When the single character 左 passed from the founder's hand to those of his pupils and sons, the workshop of entered the chapter the sword books gather under the name Sue-. The names the line repeatedly: Yasuyoshi, Yukihiro, Yoshisada, Kunihiro, Hiroyuki, Hiroyasu, Sadayoshi, with Kōan and Sadakuni read among them, each said to have taken up the master's manner. The succession is also a dispersal. Yasuyoshi, called a son of O-, carried the style north from into Chōshū (Nagato), where his descendants and the smith Akikuni continued it; Hiroyasu, transmitted as a son of Yukihiro, is recorded as moving later to Aki. The dated work places this phase from the early years through Shōhei and Eiwa and on into the Ōei era of early , by which point the Chōshū Yasuyoshi name had clearly passed to a second-generation hand whose pieces the judges separate by signature and workmanship from those of the first.
The inherited idiom is the Sōshū-den manner the founder brought from , read now at a generational remove. The ground stays mixed with and , the grain standing (), carrying thick and frequent , over which the smiths temper a or base mixed with , , and pointed () elements, with and entering, deep , thick , and fine and drawn through. The thrusts up () to a pointed tip with and a long return, the one trait the hold to across the whole line. Against the founder, the register shifts. Where O- stands for bright, clear , the Sue- more often note a steel of darker, blackish cast and a tending toward (subdued). The pattern standardizes: signed work survives chiefly as , and the judges remark that a strongly distinct individuality is hard to isolate among them. A lean enters at the edges, the reading in Yasuyoshi a -dominant temper with near the that mingles a character, and noting faint in several Hiroyasu blades.
A collector reads Sue- against the apex through the two anchors the school is judged by, ground and point, but inverted in emphasis. Because brilliance no longer settles the matter, prominence becomes the working key: the house long appraised the most vigorously blades of the " ichirui" to Kunihiro, and the conspicuous- repeatedly fall to Hiroyasu, while the pointed, brushed with its long keeps the attribution within the line. The named masters anchor the phase, Kunihiro for the boldest large-pattern enlivened by and , Yasuyoshi for the -tinged Chōshū work, Sadakuni recorded as a son of Kunihiro whose few surviving approach the founder's hand, Kōan and Hiroyasu reaching across into Ōei. The provenance threads through the great houses the cite: the signed Yoshihiro from the Ikeda family, a Sadakuni held by the Mōri, Hiroyasu blades transmitted in the Kuroda, Takasu Matsudaira, and Hisamatsu houses, several carrying Kōchū and Kōon . For the student of Sōshū-den, Sue- is the manner held one step past its height, transmitted, divided across provinces, and carried into the age.