A signed in the fifteenth session carries the two characters Kunihiro and, on its scabbard, an old note of fifty , and its published commentary opens with the line that has governed the smith ever since: that Shindogo Kunihiro is traditionally the son of Kunimitsu, and that old transmitted writings hold his works to show a longer turnback than Kunimitsu's. Kunihiro worked in at the very end of the period, and signed pieces dated Bunpo 2 (1318) and Genko 4 (1324) fix his time. The published sources record that Shindogo Kunimitsu had three sons, Kunihiro, Kunishige and Kunitai, all said to have later signed Kunimitsu as their father did, but that of the three only Kunihiro survives in genuine work, no reliable signed blade being known for the other two. His recorded oeuvre is the small sword, the and a single short , with one exception: a signed Kunimitsu that the published sources read as his own.
His is, before all else, the Shindogo hand received whole from his father. He excelled in well-constructed and tempered , the sources saying plainly that he produced skillful and skillful . The temper is a fine , or a medium , laid in with the bright and clear, fine and working within the , and in places , and - along the ; here and there a faint or enters the line, but the manner is the quiet straight temper throughout. Over this restraint the recognition rests on a second, contrary mark, the carving: at the base of the he sets with a and , on the fifteenth-session piece a , the devotional program of the Shindogo workshop, while the plainer pieces show only a with an accompanying groove run as kaki-nagashi.
The is the part that most binds him to Kunimitsu. He forges an , at times a , well packed and minutely covered in thick , entering frequently, and over much of the work a stands; on the sixty-sixth-session the published commentary reads a toward the and a straight-form nearer the edge. One late piece runs to a standing with and flowing grain and a mottled , but the type is the bright, well-forged Shindogo steel. It is this reflection, the calm of a closely kneaded rather than the of , together with the , that places his blades within his father's school at a glance, the on the best of them held to be not inferior to Kunimitsu.
The record divides cleanly into two registers of one form. A few , two-character signed anchor the smith and carry his dates; the larger body is the judged Shindogo and then to Kunihiro in particular, several resting on old , one with a Genroku 8 (1695) paper by Mitsutsune. The shape is the orthodox , with a tendency to furisode in the , often slightly broad in width and at times . The tradition that Kunihiro and his brothers later signed Kunimitsu and worked as substitute hands for their father, the sources note, both explains why genuine Kunihiro signatures are so few and leaves room for further study, since some Kunihiro-dated pieces fall in the same years as Kunimitsu's own dated work.
Because the and sit so close to Kunimitsu, the against the father is decided not in the steel but in the and above all in the . The published sources name the tell exactly: Kunihiro's can be broader than the teacher's, and the turnback of the is wider than anything seen in Kunimitsu, with a habit by which the leans slightly. On one judged at the twentieth session the round is even a little inferior and the somewhat long, and on a piece that at first glance looks like Shindogo Kunimitsu it is precisely the broader on the reverse that decides it for Kunihiro. The published commentary on one states flatly that it cannot be appraised as the work of anyone but Kunihiro. He stands one generation below the founder of , his father's line opening through Yukimitsu toward Masamune, so that his sit at the threshold of the tradition that would follow.
Fujishiro rates him Jo-jo . Two of his works are Important Cultural Properties, a dated Bunpo 2 held at a shrine in Saga and a dated Genko 4 with the added inscription of a resident, and fourteen works stand at rank, thirteen and one signed of 96.1 cm. That is signed Kunimitsu, yet the published sources read it as his: its workmanship agrees with what the old texts say of Kunihiro's manner and its thick, deep carving resembles his, so that "this can be appraised as Shindōgo Kunihiro's Kunimitsu signature". The provenance that survives is distinguished out of proportion to the small number: one broad , sound and excellent in and , is recorded as a personal dagger worn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and another was formerly held by the main Tokugawa house. For the collector almost none of this can be sought. The two Important Cultural Properties are patrimony outside the market, and a recorded example rests in the Tokyo National Museum. What may realistically be met is the tier, fourteen blades in all and all but one of them , very often pieces resting on attribution, nearly all small and quiet works in the Shindogo manner; such a blade reaches the market only rarely, and a signed, dated Kunihiro , of which only a handful exist, is a landmark when it appears.