The and Gojo schools represent the dawn of signed Japanese swordmaking and the foundation of the Yamashiro tradition. The school takes its name from the residence of its founder, Munechika (三条宗近), on (Third Avenue) in the capital toward the end of the tenth century. Munechika is the legendary maker of the Mikazuki Munechika (三日月宗近) — counted among the Tenka-Goken, the "Five Great Swords under Heaven," and designated a National Treasure — whose serene, slender form and crescent-shaped embody the courtly elegance of the late period. The earliest masters traditionally gathered around Munechika include Yoshiie (吉家), Arikuni (有国 / 在国), and Kanenaga, with the school's transmissions consistently framed by the as 伝 — matters of long-standing tradition rather than documented fact, as befits smiths working a millennium ago.
The Gojo school (五条), named for Fifth Avenue, is its inseparable sister lineage, led by Gojo Kanenaga (五条兼永) and Gojo Kuninaga (五条国永). Kuninaga is the maker of the Tsurumaru Kuninaga (鶴丸国永), a National Treasure preserved in the Imperial Household collection and one of the most celebrated in Japan. Tradition variously holds Kanenaga to be a son, pupil, or member of Munechika's school, and makes both Kanenaga and Kuninaga the sons or grandsons of the senior smith Arikuni (在国) — so that the Gojo line reads as a branch of, or close to, the line rather than an independent tradition. The two schools share a single workmanship: a narrow, deeply curved tapering to a small ; a fine ground thick with and faint ; and a quiet or worked in with delicate and . Their work precedes and shapes the later and schools, and for that reason the catalogue presents them together, under one banner, as "Gojo/."