Enju Kunisuke worked at Kumafu in Kikuchi District of Higo Province, a leading hand of the Enju school across the close of the Kamakura period and into the Nanbokucho. By tradition he was a son of the founder Taro Kunimura, who is recorded as a grandson through a daughter of Rai Kuniyuki of Yamashiro, so that Kunisuke stands as the second generation of a lineage that carried the Rai Yamashiro idiom south to the provinces. His activity is fixed by a tanto dated Karyaku 2 (1327), one of the rare dated pieces of a school in which year-marked work is scarce. The published sources read the school as one broad manner with little individual variation, and within that uniformity they return repeatedly to a single judgment about Kunisuke: surveying the surviving works, the NBTHK writes, one perceives that he was "a smith of considerable skill even within the lineage"[[c:1]], ranked with Kunitoki and Kuniyasu among its strongest smiths. The name is recorded as continuing two or three generations into Muromachi, the technique declining as it descends, and the NBTHK treats the line under one head.

What distinguishes Kunisuke within an otherwise even school is the abundance of activity in his ha. Where the school's temper is a quiet chu- or hoso-suguha with calmer internal work, his is the busiest hand of the line: a suguha base that frequently takes ko-gunome and somewhat angular gunome, with abundant nie, vigorous sunagashi, kinsuji and nie-suji, the nioiguchi at times sinking and at times brightening. The published sources mark the difference as a matter of degree rather than kind. Of one o-suriage mumei katana the NBTHK observes that its sunagashi runs "more violently than usual"[[c:2]], its gunome pointed, and judges the result uncommon within the school. Above this busy temper sits the feature the judges name as his alone: on his wide, sunobi wakizashi and tanto, the boshi is hardened deep and breaks into a violent flame, rising and pointing back, the omote taking a kaen form. Of the Tokubetsu Juyo wakizashi the published record states plainly that this deeply tempered, fierce flaming boshi is "without parallel even among this smith's own work and within the Enju school"[[c:3]].

The forging is a packed itame or ko-itame that flows toward masame, mixed at times with mokume, and on his wider pieces the grain stands a little, the hada-dachi tendency answering the liveliness of the ha. Across the ji lie dust-fine ji-nie, applied thickly, and fine chikei that enter well, over which the school's pale shirake-utsuri rises. The boshi of his quieter blades closes sugu into a komaru or a large-radius o-maru with a shallow turnback, often with hakikake at the tip. Against the parent Rai school the published sources fix the differences precisely: the masame-lean and the whitish steel, the nioiguchi tending toward shizumi, the calmer internal activity, and the larger, shallower-returning boshi. These are the named recognition points of Enju, and Kunisuke shows them all, the standing ji a degree more than his profiled siblings.

His surviving work falls into two registers. The first is the active manner of the Nanbokucho phase: wide, sunobi wakizashi and tanto, read as Nanbokucho from their broad bodies and stretched length, carrying the busy ha and the flaming boshi described above. The second is a quieter register of slender ubu tachi with deep koshizori and small kissaki, and o-suriage mumei katana whose deep arc-like wazori preserves a Kyoto air. Of one such mumei katana, finely packed in ko-itame with bright chu-suguha, the NBTHK writes that its workmanship "closely recalls Kyo-mono"[[c:4]], so that the attribution to the technically accomplished Kunisuke is fully persuasive. On certain of his tachi the judges note an unusual thing for the line: the temper construction is the one usually seen on the school's tanto. His signature is itself a kantei point. Among all Enju smiths he cuts the boldest two-character mei, set close and "with the thickest chisel within the school"[[c:5]]; and where most of the line cuts the right element inside the kuni enclosure in an ear-shaped manner, in Kunisuke that tendency is not conspicuous.

Kunisuke is read within the school less by a different kind of work than by degree, and the published sources place him by his proximity to Rai. The shu-mei tanto states the point the whole school turns on: that the work "at a glance can resemble Rai Kunimitsu and the like"[[c:6]], which the judges take as corroboration of the tradition that the founder Kunimura was a pupil of Rai Kunitoshi. His own preservation of that Kyoto air on the slender tachi and the wazori katana closes the lineage from the Rai side, while the busy ha and the unique flaming boshi mark the distance the school had travelled by his generation. A few of his blades carry the school's documentary curiosities: a naginata-naoshi signed on the haura, rare for the line, and another whose cut-off signed tang-tip was reset as a gakumei when the blade was shortened. Among the Enju hands the judges set him with Kunitoki and Kuniyasu at the head of the line, the standing ji, the busiest ha and the flaming boshi of his wide pieces marking him out within a school that otherwise reads as one manner.

Fujishiro grades Kunisuke Jo-jo saku. Seventeen of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, one as a Juyo Bijutsuhin, and the survival of ubu, signed examples is itself prized in the published descriptions, the more so where the dated tanto anchors his chronology. The provenance against his name is unusually grand for a provincial smith: blades passing through Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and held in the Hosokawa, Date, Uesugi and Tokugawa houses. The Tayasu Tokugawa tachi carries a history written out by Count Tokugawa Satotaka in 1919: Hideyoshi bestowed it on Takenaka Uneme, it passed to Ieyasu, then to the Mito Tokugawa as an heirloom of Yorifusa, and finally to the Tayasu branch under Munetake. Of his designated works of recorded whereabouts, examples are held by the Sano Art Museum, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum and Oyamazumi Jinja. For a private collector a Kunisuke is among the more attainable of the Higo Kamakura names, since most survive in the tradeable Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers; even so the great majority are held, not traded, and a signed and dated example, or one of the flaming-boshi sunobi pieces, comes to market only rarely.

Enju Kunisuke worked at Kumafu in Kikuchi District of Higo Province, a leading hand of the Enju school across the close of the Kamakura period and into the Nanbokucho. By tradition he was a son of the founder Taro Kunimura, who is recorded as a grandson through a daughter of Rai Kuniyuki of Yamashiro, so that Kunisuke stands as the second generation of a lineage that carried the Rai Yamashiro idiom south to the provinces. His activity is fixed by a tanto dated Karyaku 2 (1327), one of the rare dated pieces of a school in which year-marked work is scarce. The published sources read the school as one broad manner with little individual variation, and within that uniformity they return repeatedly to a single judgment about Kunisuke: surveying the surviving works, the NBTHK writes, one perceives that he was "a smith of considerable skill even within the lineage"[[c:1]], ranked with Kunitoki and Kuniyasu among its strongest smiths. The name is recorded as continuing two or three generations into Muromachi, the technique declining as it descends, and the NBTHK treats the line under one head.

What distinguishes Kunisuke within an otherwise even school is the abundance of activity in his ha. Where the school's temper is a quiet chu- or hoso-suguha with calmer internal work, his is the busiest hand of the line: a suguha base that frequently takes ko-gunome and somewhat angular gunome, with abundant nie, vigorous sunagashi, kinsuji and nie-suji, the nioiguchi at times sinking and at times brightening. The published sources mark the difference as a matter of degree rather than kind. Of one o-suriage mumei katana the NBTHK observes that its sunagashi runs "more violently than usual"[[c:2]], its gunome pointed, and judges the result uncommon within the school. Above this busy temper sits the feature the judges name as his alone: on his wide, sunobi wakizashi and tanto, the boshi is hardened deep and breaks into a violent flame, rising and pointing back, the omote taking a kaen form. Of the Tokubetsu Juyo wakizashi the published record states plainly that this deeply tempered, fierce flaming boshi is "without parallel even among this smith's own work and within the Enju school"[[c:3]].

The forging is a packed itame or ko-itame that flows toward masame, mixed at times with mokume, and on his wider pieces the grain stands a little, the hada-dachi tendency answering the liveliness of the ha. Across the ji lie dust-fine ji-nie, applied thickly, and fine chikei that enter well, over which the school's pale shirake-utsuri rises. The boshi of his quieter blades closes sugu into a komaru or a large-radius o-maru with a shallow turnback, often with hakikake at the tip. Against the parent Rai school the published sources fix the differences precisely: the masame-lean and the whitish steel, the nioiguchi tending toward shizumi, the calmer internal activity, and the larger, shallower-returning boshi. These are the named recognition points of Enju, and Kunisuke shows them all, the standing ji a degree more than his profiled siblings.

His surviving work falls into two registers. The first is the active manner of the Nanbokucho phase: wide, sunobi wakizashi and tanto, read as Nanbokucho from their broad bodies and stretched length, carrying the busy ha and the flaming boshi described above. The second is a quieter register of slender ubu tachi with deep koshizori and small kissaki, and o-suriage mumei katana whose deep arc-like wazori preserves a Kyoto air. Of one such mumei katana, finely packed in ko-itame with bright chu-suguha, the NBTHK writes that its workmanship "closely recalls Kyo-mono"[[c:4]], so that the attribution to the technically accomplished Kunisuke is fully persuasive. On certain of his tachi the judges note an unusual thing for the line: the temper construction is the one usually seen on the school's tanto. His signature is itself a kantei point. Among all Enju smiths he cuts the boldest two-character mei, set close and "with the thickest chisel within the school"[[c:5]]; and where most of the line cuts the right element inside the kuni enclosure in an ear-shaped manner, in Kunisuke that tendency is not conspicuous.

Kunisuke is read within the school less by a different kind of work than by degree, and the published sources place him by his proximity to Rai. The shu-mei tanto states the point the whole school turns on: that the work "at a glance can resemble Rai Kunimitsu and the like"[[c:6]], which the judges take as corroboration of the tradition that the founder Kunimura was a pupil of Rai Kunitoshi. His own preservation of that Kyoto air on the slender tachi and the wazori katana closes the lineage from the Rai side, while the busy ha and the unique flaming boshi mark the distance the school had travelled by his generation. A few of his blades carry the school's documentary curiosities: a naginata-naoshi signed on the haura, rare for the line, and another whose cut-off signed tang-tip was reset as a gakumei when the blade was shortened. Among the Enju hands the judges set him with Kunitoki and Kuniyasu at the head of the line, the standing ji, the busiest ha and the flaming boshi of his wide pieces marking him out within a school that otherwise reads as one manner.

Fujishiro grades Kunisuke Jo-jo saku. Seventeen of his blades stand in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, one as a Juyo Bijutsuhin, and the survival of ubu, signed examples is itself prized in the published descriptions, the more so where the dated tanto anchors his chronology. The provenance against his name is unusually grand for a provincial smith: blades passing through Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and held in the Hosokawa, Date, Uesugi and Tokugawa houses. The Tayasu Tokugawa tachi carries a history written out by Count Tokugawa Satotaka in 1919: Hideyoshi bestowed it on Takenaka Uneme, it passed to Ieyasu, then to the Mito Tokugawa as an heirloom of Yorifusa, and finally to the Tayasu branch under Munetake. Of his designated works of recorded whereabouts, examples are held by the Sano Art Museum, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum, the Tokugawa Art Museum and Oyamazumi Jinja. For a private collector a Kunisuke is among the more attainable of the Higo Kamakura names, since most survive in the tradeable Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers; even so the great majority are held, not traded, and a signed and dated example, or one of the flaming-boshi sunobi pieces, comes to market only rarely.