Nara Toshinaga (利寿), whose common name was Tahei, was born in 7 (1667) and died in Genbun 1 (1736) at the age of seventy. One record names him a pupil of the Nara master Toshinaga written 利永, the fourth generation of the school, and places his house at Honjo in . With Tsuchiya Yasuchika and Sugiura Joi he is counted among the Nara Sansaku, the three celebrated masters of the Nara school, and the published sources rank him first among them: the eldest of the three and, in their words, the most skilled. One commentary calls him the master "praised as first in the Nara school", another sets him at "the summit of the Nara school".
What the names, again and again, is the force of his chisel. Of a with a tiger beside a waterfall it writes of "carving charged with power into every corner", of his lions that their leaping high relief is "worth a second look" and "one of the highlights of Toshinaga". His relief is high and , cut back from the plate so that the figure stands proud, and it is enriched with gold, silver, and colour inlay. On a Fujito battle the waves are carved in iron with finely graded relief, the figures raised higher still, and the colour kept to a minimum.
His materials are wide. He works , iron, , and roughened , very often with an ishime texture that the published sources call his own. Brass is singled out: of a Jurojin-and-tortoise they write that brass worked in is "the method in which this maker excelled". Some pieces are finished with lacquer laid over parts of the plate, a Nara touch that darkens the or the copper. His output is dominated by , the low-waisted and slightly tall in the manner, and the commentary repeats that " and are scarce, and are many". His are thick, and an early record doubts that they number more than ten; among them the Omori Hikoshichi and the Mure Takamatsu are famous.
His subjects run in two registers. The first is the human figure. Shoki and the oni are his particular theme, and the commentary says that "the expressions of Shoki and the oni are especially his own". Jurojin with a minogame tortoise is another subject he favoured, with several and of similar design surviving. Bishamonten, the Three Kingdoms, the Fujito crossing and the vanguard at the Uji river complete it. Of his mounted warriors the writes that they follow the Goto manner but are "more true to life than the warriors of the Goto house". The second register is birds and beasts: fighting cocks with chicks at their feet, a tiger crouched above a falling torrent, a parent tiger swimming a raging current while its cub crouches on the bank, a lion with peony, and returning geese descending across a brass sky worked smooth in .
Through both registers runs a contrast of movement and stillness. On the waterfall the published sources read the water as movement and the crouching tiger as stillness, a tiger "watching intently" and about to spring. On one gamecock the bird is not in its fighting pose: beak closed and feathers lowered, it is read as the still "wooden cock" of the old tale, set against the combative cocks of his other works. A Uji river pairs his with a added in the late period by Toryusai Seiju.
His record numbers thirty designated works: three Important Cultural Properties, four at , twenty at , and three recognised before the war as . The three Important Cultural Properties are national patrimony and do not change hands. The prewar records name Hosokawa Moritatsu, whose set is now with the Eisei Bunko, and Furukawa Toranosuke; a Jurojin comes from the Ryushido collection of Mitsumura Toshimo with a box inscribed by Unno Shomin in Meiji 37 (1904). A or appears from time to time, a or far more seldom.
