Kanro Toshinaga signed himself Gōshū Kanro Toshinaga of Takagi, and one tantō raised to Tokubetsu Jūyō in 1976 carries that full inscription cut below the peg-hole. He worked at Kanro in Takagi, in Ōmi Province, across the close of the Kamakura period and into the Nanbokuchō. From old times he has been transmitted as a man of the line of Takagi Sadamune of the same province, and the published sources repeat the tradition while declining to take it at face value. Examining his extant signed work, they conclude that 'rather than regarding him as a pupil, it is more appropriate to view him as a swordsmith of the same period'[[c:1]]. His signed pieces are few, a handful of tantō with one long-signed example, a dated ken and the rare tachi, so he is a name known through a thin but unusually consistent body of work.
The hand that body shows is read first in the forging and the point. Over an itame that flows and takes in masame, with ji-nie gathered thickly and chikei entering, he tempers a shallow notare worked low and quiet rather than in clove-flower clusters. Into the habuchi run hotsure, kuichigai-ba and nijuba, the edge breaking up in nie, with sunagashi and kinsuji drawn through it and yubashiri gathering toward the upper half. The bōshi turns in a small round but breaks into hakikake at the very point. It is this pairing, the masame in the steel and the swept hakikake of the turn-back, that the published sources name as his constant marks, and on which they rest the reading that 'he is regarded as a swordsmith of Yamato-related character'[[c:2]].
The jigane is the steady thing across his work. Itame mixed at times with mokume and ō-itame, the grain standing a little and flowing, ji-nie thick, chikei frequent, the surface bright and clear where the temper widens. On the wider mumei blades the steel opens into a flowing itame with passages of large grain, and the nioiguchi is described as bright and clear. Over so active a jigane the temper itself stays comparatively restrained, a low notare base into which gunome and a pointed tendency are mixed, the interest carried in the nie working of the edge rather than in height of pattern. One signed tantō, the published commentary notes, shows yubashiri, kuichigai-ba and nijuba in the upper half and a hakikake boshi that 'clearly demonstrate Toshinaga's distinctive characteristics'[[c:3]].
His record divides cleanly in two. The first face is the signed tantō, several of them ubu and so preserving his own work untouched, in katakiriba-zukuri or hira-zukuri with mitsu-mune, on which he occasionally carves bonji with a suken and goma-bashi. Within this group stand his two Important Cultural Properties, a hira-zukuri tantō and a double-edged ken dated Enbun five, the year 1360. The second face is the ō-suriage, unsigned katana attributed to him from period and school, wide in body and flowing in the jigane, the same low notare and swept bōshi carried at full length. The published sources accept one such katana with the plain judgment that the traditional attribution can be upheld, while granting on another that no single feature compels the name, so the masame and the hakikake are made to carry the kiwame where personality alone will not.
What sets him apart is exactly what the judges name in him rather than in his neighbours. His is not the clean clove-flower of Bizen but a nie-laden, Yamato-flavoured manner, the flowing masame and the hakikake boshi marking his steel and his point against the tighter Osafune hand; and the same nie working that ties him to the Sadamune circle of his day keeps him distinct from the plainer provincial smiths around him. The connection to Sadamune is read as one of period and shared taste rather than of master and pupil. One wide Nanbokuchō wakizashi, intensely nie-laden with kinsuji, sunagashi and yubashiri spilling into the ji, the published sources call 'a work truly brimming with martial spirit'[[c:4]], and an unsigned tantō they receive as 'a fine example that connects closely to the smith's signed works'[[c:5]].
For the collector he is a rare early name with a small and largely held record. Fujishiro grades him Jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his standing rests instead on two Important Cultural Properties, the hira-zukuri tantō and the dated Enbun-five ken, both heritage preserved outside the market, together with a single Tokubetsu Jūyō tantō and six Jūyō blades among tantō, katana and a wakizashi. Of the holders on record one tantō is preserved at the Kōsetsu Museum of Art and another blade at the Tokyo National Museum, and one piece carries Date family provenance, the remaining whereabouts unrecorded. Only the Tokubetsu Jūyō and Jūyō tier could ever change hands, and even those come to light rarely, his extant signed works being, as the published commentary repeats, exceedingly few. A signed Kanro Toshinaga, with its flowing masame and swept hakikake, is an uncommon thing for a private collector to encounter, and a documented one a notable addition.
