The Kagenaga smiths worked in Inaba Province (因州, Inshū), and the place their beginnings at the close of the period, carrying the name forward in successive generations into the era. The notices record a first generation set in the Kagen era (1303 to 1306) and a second in the Kenmu era (1334 to 1338), with the signature continuing down to the Ōei era (1394 to 1428), from which the rare dated examples survive. The line's roots are consistently traced to the Yamashiro tradition: the founder is transmitted as a disciple of Yoshimasa (one naming him Yoshimasa's younger brother), with variant accounts citing Kuritaguchi Yoshimasa, Kunitoshi, or Fujishirō Yoshimitsu of the Kuritaguchi group. The smiths were widely called the Inaba kokaji, the "Inaba minor smith," a sobriquet the note attached from the period onward. A later Inaba branch is recorded in the body, the Shinano Daijō Fujiwara Tadakuni line, whose first generation studied under Dewa Daijō Kunimichi before moving to Inshū.
Across the blades the shared hand rests on . The Kagenaga work is of slender, build, alongside in , the an that flows toward the edge into and , with and a the repeatedly describe as somewhat soft and tending toward a whitish () cast, a trait treated as a point of recognition rather than a fault. The temper is most often a narrow or whose tends toward tightness, carrying , , , and frequent edge effects of , , uchi-noke, and . The runs , turning in or , regularly showing and a pointed tendency. Several notices record , including , one observer remarking that the recalls unrui. Entering the period the temper widens into and , one hardening a that the read as drawn from Kagemitsu, while another is judged at a glance to suggest Yamato .
For the points are the base, the soft whitish , the -laden , and the tight with its small activity, set against extant dated works being exceedingly few. The signature itself is a recognition point: a large five-character "Inshū-jū Kagenaga" , sometimes cut at the center of the tang rather than near the as on most , and appearing in rare variant forms reading Sen-niura jū and Senni-hara jū, one such recorded in the Kōzan . Named works span , , , and an exceptionally rare ōmi-, with dated and of Ōei 9 (1402) carrying particular documentary weight for the manner. Among the provenance the notices give the Jūyō-Bijutsuhin held by Tokugawa Iesato and a and Tadakuni in the Imperial Household Agency, with a further Kagenaga preserved at Yasukuni Shrine. The body of work establishes a provincial Yamashiro-rooted line whose later generations reached toward and Yamato manners while keeping the inherited straight temper.