Knife Blog

My pleasure to introduce myself. I am the 4th generation of a knife wholesaler that started in 1917 in Sakai City. Through this blog, I would like to tell you how fascinating Sakai knives or Japanese knives are.
 
Sakai City is one of the 3 cities famous for knives in Japan and Sakai is famous for single-edged “Japanese knife”.
 
It is said that Sakai knives have the 600-year history. This history dates to 16th century. When tobacco was introduced from Portugal in the end of 16th century, knives that can cut leaves of tobacco became necessary. Then, tobacco knives were made in Sakai City. Since the sharpness of them was great, the Edo feudal government gave a hallmark, “Sakai-Kiwame” and knives made in Sakai City were sold all over Japan. As a result, the sharpness of Sakai knives was known all over Japan.
 
Let’s go back to the topic of a single-edged Japanese knife. The features of a single-edged Japanese knife are that it is single-edged and that it includes carbon steel.
 
A single-edged knife is sharp and ingredients don’t stick to it very much, so this kind of knife made it possible to cut quickly and to cut fish from the nearest part of its bones. Moreover, a cut surface is beautiful and it is easier to control a blade than a double-edged knife.
 
Carbon steel is hard, so Sakai knife are sharp and keep sharp for long time. And the other feature of a single-edged Japanese knife is that it is easy to sharpen. On the other hand, carbon steel is weak in water and it gets rusted easily. Steel has more details, so I will write about it in another blog.
 
Due to these features, it is said that more than 90% of Japanese professional chefs use Sakai knives.