Japanese kitchen knives? What differentiates them and their price?

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Sid Post

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Oct 14, 1998
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I have looked on the web for Japanese production knives specifically. I'm not looking at Seki City models sold by companies like Spyderco but, the functional equivelent (I beleive) to Henckels and Wustoff.

The only ones I have personally held in my hand are the Globals which seem like very good knives but, their appeal appears to be strongly based on styling, not necessarily building a superior knife. This is not meant to imply it isn't a great knife ;) .

A couple of sites I found are http://www.bladegallery.com/knives/maker.asp?code=89&display=+Kansui Ink Pattern Kitchen Knives and Japanese Knife .

I have also looked at Mac which are more traditional patterned "Western" style knives. Their 42.5 edge bevel and RC63 edges I'm sure make a very good, even if specialized, kitchen knife. Their prices seem very reasonable as well.

What I don't really understand from the very limited information I have found, is what makes one knife a ~$1,000 and another in an apparently similar style and slightly less upscale final finishing a ~$100. Is this a function of their lack of any real presence in stores and the internet for us "Yank's" causing some price gouging in the USA/North America?

I stumbled onto the Kanui Ink Patterns knives which based on the pictures look very attractive. Hattori makes a nice looking kitchen knife line but, to be honest the only website I found them at was the Fallkniven site.

Is this just such a speacialized knife market that normal market forces aren't at work?

Finally, is there an English web forum that talks about Japanese kitchen knives in a manner similar to this forum? Are there any recommended web site retailers that you have used with good results?
 
Lee Valley sells Japanese kitchen knives of various prices. Essentially you are looking at the difference between production, hand made, and name-brand hand made. As for the difference in performance, this is the same as with custom knives in general. You can buy a forged bowie for $300-400 or for $3000-4000. How does the performance compare there?

I have the cheapest Lee Valley Japanese kitchen knife. The edge geometry is significantly beyond the traditional western cutlery. For example, compared to a Henckels, the Japanese blade was significantly more efficient (less force), even after I reprofiled the Henckles on a belt sander. NIB, it would have been night and day.

The Japanese blades also tend to come with much sharper edges NIB, for what that is worth.

-Cliff
 
I use Japanese knives in the kitchen almost exclusively.

since my wife returned from living in Japan for four years, almost all of our kitchen knives are get-them-in-the-supermarket-kind-of-knives she got whle she lived there.

These go for as cheap as 2000 yens - which is about 20$ and are great kitchen knives.

As the originals simply keep on working, I got a few more that are still NIB and have not been used some 10 years after....

The other brand I use in the kitchen and is in its own league is Sabatier from France.
 
Sid,

I've also been interested in Japanese kitchen knives. There seem to be more permutations in the forging technique than one might expect. This site has a lot of Japanese knives by several manufacturers. Many produce several lines with different prices. Maybe part of the answer to your questions can be found here.

http://www.japanese-knife.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv

EDIT:

Also, here's a site that distinguishes between "household" knives and "professional" knives. Many of the "household" ones aren't terribly expensive.

http://www.japanesetools.com/japanesecutlery.com/cutlery/householdcutlery.html

It's my impression that many, but not all Japanese knives will have an edge that is considerably harder than the stainless knives like those put out by Henkels or Wustoff. I don't know if jobs like chopping whole chickens into pieces are even traditionally performed in a Japanese kitchen. But I think you'd want to be very careful not to use a thin, hard vegetable or sushi knife for a job it wasn't intended for.

I don't think that there is systemic price gouging. It looks to me like there is a huge variety of traditional, Western, and hybrid kitchen knives manufactured at every level. The Japanese market seems able to support a much larger number of very high-end offerings. What we see imported just depends on what small part of the offerings the importer has selected. Maybe someone who is familar with the confusingly large number of variations can help us out.
 
Ahh... Japanese kitchen knives, a topic close to my heart.

Sid, you asked about variations in pricing. I'll echo Cliff's reply about the similar variations in custom knives. For the Japanese kitchen knives a few factors play a part in pricing:

1. Blade material
2. Amount of hand work
3. Fame or renown of the maker

2 & 3 have most impact. Many of the top-shelf brands are still completely hand forged and labour in Japan isn't cheap. Intermediate series involve less hand operations and machines take over some portion, this also reduces costs. The mass factory produced ones are the cheapest.

Materials can impact the cost in that some steels need a more experienced smith to forge and quench. Senior smiths cost more. In some cases, e.g. Hattori's top knives use Cowry X, which because of its hardness is completely hand made (apparently the normal machines won't do).

And of course who can forget reputation. Why does a Ron Lake cost so much? Similarly, names like Masamoto, Aritsugu (probably the oldest in the world, since 1560!), Kobayashi, Shigefusa are renowned and that comes with a price.

There isn't any price gouging for US or anyplace else. If you check the prices in Japan itself, it can vary from 3,000 yen to over 200,000 yen.

For you fans of Japanese cutlery, visit this link: http://www.kougei.or.jp/english/metal.html

Scroll down and click on the links for the areas of Echigo Yoita, Shinshu, Sakai, Echizen, Tosa, etc. Lots of nice pics and commentary in English.
 
For a vendor in USA, I echo the recommendation for japanese-knife.com. They carry some very fine makes. The parent company is Korin, based in NYC. Ask for their knife catalogue!

Many of the Japanese makers have a website (I've got linked to over 40) but too bad they are in Japanese, which I can't read.

Tip: buying from Japan is much cheaper! But again the vendor's sites are in Japanese. :(
 
After looking at some of may past posts I think that I am begining to sound like a broken record but I cannot believe my Murray Carter japanese style kitchen knives. Do a search with any of the engines. I don't believe he has a web site but sells his stuff through some of the internet retailers. Great knives, sharper than anything I have ever bought and seem to hold an edge forever.
 
I was of the understanding that "real" Japanese knives (i.e the really expensive ones designed for pros) had a softer edge than Western knives that required frequent honing and resharpening. I'm sure I read this somewhere.

Anyway, Murray Carter's little brochure/catalog is a good place to start to learn about Japanese kitchen knives. It also serves as an interesting comparison. A roughly finished kitchen knife that is still hand forge welded of two different steels will run about $15 per sun, a sun being a traditional Japanese blade length measurement that is slightly over an inch. For one of Murray's custom pieces that is finished more finely, the price can double or triple for the same length for a kitchen knife (some even go as high as $150/sun for damascus or $100/sun for special laminates).

FWIW, I use two Japanese style knives exclusively in my cooking. One is a Spyderco Santoku and the other is a Solo Santoku. Solo is titanium and my wife loves it, although I prefer the wider blade of the Spyderco, which is stainless. I have a tough time keeping the Spyderco really sharp, but I do like the wide blade a lot. The Santoku (Wabocho, something like that I think I've seen them referred to) is a good all around knife in the kitchen. A Yanagi-ba is a more specialized blade that is typically longer in length and is used primarily for the fine cute required for sushi. Also, most real Japanese kitchen knives are convex ground on one side only to give more control and finer slicing ability.
 
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