Yamaura Kiyomaro was born Naizosuke Tamaki in Bunka 10 (1813) at Akaiwa village in Komoro, Shinshu, the second son of the rural warrior Nobukaze and the younger brother of the smith Saneo. He learned forging under Kawamura Toshitaka, a swordsmith of the Ueda domain, signing first Masayuki and for a brief interval Hidetoshi, the name his teacher gave him, before returning to Masayuki within the year. Under the patronage of the bakufu retainer and military scholar Kubota Kiyone he went up to Edo, forged for a year at Hagi in Choshu from the eighth month of Tenpo 13, returned to Edo in Koka 2, and in the autumn of Koka 3 settled at Iga-cho in Yotsuya and changed his signature to Kiyomaro. He so excelled in the Soshu tradition that the published sources record he was called the Yotsuya Masamune (四谷正宗), and they place his reputation today as high as that of Kotetsu, calling him without question the foremost master among the shinshinto. He died by his own hand at forty-two in Kaei 7 (1854).
What he aimed at, in the words of the published commentary, was the upper level of the Soshu transmission (相伝上位), and among shinshinto smiths his construction and manner reveal Soshu-den with particular clarity. The temper is a gunome-midare mixed with ko-notare, the ashi entering, the nie thick and gathering coarse in clusters of ara-nie, the whole work, as the NBTHK puts it, filled with a vigorous and commanding spirit[[c:1]]. Long kinsuji and streaming sunagashi run through most of his blades, in both the Masayuki and the Kiyomaro periods, the activity of a ha built on nie; the published sources single out this play of kinsuji and sunagashi in his strong steel as splendid. The boshi is midare-komi, turning pointed with hakikake, at times thrusting up to a point or settling into a small round.
He forges an itame that flows and stands a little, well packed and at times mixed with large open grain, the ji-nie laid thick and in fine particles, the chikei entering frequently and the steel clear. Where the forging tightens into ko-itame the jigane only grows clearer. His mature katana carry an imposing shape, the body wide, the sori toward the point, the chu-kissaki extended or running to a large point with the fukura withered for a sharp impression.
The record now reads in two periods and a favoured register. The early Masayuki work is substantial: some twenty-six blades of the period, signed Masayuki, Minamoto Masayuki, Yamaura Masayuki, Yamaura Tamaki Masayuki and the bare single character Tamaki, dated from Tenpo 4 to Koka 3, among them the Hagi pieces inscribed 於萩城 and 於長門国 and the Komoro pieces inscribed 於信小諸城. The earliest, a Tenpo 4 wakizashi bearing Kubota Kiyone's name, shows that the two men were already in contact during his Matsushiro years; the published sources note that its sunagashi and kinsuji are less abundant than in later work, though the nioiguchi is already bright. These blades carry a closely packed itame that often tends to masame, with a gunome mixed with choji and pointed elements, deep nioi and attaching ko-nie. The mature Kiyomaro manner is the Soshu prime described above. Within it lies the register he prized most: the published sources say that 「志津伝は得意中の得意」, the Shizu transmission his forte of fortes, and they already read it in the early hand, calling a small Tenpo 11 katana a masterpiece of the Shizu manner. That register gathers in the shobu-zukuri and kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri wakizashi he favoured and in the tanto, where a ko-notare base mixed with gunome and choji, with ara-nie in clusters, tempers into a flamboyant midare.
What sets him apart from his shinshinto contemporaries is this Soshu reach. He looked past the Bizen and Kotetsu copying of his day to the Soshu masters, taking Shizu Saburo Kaneuji as his model. His own steel and edge, thick in ji-nie and chikei, vigorous in ara-nie, rich in kinsuji and sunagashi, are what the judges praise: they call one blade the very best among works by the same hand[[c:2]], and say of others that his true ability is there fully revealed[[c:3]]. His Sai-jo saku rating in Fujishiro and the line named for him carry the Soshu-revival manner forward through his pupil Kiyondo and the wider Kiyomaro-den.
Fujishiro grades him Sai-jo saku, and the Toko Taikan places him high among shinshinto names. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his record runs through the modern designation tiers, one blade at Tokubetsu Juyo and sixty-eight at Juyo, with four blades also recognised before the war as Juyo Bijutsuhin, seventy-three designated works on record, every one of them signed. The published sources estimate his extant work at something over one hundred blades, note that examples in ordinary shinogi-zukuri of standard dimensions are comparatively few, and call a matched daisho dated Kaei 1 without parallel. The recorded blades pass through documented hands: the Iwasaki family and the Seikado Bunko, a retainer of the Matsushiro domain who ordered a daisho, his patron Kubota Kiyone, Makino Suo-no-kami Yasushige, and the Bakumatsu swordsman Chujo Kinnosuke, whose favoured sword one Juyo katana is said to have been. Most are held rather than traded, so a Tokubetsu Juyo or Juyo Kiyomaro reaches the market only from time to time and at the very top of it, and a signed example in private hands is among the more notable things a collector of shinshinto could encounter.
