Two tanto fix Norinaga in time with a precision rare for a medieval smith: one dated Bunpo 3 (1319) adds his age of forty-eight, another dated Ryakuo 3 (1340) his age of sixty-nine, and from these the published sources compute a birth in Bun'ei 9 (1272). An ubu naginata of Ryakuo 1 (1338) supplies a third date, and a Gentoku date is recorded in the Kozan oshigata. He worked at Shikkake in Yamato, one of the five lineages of the province beside Senjuin, Taima, Hosho and Tegai, and the published record opens text after text with the same sentence: the Shikkake school "flourished with Norinaga as its de facto founder"[[c:1]]. The registers name his father Norihiro as the founder, but no authenticated work of Norihiro survives, and the papers settle the school on the son. The name itself continued from the end of the Kamakura period through the Muromachi period, carried by successors whose separation, the NBTHK writes, remains an open question.
His hand is among the most readily named in Yamato. The published formula first gives the school the shared frame of the tradition, a high shinogi with a wide shinogi-ji, an itame forging with a flowing tendency, and a hamon fundamentally of suguha, and then states the tell: the distinction lies in tempering small ko-gunome strung in series within the ha[[c:2]]. One Juyo text raises this to a ranking: "among the works of the five Yamato schools, those in which the gunome stand out most are the works of the Shikkake school, and among them the most technically accomplished is Norinaga"[[c:3]]. On his classic blades the strung ko-gunome runs from base to tip. The edge frays into hotsure, kuichigai-ba and uchinoke; nie sits thick, at times rough above the monouchi; kinsuji and sunagashi sweep through. The boshi is sugu and strongly swept with hakikake, closing komaru or with a yakizume feeling, on one Tokubetsu Juyo blade becoming flame-like. The same sources add a quieter mark, that "the subdued tendency of the nioiguchi is also a point not to be overlooked"[[c:4]].
The jigane beneath this temper is an itame that flows overall and leans to masame, thick in ji-nie with fine chikei, in places standing. On the finest blades a clear nie-utsuri rises, and one Tokubetsu Juyo katana shows steel that runs slightly blackish. The Tokubetsu Juyo tachi of the twenty-fourth session is described in terms the sources reserve for his best work: a densely packed ko-itame, bright in iron color and well refined, on which the band of ha-nie adheres thickly, "beautifully luminous, bright and penetratingly clear"[[c:5]]. The strength of that steel is itself a discriminator within the school: the Jubi naginata-naoshi handed down from Tokugawa Yorinobu is singled out because "the jigane is stronger than usual Shikkake work, and the nie in the ha is also stronger"[[c:6]].
His work falls into clear registers. With Tegai Kanenaga he is the Yamato smith of comparatively many signed works, the long mei taking the forms Yamato Norinaga saku, Yamato Shikkake-ju Norinaga saku and Yamato Sakon-no-jo Norinaga saku, and the sources note that "among those judged the first generation there are no two-character signatures"[[c:7]]. His tachi mostly survive suriage with the signature left near the nakago tip on the mune side, while the tanto are ubu with the long mei at center; twenty-five of his designated blades are signed against twelve unsigned. The mumei register carries the seals of the Honami: a kinzogan of Koshitsu, whose inlaid attributions are called extremely few, a kinzogan of Kojo with an origami of Tenna 3 (1683) at twenty mai, kinpun and shu-mei attributions of Koson, and a lost origami of Kan'ei 12 (1635) read as the hand of Koshitsu or Koon. The formula itself reserves a further register, works in pure suguha: a hoso-suguha naoshi that once bore an old attribution to Sairen, the quiet ubu naginata of Ryakuo 1 made at sixty-six, and the kanmuri-otoshi tanto of Ryakuo 3 at sixty-nine, on which the strung ko-gunome can scarcely be seen. The pole arms are a school specialty; the Ryakuo 1 naginata survives ubu with an inscription the sources call precious as a document, the rest were shortened into wakizashi, and on them the naginata-hi with its companion soe-hi is "powerfully cut"[[c:8]], showing the character of Yamato carving. The generations remain unsettled. The old rule reads mei without the Shikkake prefix as the first generation and prefixed long mei as the second and after, takes the Sakon-no-jo signature as a second generation around Ryakuo, and the registers give a third at Oei and a fourth at Eikyo. Yet the tanto of the forty-seventh Juyo session, dated Ryakuo 3 at sixty-nine and still signed with the prefix, makes the judges hesitate before that rule, and they call it "precious material urging further examination of the generational division"[[c:9]]. An early Muromachi successor signs the Kasuga dedication tanto at sixty-two.
The published sources place him by his neighbors. Against Taima, the old connoisseur text quoted in the ninth Tokubetsu Juyo session warns that Shikkake work is mostly a sugu temper easily confused with Taima, "but the ji is not as tight as Taima's and the nioi is thinner, and by the inferiority of rank one should know it as Shikkake"[[c:10]]. Against Tegai the rank is stated plainly: his "technique is second to Tegai Kanenaga"[[c:11]], and the differences are itemized, that his forging stands more in the hada and falls short of Kanenaga's clarity[[c:12]], that the gunome midare stands out far more in his hamon, and that Kanenaga signs only with two characters while Norinaga leaves long mei. What Kanenaga is to Tegai, then, Norinaga is to Shikkake: the smith on whom the school's technique and its signed record both rest, distinguished from every other Yamato hand by the strung ko-gunome in a suguha frame.
He is Jo saku in Fujishiro's grading, with forty-six designated works on record. Five are Important Cultural Properties, patrimony preserved outside the market; beneath them stand six Tokubetsu Juyo and thirty Juyo, thirty-six blades across the two tiers, with three more on the Juyo Bijutsuhin rolls. Twelve blades carry recorded provenance through the great houses: a tachi of the former shogunal collection, recorded as a gift of the tenth shogun Ieharu in 1774 and later held by Tokugawa Iesato; the tachi granted by shogun Tsunayoshi in Genroku 11 (1698) to Matsudaira Yoshiyuki, founder of the Takasu branch, and handed down in that house; the rare Sakon-no-jo tachi transmitted in the Maeda house of Kaga with its Edo uchigatana koshirae; the naginata-naoshi kept as the sword of Tokugawa Yorinobu of Kii, treasured by its later owner as a daisho with the shogunal tachi; a tachi formerly of the Mori house; and a gold inlay recording the possession of Honda Nakatsukasa Shoyu Tadakoku. The Date family and the Imperial Family also appear among recorded owners. Of recorded whereabouts today, examples rest with Ise Jingu, the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums, Seikado Bunko, the Kurokawa Research Institute and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. For the collector the arithmetic is sober: most of the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo blades are held rather than traded, and an attributed katana with the strung ko-gunome appears on the market only from time to time. A signed piece, of which roughly two dozen are designated and many sit in institutions or long-held collections, is a genuine rarity, and a dated one is rarer still.
