Katsumura Tokukatsu, commonly called Hikoroku, was born in Bunka 6 (1809) at Mito and was a retainer-smith of the Mito domain, dead on the twenty-ninth day of the second month of Meiji 5 (1872) at the age of sixty-four. The published sources set down his training in a fixed sequence: he first learned forging from the Mito domain smith Sekinai Tokumune, and in Kaei 5 (1852), sent up to by order of the domain together with his disciple the first-generation Masakatsu, he studied in the circles of Hosokawa Masayoshi and the Ishidō master Ozaki Suketaka, also called Unju Korekazu. From the Bunkyū years he moved to the Mito domain residence at Koishikawa in and left a considerable number of blades there. He belongs to the late- Mito, or Suifu, school of the period, and what fixes his name among its smiths is not his Ishidō schooling but the manner he settled into afterward, a held to consistently for the rest of his working life.
The published record draws that turn in plain terms. In his early period he followed his teacher Sekinai, forging an and tempering a ; then, as the sources put it, 「中期以降は大和伝に終始し」, from his middle period onward he kept entirely to the Yamato tradition, 「柾目鍛えに砂流しかかる直刃を焼いた」, forging in and tempering a through which runs. None of his designated blades is read as belonging to the early Sekinai face, so that -and- manner survives in the texts as a point of departure rather than as an extant example, and every one of his recorded shows the -and- hand of his maturity. That hand is the first thing to name in his work. The is a , closely packed yet tending in places slightly toward standing grain, with adhering finely and at times a -like windblown variation entering the surface; over it the temper is a base that takes a shallow and in places mixes in connected , the fraying into , running frequently, entering, and the bright.
The straight grain and the frayed straight temper are the heart of his , for they hold together across every blade and they are never the clean he might have brought back from his teachers. The stands tight rather than coarse, with the fine scattered over it, and on the widest pieces the steel takes on flowing and leans further toward still. The that sits on it is worked, not quiet: enter well, the forms strongly, and on the broadest blades a little appears near the . The completes the Yamato reading, straight and turning back in a small on every piece, the point swept vigorously with . Of his first designated the published sources write 「この刀は徳勝の大和伝であり」, this sword is Tokukatsu's , and find in its , its frayed , and a that deepens toward the a careful attention to older models, judging that 「地刃ともによく沸づいて覇気がある」, both and are well covered in and the blade carries a forceful spirit.
The on which all this sits is its own tell, a body the published sources call the broad, long, thick-kasaned and shallow- construction of Mito swords, stout and martial in with . The lengths run long, from blades of a drawn out to one of fully ninety centimetres finished in an , and the is thick throughout. Two registers stand apart within this single manner. Two of the the smith himself styled with a gō, Shōri, Victory, cutting the name into the blade, and the sources read these self-named pieces as works he held in particular regard. One of the thirty-first session carries uncommon on his blades, two set in overlap on one face and a in relief on the other, which the sources call rare for him and well-judged in its harmony with the sword. They name this blade, with its deeper and its conspicuous and , 「初代徳勝快心の一口である」, a fully satisfying piece by the first-generation Tokukatsu.
What sets him within the Mito circle is held in that recurring word, the Yamato temperament the published sources find in him; they write of his designated work that 「大和気質が窺われる」, a Yamato disposition can be perceived, and read his finish as recalling the old Shikkake masters of the Yamato tradition. His own grounded traits make the distinction without recourse to comparison: the tight , the frayed and -laden , and the vigorously swept set his hand apart from the cleaner Ishidō he had studied, and his blades wear that Yamato temper on a frankly Mito body, 「水戸刀特有の幅広・長寸」, the broad and long form characteristic of Mito swords. His disciple the first-generation Masakatsu, who had gone up to with him by domain order, worked at his side, and on the of the forty-eighth session the sources reason from the manner of the signature that the long is 「正勝の代銘になるものと推せられる」, inferred to be a cut by Masakatsu in the master's stead, the reading turning on the signature rather than on any departure in the workmanship, which is his customary .
Tokukatsu's recognized work survives on five Important Sword designations, from the twenty-third session of 1975 through the sixty-sixth of 2020, all of them of the broad, long, thick-kasaned Mito build, signed in a long inscription in the Suifu-jū Katsumura Tokukatsu form or its variants, two of them styled by the smith himself with the gō Shōri. He has no National Treasure, no Important Cultural Property, and no on record, so the population a collector may realistically meet is this group of and the signed blades of his that stand below them. The recorded pieces carry no documented or temple provenance; their standing rests instead on what the published sources praise on each, the soundness of and , the deep and bright of his best, and the rarity of a Mito blade good enough to reach the level. A signed Tokukatsu, its tight and its frayed sound in and , is among the surer ways to hold the late- Mito hand in a single blade, a smith more readily met than the great Yamato names yet seen only from time to time, a deliberate acquisition when one appears rather than a chance one.