The city that sharpened Japan

Sakai sits on Osaka Bay, and it has been working metal for a very long time — the tools that dug the great burial mounds nearby were forged here in the 5th century. Blades came later: swordsmiths settled in Sakai around the 14th century, and when Portuguese traders brought tobacco to Japan in the 1500s, Sakai's smiths made the small, wickedly sharp knives used to chop it. The Tokugawa shogunate liked them so much it stamped Sakai blades with its own seal of quality and gave the city an effective monopoly.

When the sword era ended, the skill didn't go anywhere. It went into kitchen knives. Today the overwhelming majority of Japan's professional chefs cook with blades made in Sakai.

One knife, several masters

A Sakai knife is not made by one person. Forging, sharpening, and handle-fitting are separate trades, each with its own masters, and a blade passes from workshop to workshop on its way to being finished. The final hand-sharpening — honbazuke — is what gives these knives the edge they're famous for. It's a slower way to make a knife. It's also why they cut the way they do.

Aoki Hamono

The Sakai Takayuki name belongs to Aoki Hamono, a family workshop established in Sakai in 1950. They make everything from the stainless INOX and Grand Chef lines that work in restaurant kitchens every day, to 33-, 45-, and 63-layer Damascus blades, to traditional carbon steel in Aogami (blue paper steel) that sharpens like nothing else. Their knives are in chefs' hands in more than a hundred countries. Ours come straight from Sakai.