Norimune of the Fukuoka school in is named by the published sources as the founder of that line, and, according to the Meizukushi (Kanchiin-bon) cited in the National Treasure commentary, one of the who served the retired Emperor Go-Toba in the early period. The published commentary states the matter of him plainly: that he is "renowned as the founder of the Fukuoka lineage, and extant signed works by him are extremely few." Because so little signed work survives, the standard against which he is known is set by a small number of , signed , and the published sources rank such a piece as a representative record of the master himself. He stands at the head of the tradition before its later flamboyance.
The characteristic hand is restrained and archaic. The is slender with high and clear , the a compact , the whole, in the words of the published sources, "an unmistakably graceful silhouette." Over a well-packed , the temper is built on a base into which and are mixed, with and entering well and along the . This is the calm root of the school, the quiet manner that precedes the exuberant of the Fukuoka mainline. The published sources call the result the archetypal style of the early masters and return to it as the type by which the school's beginning is read.
The is tightly forged, carrying fine , and across it a stands out clearly. On the the tends slightly , subdued rather than brilliant, and a runs in the lower-middle of the blade; the runs with only a faint disturbance and turns back in a small . The National Treasure at Hie Jinja shows the same , well forged and packed with fine and a . Its temper of and on a tone carries frequent small and with and , and there the is tight and bright, the running to with a slight . The published sources judge the and a typical example of early (Ko-) . The National Treasure commentary separates that style from : the form keeps the high, graceful of the late , but where work is based on , his temper is based on , "with the appearing vividly".
The surviving record is narrow, and it turns on a single point the published sources stress more than once: signed work is scarce. The National Treasure commentary lists the few that exist, among them a blade then listed as and blades formerly of the Shimazu, Tsuchiya and Kishu Tokugawa houses, and judges the Hie Jinja "especially excellent" among them, "one of the outstanding masterpieces of Fukuoka ". Its is cut toward the on the with a fine chisel over an , -shaped . A second fully described signed piece is an , two-character signed "Norimune," raised to the first session of the and earlier to the eighth session as records of one and the same physical blade. The is with and , the signature cut high on the near the . Of it the published sources write that "among extant signed works by Norimune, examples executed to such a high level are exceedingly rare." A third, an heirloom of the Asano of Aki presented to the Emperor Meiji, is recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, where it is called, with the Hie Jinja , the twin peak of his signed work. Of his style that entry writes that it "hardly differs from work", the a little more evident and the more intense, and it rejects as mid- work the flamboyant of grand form that are often given his name, as it rejects the popular name Kiku-. A further entry, a attributed () to Norimune, survives only as an old certification whose physical particulars the editors could no longer confirm, a reminder of how thin the documentary trail for so early a master has become. The four Important Cultural Properties are known from their plates, which give only the forging and the . Two signed , one at the Okayama Prefectural Museum and one from the Mitsui family, are with , the second mixing in . A attributed to him at Iminomiya Shrine is an with . The blade of a mounting at Atago Shrine in Kyoto, signed Norimune, is an with a .
His place in the school is fixed at its source. From his restrained founding manner descend the brilliant Fukuoka of Yoshifusa and the wider line, while the quieter side, on which is rarely recorded, is carried by the Ko- hand of Sadazane; against both, Norimune's combination of a clear and a -based temper marks the calm beginning from which the two diverge. His still keeps the high of the late , while his -based temper and vivid already separate him from , which places him at the moment one tradition becomes another. That is why the published sources reach for him as the type-specimen of early rather than as one master among many.
In Fujishiro's grading he is Sai-jo , and the Toko Taikan values his work near the very top of the field. Eight designated works are on record. They are led by the National Treasure at Hie Jinja, dedicated in 1646 by Tokumatsu, the fourth son of Tokugawa Iemitsu and later the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi, together with its -no- mounting. Four further works are Important Cultural Properties (). The list is completed by the recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, the signed Takahashi of the first session, and the old certification. The blades that bear his attribution have passed through the hands of those who held the country, recorded against the Tokugawa, the Shimazu, the Ashikaga, the Asano and Mori houses, the Asano heirloom passing to the Emperor Meiji as a gift; the few of recorded whereabouts are held by shrines and museums, among them Hie Jinja, Atago Shrine, the Tokugawa Art Museum, the Sano Art Museum, the Mitsui Memorial Museum and the Okayama Prefectural Museum. The published sources record that the most famous signed examples of his hand are designated cultural property, one of them listed in its day as , so that the scarce signed pieces are heritage rather than property in trade. A signed, Norimune coming into private hands is among the rarest things a collector of early could encounter, a landmark when it appears and a landmark only rarely.