Shodai Etchū no Kami Masatoshi was the fourth and youngest son of Kanemichi of Mino-Seki, and the latest dated work from his hand bears the year Kan'ei 6 (1629), the earliest Keichō 5 (1600). With his father and his three elder brothers, Iga no Kami Kinmichi, Rai Kinmichi and Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi, he came up from Mino to Kyōto and there founded the Mishina school, one of the principal forces of Kyoto Shintō beside the Horikawa. Among the four brothers the published sources give the youngest the highest marks: they call his dexterity foremost of the brothers[[c:1]] and his range the broadest within the lineage[[c:2]], a versatility one entry sets beside that of Kunimichi of the rival Horikawa school. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. His record is not one manner held at full power but several manners practiced by a single capable hand, and it is read that way.
The center of that record is the Shizu manner the published sources say he most excelled in[[c:3]]. Over an itame mixed with mokume, ō-itame and a flowing nagare-hada that stands a little, the steel sometimes taking a slightly blackish tone, he sets a large midare based on a shallow notare, mixing gunome, ko-gunome, angular elements and pointed teeth. The nie is strong and at times coarse, gathering unevenly into patches; vigorous sunagashi runs through it, long kinsuji enter, and small tobiyaki and yubashiri cross the edge into a nijūba-like aspect, the nioiguchi tending to sink. The published sources read these as taken from the Shizu range he preferred, rustic and antique in flavor, and call his finest of them outstanding even among his own works.
The jigane is the constant that underlies every manner. An itame that flows into nagare-hada, the grain standing and often becoming masame toward the edge, carries the Mino-Seki inheritance into the Kyōto work, with thick fine ji-nie adhering and chikei entering well. Above it the activity is the tell. Sunagashi is all but constant, far heavier than on a Bizen ji, and twice over he marks himself in the bōshi and the yakigashira. The bōshi runs in most often pointed, thrusting up before the turnback and sometimes settling into a small ko-maru, with hakikake along the tip; the published sources read this shallow notare-komi pointed-and-swept form as the Mishina bōshi, single it out as most conspicuous in Masatoshi of the four brothers, and describe it, more than once, as a textbook example, a temper made as if drawn from a picture[[c:4]]. Above the yakigashira the strong nie gathers with tobiyaki and yubashiri into stripes, the sprouting of sudareba (簾刃の萌), and the judges note this is not infrequently seen in his work[[c:5]]; it is the seed of the basket-weave temper that would define the later Mishina school.
Because he was so versatile, his record divides into registers as much as phases. The Shizu prime stands beside a strongly Mino-flavored register, where the lower half flares into a flamboyant gunome-chōji mixed with gunome and the pointed sanbon-sugi teeth the sources attribute to a model in Magoroku Kanemoto, the steel flowing into masame near the edge and bunched, washed-out tama gathering in the ha. A third, quieter register is Yamato: an itame flowing into masame under a tight chū-suguha, with uchinoke, small nijūba and hotsure along the habuchi, one suguha katana read by the judges as worked with an awareness of the Shikkake smith Norinaga. To these the published commentary adds Sōshū hitatsura, so that no single edge form fixes him; what fixes him is the bōshi, the sunagashi and the flowing jigane that persist across all of them. Dated works are rare, but the brothers' move up to Kyōto, his Bunroku-era receipt of the Etchū no Kami title, and a documented change from about Keichō 20 in how the sixth stroke of the character mori in his title is cut give the signed work an unusually firm chronology.
What sets him within the school is named plainly by the judges. He is the most capable and the widest-ranging of the four Mishina brothers, and where his eldest brother Iga no Kami Kinmichi shared the Shizu specialty, Masatoshi carries it furthest and shows the family bōshi at its clearest. The name continued for several generations, but the published sources hold that the second generation and after are markedly inferior[[c:6]], so the first generation is the recognized master of the line, the hand against which the rest are measured. His distinction is therefore not a borrowed resemblance but his own spread of attested traits, the broadest in the school carried with a steady technique the commentary repeatedly calls skillful.
For the collector he is a signed and knowable name from the founding generation of Kyoto Shintō. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs instead through two Tokubetsu Jūyō and twenty-six Jūyō blades and the prewar Jūyō Bijutsuhin, twenty-eight pieces in the Tokujū and Jūyō tiers all told, and almost every one of them signed. Provenance is thin but distinguished, his blades passing through the hands of Oda Urakusai and the Oda family, the Imperial household, and the Kitano Shrine association. Carvings, rare in the Mishina line, appear on a few of his blades, a Fudō Myōō and Kurikara among them that the judges call valuable for the study of his hand. Most designated blades, in private hands or not, are held rather than traded, and only a small part of his record reaches the tradeable tiers, so a signed Etchū no Kami Masatoshi comes to market from time to time rather than readily. When one does, it is a sound and varied document of the smith the Mishina school regarded as its most versatile founder-generation hand.
