Hito-jogi Kirimon-zu Futatokoromono

Goto Yujo, the first generation of the Goto house, is called in the published sources "the progenitor of Japanese metal carving" and "a chisel master without equal, past or present." He served the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa and took part in the Higashiyama culture of his court, and many of his works were taken up among the Higashiyama treasures of the shogunal collection. For that reason, the NBTHK writes, the celebrated metalworkers of later ages all took Yujo of the Goto house as their model. The prevailing view places his birth in Eikyo 12 (1440) and his death in Eisho 9 (1512) at the age of seventy-three. One commentary adds that he served as a close attendant of Yoshimasa, received a fief of three hundred cho within Sakamoto in Omi, and was raised through the rank of hogen to that of hoin. The same commentary describes the Goto as the first house of sword-fitting metalwork, serving the Muromachi shogunate, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shoguns from Yujo through seventeen generations to Tenjo.

His subjects are the formal ones of the house, the lion and the dragon above all. The published sources say that the dragon is the traditional subject of Goto house carving and that its manner is held to have been devised by Yujo himself. His menuki are carved in the round in solid gold or in shakudo, and his kozuka and kogai carry a gold crest in high relief on a shakudo nanako-ji, the reverse covered in gold. The commentary returns again and again to the same description of the chisel: the rounded, ample modelling has depth of flavour, and "the chisel work is bold and truly powerful"[[c:1]]. A kozuka with a gold crest of an ox is said to prove the manner described as "high peaks and deep valleys."

The published sources also set out the features by which his hand is judged. On his dragons the figure-eight wrinkles of the brow join at their tips, the scales are cut in a higaki-beshi lattice, the claws grip the jewel sharply, and the wrists and ankles rise in a swelling peculiar to him, with five namekuri strokes; the horns carry firm triangular chisel cuts. On his lions the ears show no kirikake chisel cuts, which the commentary calls Yujo work true to the canon. The reverse of the menuki is the other test. Several have the paired inyo-ne posts with an added root, the so-called futatsu-ne, which the NBTHK says is seen only rarely on work of the mid Muromachi period or earlier, and of which it writes that "within the Goto house, Yujo alone has this feature," and even then only rarely. Other menuki show notches cut in the reverse edge, signs of their age, and a kukuri-dashi modelling drawn in at the hem.

Nothing of his is self-signed. His work is known through the appraisals of the later heads, who cut kiwame-mei and issued origami: the seventh head Kenjo with Mitsunobu and the ninth head, Teijo in the Shoho and Keian years, Renjo, who assembled crests and menuki into mitokoromono, Tsujo, Jujo, Enjo and Keijo, whose valuations reach one thousand and twelve hundred kan. One monkey menuki pair records the limits of that tradition. Teijo's origami states that the omote is by Yujo and that he carved the ura himself, and the commentary finds his skill uncommon yet says the difference shows in the turn of the edge and in the reverse. On a rhinoceros pair completed by Kenjo, with a kozuka by Joken modelled on it, the published sources see the difference of period and rank plainly, yet find that Yujo's pride in house carving passed securely to later generations.

Within the house, the commentary groups him with the upper three generations, whose lions have a peculiarly fierce power, and it records a later head copying a Yujo kogai for a matched kozuka, showing how the Goto kept their manner by taking early work as their model. A shakudo dragon menuki of a single colour is compared with the famous Marukibashi mitokoromono and the Nuregarasu kogai, the works in which Yujo approached an austere, unadorned realm; its "state of wear, rich in the feeling of age," is said to confirm its strength further. A gold lion mitokoromono at the Tokubetsu Juyo rank is called "a work that displays the very essence of the Goto house."

His designated record is forty-one works: four at the Tokubetsu Juyo rank and thirty-seven at Juyo, with no National Treasure or Important Cultural Property among them. Their provenance is unusually full. Two sets descend from the main Tokugawa house, several from the Konoike family, the Osaka merchants, and others from the Satake, the Tsugaru and the Nabeshima; one mitokoromono carries a note that it passed from Yanagisawa Dewa-no-kami to Sakai Saemon-no-jo. The commentary on one lion pair notes that the Yujo lions of the Kaga Maeda collection are famous. Of a gold lion menuki pair it writes simply that the modelling has depth of flavour and that the workmanship is excellent. A Yujo comes to light only rarely, and a set whose crests and menuki all show his features is called by the NBTHK extremely scarce.