name of Japanese style knife

K

Ken H>

Joined
Dec 31, 2011
Messages
4,550
Hello all - I've looked for the last hour trying to find the Japanese name for a paring knife, and the petty knife. It seems there are neat Japanese names for many styles of knives, but everywhere I look a paring knife is called a "Japanese paring knife". Is there a neat sounding Japanese name for a paring knife?

OR, is that a knife the Japanese adopted from the west and stayed with the western name?
 
To my knowledge, there is no traditional japanese knife equivalent to a western paring knife. The closest you might come is a short Petty ... but the Petty is not a traditional knife, rather it is a Recent japanese marketing answer to the western “utility” knife.
 
Natlek said:
Why you don t search for example here and see which one is what you look for ?
https://www.japanny.com/
Click to expand...
I just looked thru all 7 pages of knives and not a single one is anything similar to the "paring knife" that I've seen listed on many other pages of Japanese style knives. The shortest blade I saw listed in that link was 210mm.

Cushing, you're right, all the Japanese style blades in the small chef are called "petty chef" and all the paring size knives are just called "paring knife". I suspect you're right, both of those styles are not Japanese, but brought over from Western style knives to fill a niche. I posted thread looking for guidance from ya'll folks who know LOTS more than I do about Japanese knives.

Ken H>
 
Last edited:
Natlek said:
I found this on that site as paring knife ................
https://www.japanny.com/collections/by-knife-type-paring-peeling
Click to expand...
You are correct, now I realize for some reason when I clicked on the link you posted in first post it took me to a page of long knives, with 7 page links at bottom of page. I didn't even look at the "knife types" link at top of page. As you can see, all those knives are referred to as "paring knives" with no Japanese name associated with the knife.

to all: Thanks for all the help, I think ya'll have confirmed my original thinking, no Japanese name for a Japanese style paring knife.
 
Who knows ... maybe this is a recent addition by the japanese makers. The gyotu was Recently created as a reaction to the western chefs knife. The petty as a reaction to the utility knife. MaBye they are doing the same thing now with the paring ... just not giving it a fancy japanese name?
 
When I visited a person who grew up in Japan, they were using a Santoku style blade to split bananas. It was a really long time ago, so I can't be certain on that.
 
I think some paring knives are advertised as フルーツナイフ (furutsu naifu - fruits knife) in Japan. I tried google searches for
  1. フルーツナイフ (furutsu naifu) 8.5M hits
  2. ペアリングナイフ (pearingu naifu) 5.8M hits
  3. パーリングナイフ (paringu naifu) 1.8M hits
Fruits knife seems to be the most common term based on that. If you search for フルーツナイフ on amazon.co.jp, knives labeled with the other two terms as well as knives labeled ペティナイフ (petty knife) show up. I don't know if there is a neat sounding Japanese name for them, but I suspect there is not.
 
Hubert: Thanks for those links, They're very informative. It does sound like "furutsu naifu" (fruit knife) is about the closest thing to a Japanese name for a paring knife, and they look more western than Japanese. Searching on the amazon.co.jp site is interesting looking at the knives.
 
Thank you Stacy - that's a really good link. It looks like the "petti naifu" would be a good example of a "Japanese paring knife" with the length range of 90mm to 150mm which is a good range of lengths for a paring knife or petty chef.

This has been a good thread for me, and I thank ALL of ya'll for comments and links.

Ken H>
 
Last edited:
Ken - if you are interested, there is a book on this subject (and more) that I very much enjoyed reading. It is “Sharp”, by Josh Donald
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top