The family
According to Ishikawa Prefecture, he was the fourth son of the first Kanewaka (兼若, Kanewaka), who worked in Kaga. The Japanese Sword Index, in Anthony Thomas’s study of the school, calls him Tsujimura Hachimanyama Kashū Kiyohira I, fourth son of Tsujimura Kanewaka I, with a style resembling his father’s.
From Kaga to Edo and Odawara
According to the prefecture, towards the end of the Keian era, around 1651, he moved to Edo, mixed with the city’s swordsmiths and created a style of his own, which made him famous, adding the new Edo style to the Kanewaka tradition. The katana of 1678 calls him a resident of Hachimanyama, in Odawara, Sagami province: 相州小田原八幡山住辻村五郎右衛門尉藤原清平 (Sōshū Odawara Hachimanyama jū Tsujimura Gorōemon-no-jō Fujiwara Kiyohira). The Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, in its 2006 exhibition “Meitō to yari”, presented him as the fourth son of the first Kanewaka, who worked in Edo and in Odawara.
His dates
The Japanese Sword Index has him active from around 1650, with dated work from 1652 to 1694, and dead in 1694. The Edo-Tokyo Museum keeps a wakizashi signed 賀州住藤原清平 (Kashū jū Fujiwara Kiyohira), “resident of Kaga”, dated 1660 (Manji 3), which it attributes to Hachimanyama Kiyohira. A “Kaga” signature nine years after leaving for Edo sits badly with the move: either he went on signing at times with his family’s province, or the signature calls for a review.
The generations
The Japanese Sword Index calls him Kiyohira I, the first. There is no information at all on a second Kiyohira in the sources consulted.