names the closing chapter of the tradition, the work made after the smiths reached the height of their powers in the era and then carried the lineage forward into decline. The window is anchored by the hands the repeatedly groups together as the representative smiths of the period: Tsuguyoshi (次吉), Tsugunao or Tsuginao (次直), and Moritsugu (守次), with Naotsugu (直次), Yoshitsugu (吉次), and a Sadatsugu (貞次) name carried down from the late masters into this later age. Dated blades fix the chronology firmly, from a Moritsugu of Enbun 3 (1358) and a Naotsugu in the Ryakuō years through Tsuguyoshi pieces of Teiji 2 (1363) and Kōan 2 (1362). These men succeeded the late--into-early- generation that produced Sadatsugu and the earlier Moritsugu, and they worked at the moment the Southern Court's fortunes were turning, after which the school thinned out. The very tail of the line surfaces in obscure later hands such as Munesada and Sōtei of Kasaoka, dated Bunmei 13 (1481), whose lineage the records leave unknown and whose work the describe as nearly indistinguishable from late .
is the first tell. after records a wide with little taper from base to tip, thin , proportion in the and an extended or outright in the larger blades, the broad build that the earlier never carried. The keeps the school signature of mixed with , finely standing, with mottled and patches of drifting through the steel. Above all the period is read in its : streak-like suji- rises near the edge and stacks into the layered the catalogues prize, seen plainly on the Tsugiyoshi of Tokuju 21 and the dated Tsuguyoshi of 58. Two tempers divide the leading hands. Tsuguyoshi favors a tight, bright with and ; Tsugunao favors the flamboyant with its reverse slant, and pouring in, that matured around Enbun. Against this the of the mid- ran with a subdued, over a refined , while the late- Chū- of Sadatsugu and Moritsugu stood between, the growing calmer and the reverse-slanting only beginning to foreshadow the later drama. Crucially the period remained where other provinces took up , a holding distinction the mark out by name.
For the cluster reads together. A broad , over , file marks on the tang, and a that is tight and clear point to this window rather than to of the same age; the choice between bright and reverse then separates Tsuguyoshi from Tsugunao, while Naotsugu's forceful reverse-chisel and , and Moritsugu's in a tight , mark their own hands. The named masters carry strong provenance: a Tsugiyoshi dated Enbun 2 descended in the Maeda family, a Yoshitsugu passed to the Sakai of Himeji by gift of Tokugawa Ietsuna, and an Tsuguyoshi ran through the Yanagisawa house with from Mitsuatsu. Honma's own remark singling out Tsugiyoshi and Tsuginao as the makers of the clearest in fixes their standing at the close of the story.