, the thick and well attached, with fine running vigorously and and a slight suggestive of . The follows the temper into a that rises with , comes to a sharp point with a deep return, and sweeps frequently with . Of the that shows this hand most fully the published sources write that "his aim lay clearly in -", calling it an ambitious work through which the high level of his ability can be understood. This is not the broad -based that the commentaries give as the school's common range but a separate, intended idiom, and it is the beneath the , present on every one of his designated blades, that ties the two manners together.
The is the steady foundation on which both hands are laid. The forging is an , well knit and at times a tight , that overall carries a and on the flows strongly into a -like state, with minute adhering and delicate entering. On the blades where he tempers the school's it throws up a clear in a bright , and the published sources note that this is the customary accompaniment of his manner, the flowing and the standing reflection arriving together. That flowing, -leaning , rather than a tight , is the Yamashiro-descended surface that carries the line back to its Kyoto source, and it is the constant against which the variety of the is read.
His second documented manner is the the commentaries name the salient point of the hand. It sits over the tight and runs chiefly with , , and mixed in, the generally aligned in a small-pattern , a reverse-slanting tendency appearing in places, and entering well, adhering, fine present, and the bright. One carries this further than any other on record: it shows differing manners on its two faces, a flamboyant with marked rises and falls on the and a small-pattern, level-headed on the , the so-called kashiwade style. The published sources call it the only known example of that approach within the smith's work and read in the flamboyant a resonance with the Fukuoka Ishido of the province, a kinship they support by pointing to a documented Ishido carving on a blade of the second-generation Yoshimasa. Of this blade they conclude that it manifests the school's salient points.
What distinguishes Yoshikane is best drawn from his own grounded traits rather than by contrast with his neighbours. His is a smith of two intentions held at a high finish: the reach, with its deep , thick , and over the flowing ; and the school , with its aligned and the that the flowing throws up. The of the kashiwade , a small-pattern without rises and falls and with the heads of the aligned, the commentaries call a typical example of the distinctive , so that one blade holds both the school's textbook hand and its rarest variation. The is cut on every designated piece, a long signature in bold, thick chisel strokes set below the toward the , and on one blade an added inscription records that it was made of nanban-tetsu, the imported steel.
Yoshikane is rated Jo by Fujishiro, a sound standing for a provincial smith rather than a first rank, and his designated record is small and entirely signed. Five of his hold the rank, his record reaching no Important Cultural Property or National Treasure tier, so his blades are encountered as and lower-ranked pieces rather than as patrimony held permanently out of reach. One of his swords is recorded as having been held by the Imperial Family, the single notable provenance attached to his name in the corpus, and the remainder pass through private hands. The number of designated works on record is genuinely small, and the blade worth waiting for is the one in which both his intentions are fully realised, of the kind the published sources praise in their highest verdict on him: a work in which "the and the are both strikingly clear", revealing, as they put it, Yoshikane's outstanding workmanship among the -period smiths. Such a blade comes to market only from time to time, and when one does it is a good representative of a respected provincial school whose finest hand looks back to both and the old Yamashiro line.
