The last great chapter of unfolds in the Eisho and Tenbun years of the late , when the riverside workshop turned its accumulated craft toward an age of constant war. Where Oei- had looked backward, reviving the shape and the temper of the masters under Yasumitsu and Morimitsu, faces forward into Sengoku demand. The leading hands carry the family characters one generation further: the Sukesada group, headed by Yosazaemon-no-jo Sukesada and the Hikobee-jo Sukesada said to be his father, alongside Katsumitsu (often Jirozaemon-no-jo), Munemitsu, Tadamitsu of the Heiroemon-jo line, and the Kiyomitsu smiths Magoemon-no-jo and Gorozaemon-no-jo. The draw a sharp line through their output. Commissioned blades, chumon-uchi, were signed with full zokumyo, dated, and frequently inscribed with the name of the ordering party, as on the Katsumitsu and Sadamitsu of Meio 8 made for the Miyake of Kojima, a house that fed into the Ukita. Below them ran the bulk trade of kazu-uchimono, the arms that supplied the warring provinces, and it is the chumon-uchi masters that the designations preserve.
What the steel does in this window is distinct from every earlier register. The shape is the : wide with thick , pronounced , an extended or , and a short suited to the katate-uchi one-handed draw, a body unlike the of Ko- or the broad profile of Soden-. The forging tightens into over which a stands faintly rather than vividly, weaker than the bright reflection of the founding generation. The signature temper is the open-waisted , splitting at the heads into compound and mixed with and ; it is -based with and a bright , with , , and small worked through. Against this, Soden- had pushed and , while the founders had tempered flamboyant over a vivid . Two specialties branch off the base: the Kiyomitsu and Tadamitsu , calm and tightly forged, and the of high-tempered pieces with long and , seen in the warlord-smiths Akamatsu Masanori and Ishikawa Yukihisa.
To a blade is to read the body first and the temper second. The compact with thick and a short tang fixes the late- date; the faint over dense keeps it in ; the open-waisted compound names the group. The masters then separate by hand: Katsumitsu is set apart by the abundant he folds into the , yielding a more florid, brilliant than his peers; Tadamitsu and the Kiyomitsu smiths are read out by their , with Magoemon-no-jo's standing in to distinguish his ground. The cutting reputation is documented directly, as on the Hikobee-jo Sukesada of Keicho 5 carrying a tameshi inscription naming the tester Ichihara Hachibee. Provenance threads through the supplementary signatures: Masanori's reward blades cut for his retainers, the Miyake names tying the workshop to the Ukita, and the Shinjuro Sukesada whose few large works may have ended in the Tensho flood. The carried from the mainline, with , Fudo Myoo, and shrine dedications, persist on these blades as a final mark of the line.