Among the workshops of the northern provinces, the Kanewaka line of (Kashū) traces its root to . The record that the first-generation smith was a son of Shihōsuke Kanewaka of Seki and that, though he stood in the lineage of the Seki smiths, he forged his blades in . He styled himself Tsujimura Jinroku, and later Shirōemon-no-jō; his earliest dated work begins in the Keichō era (a Kashū-uchi blade of the second month of Keichō 12, 1607, with further examples from Keichō 14), and around Genna 5 (1619) he received the court title no Kami and changed his name to Takahira, thereafter signing " no Kami Fujiwara Takahira." The second generation, Matasuke, was the third son of the first, born in Keichō 17 (1612), active from Kan'ei through Enpō, and dead in Enpō 5 (1677) at sixty-six. The third, his legitimate heir, took the name Shirōemon and worked from through Shōtoku, with dated pieces from Enpō 5 to Hōei 4 (1677 to 1707); a fourth, the Tsujiura Shirōemon of the same name, assisted his father as a substitute smith and inherited the name after Matasuke's death. The cutting-test signed Tsujimura no Kami Fujiwara Takahira ties the workshop to the Maeda domain's swords, its blade tested five times and the result inlaid in .
The shared hand is grounded in forging carried north. The across these blades is mixed with and , often with standing grain (), abundant , fine , and a steel of slightly blackish yet clear tone, a cast the call a trait of the northern provinces (Hokukoku-mono). The temper is built on mixed with and pointed , frequently assuming a boxed (-ba) character, with deep , well-adhering , conspicuous , , and at times ; the runs with or enters , often with and a -leaning point, a Yamato-tradition close noted on the -forged third-generation work. To read the hand, the point to and Naoe affinity, the -based mixture of and , and the box-shaped temper. Generations are told apart by that box: in the first generation it tends toward , flavorful and not sharply drawn, and a defined -ba is comparatively uncommon; from the second and third it grows more crisply outlined. The third generation also worked (reverse ), and in such pieces the fourth produced effects that could be taken for the Ishidō school.
The points the fix upon are the standing, blackish - ground, the boxed with and , and the -derived leaning. Signatures cluster on the six characters "Kashū-jū Kanewaka ," with the five-character "Kashū-jū Kanewaka" and the two-character "Kanewaka" also seen, and the first generation's post-title pieces cut " no Kami Fujiwara Takahira." Named works carry the lineage: a Genna 5 , whose date proves the title came later; the Kashū Fujiwara Yukimitsu dated Bunmei 17 (1485) marks the older Kashū ground from which such northern work descends; and a with in ashide shows the dress that accompanied the line. One blade, recorded in Honma's inventory of the Imperial collection, is attributed to the fourth-generation Tsujiura Shirōemon, and record provenance in and Ishikawa hands. Across the generations the verdict is consistent: each smith was skilled in his own right, the forging at times exceeding ordinary Kashū work, and the dated inscriptions stand as documentary anchors for early .