Kageyori's one dated work on record is a tachi at the Tōshōgū in Wakayama, signed Sakon-Shōgen Kageyori and dated the first month of Shōō 2 (1289), now an Important Cultural Property. He is a Bizen smith of the Ko-Bizen group, and his name is one of the kantei problems of old Bizen. Examining the surviving signatures, the published sources hold that "it appears there were roughly three smiths using the name Kageyori in Bizen Province"[[c:1]]. The oldest is the hand of "a boldly cut, large two-character signature"[[c:2]]. The latest prefixes Bizen no Kuni Osafune and belongs to the close of the Kamakura period, and works of the Kōan and Einin years in a somewhat older manner lie between. A further strand carries the title Sakon-Shōgen with an Einin date, and of it the published sources write that its lineage "is not clearly established"[[c:3]]. Each blade is therefore placed by its own ji and ha before it is assigned to a line.
His fully described record is two signed Jūyō tachi, both slender with a small kissaki. The shortened Tokyo tachi keeps a high koshizori in spite of the suriage, while the ubu Hyōgo tachi has a somewhat shallow sori. The temper of both is a suguha-toned line worked from within. On the shortened blade it is a suguha-chō mixed with small gunome, with chōji-ashi entering. Ko-nie adhere, the nioiguchi tends toward tightness, and the bōshi sweeps out in a kake-dashi. On the ubu blade it is a chū-suguha-toned line of ko-chōji mixed with ko-midare, small ashi entering. There the nie adhere well, sunagashi and kinsuji appear, and the bōshi runs straight into a ko-maru. Both carry a bō-hi on each side.
The jigane divides along the same two blades. On the Tokyo tachi a ko-itame is closely forged and a midare-utsuri stands, and the published sources read the whole, the packed ko-itame with its utsuri and the tight suguha-chō of small gunome and small chōji, as "one stylistic mode seen in late-Kamakura Bizen"[[c:4]]. On the Hyōgo tachi the itame inclines to stand, with ji-nie adhering. From its slender form and the well developed nie of ji and ha, the published sources judge it "a Kamakura-period work in the Ko-Bizen lineage"[[c:5]]. Its tang is signed on the omote with a large two-character mei, the form that the same explanation names as the oldest of the name.
The three Important Cultural Property tachi are known in the published record by their plates, which give the forging and the hamon in a word. The Sakon-Shōgen tachi of Shōō 2 is a ko-itame with chōji mixed with gunome. The tachi signed Kageyori tsukuru at Inaba Shrine in Gifu is an itame with a suguha. The tachi signed Kageyori at the Tokyo National Museum, 80.0 cm long, is a ko-itame with a ko-midare mixed with gunome. Taken with the two Jūyō blades, the five run from a plain suguha through a suguha-toned small midare to a chōji mixed with gunome, always on a ko-itame or itame, and only the Tōshōgū blade carries a date.
Kageyori belongs to the Ko-Bizen group, the collective name for the Bizen smiths of the late Heian into the Kamakura period. No fixed descent is transmitted for him, and his attributions rest on era and on the old-Bizen character of his ji and ha. What marks his described hand is restraint: the chōji appears as ashi and small clusters inside a suguha-toned line, and on the Tokyo Jūyō blade the utsuri stands in a tight ko-itame.
Five designated works stand on record, all of them signed tachi: three Important Cultural Properties and two Jūyō Tōken. The Important Cultural Properties rest at the Tokyo National Museum, the Tōshōgū in Wakayama and Inaba Shrine in Gifu, patrimony held by a national museum and two shrines rather than blades that pass between collectors. One of his blades carries a recorded provenance from the Arima family. Only the two Jūyō tachi stand in the tier that private collections may hold, so a signed Kageyori in private hands is among the rarer things a collector of early Bizen could encounter, and one comes to market, when it does, only with patience.
