Miike in Chikugo gives its name to a school of smiths, and the published sources open on its founder: Denta Mitsuyo, a renowned master of the late period, whose representative work is the Odenta transmitted in the Maeda house. They are equally plain about how little of the founder's own hand remains. Of authentically signed work, "none exists today apart from the single Odenta", and the later blades signed Mitsuyo are judged the work of smiths who inherited the name. Mitsuyo, the record states, "was not a single individual": the same name was borne in succession from the period into the .
The published sources describe one school manner running through that succession, and they class it as "common to early Kyushu work". The mixes and flows conspicuously, standing somewhat, with adhering. The commentary dwells longest on the surface of that , calling it a texture "sticky and, in a sense, very soft to the eye". On one it inclines to a whitish cast, and on the signed a rises.
The temper is built on in . It runs as a slender on the and as a with mixed in on the broad . and enter, and in places , and appear. The school formula adds that the tends to settle into a subdued cast, though on one the record calls it bright and clear. The runs straight to a , or on one ends in a , with a slight .
What the published sources single out as the school's own is the groove. "Its preference for carving wide, comparatively shallow " is where "the individuality of the school can be discerned". The carry the run out on both faces, and the pairs it with a . An earlier commentary lists the same three marks, a flowing , a -based temper and a broad, shallow and skilful , and concludes that across the generations "the workmanship shows a traditional manner".
Because the name spans three centuries, the published sources order the work by manner and by attestation rather than by date. The two carry no original signature. One bears a gold-inlaid Mitsuyo that the commentary reads as an attestation "by such authorities as Kochu". The other bears a large gold-powder Miike Mitsuyo with a red note that a 1 of Koon once valued it at seven of gold. That blade, the text judges, does not reach back to the late , yet its , and carving show the school's traits, so that "the gold-powder attestation is appropriate" and the work belongs broadly to the end of the period. The signed is a wide, piece whose two characters are cut large with a thick chisel, one of the later blades signed Mitsuyo.
Five designated works stand on record: two Important Cultural Properties and three . The Important Cultural Properties are preserved in temple and shrine keeping. One is a signed Mitsuyo, held at Honmyoji in Kumamoto, forged in and tempered in . The other is the attributed to Miike Mitsuyo at Kunozan Toshogu, kept with a -period and inscribed "Myojun denji Sohaya no tsurugi utsusu nari", which the record renders as the Sohaya no Tsurugi handed down by Myojun, a copy. The three blades, two of them attested by the house, are the part of his record that may change hands, and with so few on record a Mitsuyo comes to market only rarely.