There are many places in Japan that make kitchen knives. There is only one that has been doing it for six hundred years, and it makes most of the ones the country's professional chefs actually use. That city is Sakai, and if you've ever thought about buying a Japanese kitchen knife, this is where the tradition sits.
This is a small guide to what a Sakai knife actually is — where the town's blade-making came from, how the knives are made, the four shapes worth knowing about, the steel decision that trips most first-time buyers up, and the maker we carry at Karintō Edition. Nothing here needs a degree in metallurgy. Most of what matters fits in a short article.
Where Sakai is, and why kitchen knives came from there
Sakai sits at the southern edge of Osaka Bay, part of the greater Osaka metropolitan area but with a history that runs older and quieter than the city next door. Its blade-making dates back to the fifth century, when the massive kofun (古墳) tomb mounds of the Kansai plain — the largest ancient burial sites in the world — were built with iron tools forged locally. The craft has continued in essentially unbroken form ever since.
Two turning points made Sakai the country's blade capital.
The first was the arrival of Portuguese firearms in 1543. When matchlock guns were introduced to Japan through the island of Tanegashima, the Sakai smiths were among the first to reproduce them. Working with the fine, uniform steel that firearm barrels required taught them a precision they hadn't had before, and gave them a market — for the next century, Sakai was one of the arms centres of a feudal Japan almost constantly at war.
When Portuguese tobacco arrived a few decades later, the same steelworkers turned to making tobacco-leaf slicing knives. The Tokugawa shogunate declared Sakai's tobacco knives an official state product, gave them a monopoly, and stamped them with a certification mark — the earliest documented "brand" in Japanese blade-making. Kitchen knives grew out of the same workshops in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the craft designation — Sakai-uchihamono (堺打刃物) — is still today recognised as a traditional Japanese craft by the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Today, Sakai makes roughly 90% of the professional-grade kitchen knives used in Japan. If you eat in a Japanese restaurant anywhere in the world, there's a fair chance the sashimi in front of you was cut with a Sakai blade.
What a Sakai knife actually is
The reason a Sakai knife is what it is comes down to how it's made — specifically, to a division of labour that Sakai has practised for four hundred years and that no other blade-making town in the world quite matches.
A single Sakai kitchen knife passes through the hands of three specialist workshops before it's finished. The forger (kaji, 鍛冶) heats and hammers the steel into a rough blade shape, welding a hard high-carbon steel edge to a softer iron backing in a construction called san-mai (三枚) or awase (合わせ) — layered so the cutting edge holds sharpness while the body of the blade stays flexible enough not to chip. The sharpener (togi, 研ぎ) grinds the profile, sets the bevel, and polishes the surface — a job that at the professional end can take hours per knife. The handle-maker (ezuke, 柄付け) fits the wooden handle and finishes the tang.
Modern stainless knives sometimes forgo the layering; you're paying for the tradition of technique that produced them.
Because each stage sits with a specialist family, the standard at each stage stays remarkably high. It also means the knife you buy — even a mid-tier one — has been touched by three different people who have each spent decades on a single part of the job. That kind of specialisation is what makes a Sakai knife feel different from a mass-produced European one, and it's what makes it worth choosing carefully rather than by price alone.
The shapes that cover most home kitchens
Japanese kitchen knives fall into more shapes than most Western cooks encounter — some are highly specialised (yanagiba for slicing sashimi, deba for filleting fish, hamokiri for conger eel). Most home kitchens are well served by just three or four.
The santoku (三徳, "three virtues") is the everyday workhorse — sized between five and seven inches, with a slightly curved edge suited to the general slicing, dicing, and mincing that fills most cooking time. It's the closest analogue to a Western chef's knife, and for many home cooks it's the only knife they'll reach for daily.
The nakiri (菜切り, "vegetable cutter") has a flat, rectangular blade for clean vertical cuts through vegetables — down through an onion, a cabbage, a block of firm tofu — without the rocking motion a santoku invites. Its geometry is specific, and for cooks who prepare a lot of vegetables, it's the more satisfying option.
The gyutō (牛刀, literally "cow sword" — historically the knife for butchering meat) is a fuller Japanese chef's knife — longer than a santoku, more curved, and shaped closer to a French chef's knife. If a cook already reaches for a Western chef's knife by instinct, the gyutō is the shape that will feel most immediately at home.
The petty (ペティ) is a small utility knife — three to six inches, useful for peeling, coring, and the small-work that a full-size knife makes awkward.
For a home cook building a first set, a santoku plus a petty is usually enough. Add a nakiri if there's a vegetable habit worth honouring, or a gyutō if the cook prefers the longer chef's-knife feel.
The steel: what actually matters
Steel choice is where knife-buying can get needlessly complicated. There are two useful things to know.
First, most Japanese knives use one of two families of steel: stainless (rust-resistant, easier to maintain — includes 440C, VG5, VG10, and various proprietary alloys) or carbon (higher performance, holds a keener edge for longer, but rusts if left wet — includes Shirogami "white steel" and Aogami "blue steel" in various grades). For most home cooks, stainless is the sensible starting point. Carbon is a rewarding second knife once the first is being cared for well.
Second, within stainless, the practical difference between grades comes down to two things: how long the edge stays sharp before it needs re-honing, and how forgiving the steel is to sharpen when it does. Higher-alloy steels (VG5, VG10) hold an edge longer but reward a slightly more practised whetstone technique. Simpler steels (440C) are easier to sharpen well without much practice.
That's most of what a first-time buyer needs. The rest — hamon lines, kasumi vs mirror finish, hongasumi vs honyaki — is worth learning once the first knife is well into daily use, not before.
The Sakai Kikumori we carry
We carry three Sakai Kikumori knives — a small, focused selection from a much larger catalogue.
Sakai Kikumori (堺菊守 — "Sakai chrysanthemum in bloom") is a knife brand of Kawamura Cutlery Co., Ltd., a family-run workshop founded in Sakai in 1926. Nearly a hundred years of blade-making. In 2014, the Sakai Chamber of Commerce awarded them the Sakai Gishu (堺技衆) master-craftsman certification — one of the more considered marks of recognition in the trade. Their range covers everything from accessible everyday knives to top-tier professional pieces used in kaiseki kitchens; the ones we carry sit toward the accessible end, designed for a home cook who wants a serious knife without the ceremony.
The Sakai Kikumori 440C santoku, 165mm — the workhorse. Forgiving on the whetstone, versatile in the hand, and a strong first Japanese knife.
The Sakai Kikumori VG5 santoku, 175mm — the slightly larger, longer-edge-retention alternative for a cook who's ready to look after a mid-tier knife properly.
The Sakai Kikumori 440C nakiri, 165mm — the vegetable specialist. The more distinctive of the three, and the shape most likely to feel novel to a Western cook.
→ Shop the kitchen knives collection
If you're considering one as a gift, our Father's Day guide frames the same knives in that context. For care basics — hand-washing, whetstone sharpening, and how to store a Japanese knife well — see our companion piece: How to Care for Your Japanese Kitchen Knife.
