A smithy in Sanjo, and then stainless

Shimomura Kogyo puts its own history in one sentence: founded as a Sanjo blade smithy continuing from 1874, and incorporated in 1957. The blacksmith shop was in Tajima, in Sanjo, and the company is still in Sanjo now.

Incorporation is where it becomes a modern manufacturer. Stainless knife production started the same year, 1957, and five years later a set of kitchen tools with a rose pattern on the handle sold well enough across Japan to put the company on the national map. Ceramic blades followed in 1986. The company's stated motto since its founding is simply a willingness to try new things, which for a 150 year old smithy is a reasonable summary of the record.

Water sharpening, and a clamshell

The thing Shimomura puts at the centre of its own explanation is not the steel. It is the edge setting, done by Tsubame-Sanjo craftsmen by the traditional wet stone method they call mizu-togi ha-tsuke.

What it produces is a hamaguri edge, named for a clam: convex rather than flat, with a wide mirror finished bevel. The practical difference is that food releases off a curved bevel instead of sticking to a flat one, so there is less resistance through a dense carrot, and the geometry is easy to bring back on a stone at home.

The Murato blades are three ply, with a VG10 core clad in softer stainless, an 18-8 bolster and a laminated reinforced wood handle. The name is theirs to explain and they do: the mura of Shimomura, and to, a unit of measure, a standard.

Shimomura publishes no Rockwell figure for any of its knives, and we are not going to invent one.

What we carry

The Murato Classic range in VG10, which is most of a working kitchen: chef's knives at 7, 8.2, 9.5 and 10.6 inches, santoku at 6.7, nakiri at 6.5, petty at 4.9 and 5.9, and slicers at 9.5 and 10.6.

Above them the 33 layer damascus Murato, in a santoku and in the kengata shape, a reverse tanto profile with a straight spine that drops to the tip. It is the most useful looking knife in the range and also the most photographed.

And two small tools from the Ajiwai line that do one job properly: a stainless peeler and a corn stripper.