Hida no Kami Fujiwara Ujifusa was the son of Wakasa no Kami Ujifusa, born at Seki in in Eiroku 10 and first called Kawamura Isechiyo, later Heijuro. The published sources follow his career closely: a page to Oda Nobutaka who became a ronin after his lord's death, then a retainer of Sakuma Masakatsu in Owari, he moved to Kiyosu and began forging swords from about Tensho 17. In Tensho 19, when the Kampaku Toyotomi Hidetsugu took Kiyosu, Ujifusa, Masatsune and Nobutaka were received at Jurakudai and each presented a blade, and Ujifusa was granted the title Hida no Kami. Those three smiths were counted in later generations as the Owari Sansaku, the makers who established Owari under the Tokugawa. About Keicho 15 to 16 he moved to Nagoya and served Tokugawa Yoshinao as a retained smith; he passed the headship to no Kami Ujifusa in 'ei 8 and died that year at sixty-five. Three generations worked under the name, the first holding Hida no Kami, the second no Kami, and the third again Hida no Kami, and it is the first generation, the founder, who carries the line's reputation.
His characteristic hand is a broad, unrestrained , the temper the published sources name his particular forte. On a wide-bodied with shallow and an extended large , the shape they call the archetypal Keicho- , he tempers a generous as the main tone, mixing and small into it, with and entering, well attached, and patches of uneven mura- and breaking the line. The broad manner runs across his and, on his , widens into a box-tinged -gatta . One such the sources call a temper that 'fully and without reserve displays this smith's forte'. On a dated Keicho 11 the open mixed with is named a typical work that clearly shows Ujifusa's own character.
The under that temper is a standing one. Over an that tends to rise, at times a large or a coarse , mixed with and flowing toward along the , the gathers. It is the grain of the Seki body from which he came, and on his best signed the published sources read in it the manner, calling one blade the finest of his work and the piece that 'most clearly manifests the style of his native '. The over this is tempered deeply, turning in to a or with a long return and ; on his and several other blades it rises instead in to a pointed tip, the manner of the smiths. His carry a plain run through, his a with , while figural and devotional carving, which the sources call rare for him, appears only on the .
Within this one hand the published sources draw out two further faces. The first is his most numerous, the wide, shallow-curved, large-pointed body that recalls the look of greatly shortened blades, qualified, the judges caution, by the that fixes it as Keicho work; among such pieces some, they note, resemble at a glance the work of Muramasa. The second is rare, and the sources twice mark it as unusual for him: a bright worked with , and fine over a finely applied , the deep and pointed. On these the judges read a private aspiration to the superior masters, naming Go and , and find a forging well refined and carrying 'an archaic flavor as though he had privately aspired to the superior masters'. A Keicho 7 presents the in a way that calls Yasutsugu to mind, yet the larger-scale and the stronger, unevenly gathered are read as Ujifusa's own.
What sets him apart is the combination the judges keep returning to. He is a Seki smith by descent, and the standing, flowing with along the , the pointed and the broad all carry that root; but the wide, powerful Keicho- body, the deep , and the reach toward in his work mark the Owari master who served the Tokugawa rather than the provincial Seki hand. His broad open distinguishes him from the tighter , and his bright deep- from the plainer straight tempers of his peers; the documented careers of Ujifusa, Masatsune and Nobutaka together, received at Jurakudai and remembered as the Owari Sansaku, place him at the founding of a new tradition rather than at the end of an old one.
For the collector he is a well-documented founder rather than a rarity of legend. Fujishiro grades him Jo . He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through the tier, where signed and frequently dated , , and of the first generation survive in some number, several bearing Keicho-era dates that the published sources prize, calling them 'valuable material for the study of Hida no Kami Ujifusa'. Because his blades with a Fujiwara Ason signature and a dated tang are uncommon, those dated pieces are held the most instructive of all. Provenance for his work is little recorded, so it is best described simply as held in private hands; a signed first-generation Ujifusa, broad and vigorous and clearly cut with its long signature, comes to market only from time to time, and a dated example is the one a student of Owari would most wish to encounter.
