Redesigning Tradition: Japanese Knife Evolution Told by the Sakimaru Takobiki
April 1, 2025 – Josh Donald
Redesigning Tradition: Japanese Knife Evolution Told by the Takobiki
Going through a half dozen old stock Sakai Konosuke knives made between 2010 and 2015 that we recently acquired reminds me of something that I first learned about the nature of traditional Japanese knife-making through Sakai Konosuke. At first glance these knives are not super different from the same model knives being made today, but they did give me a reference point to see some changes in the years after their production.
Sakai is arguably the center of traditional Japanese knife making. There are many other knife-making towns in Japan with blacksmithing histories equally as old as Sakai’s with sword and tool forging. But, Sakai has a long history with knife making specifically that the other places only have a more recent connection to. Sakai has a large volume of small independent workshops and work in Sakai tends to be separated between crafts. In other Japanese knife-making towns, you might find forging and sharpening being done in the same shop. But that work in Sakai is done by-and-large separately, with few exceptions.
Certainly, this division of labor is not specific to Sakai and is possibly more prevalent historically in old knife-making centers. Sheffield, Solingen and Thiers all had many small independent workshops. Often when knife factories were built in these towns in the 19th century, smiths, grinders, and other contributing craftspeople would rent a room in the factory but keep their independence.
Today it is hard to find knife makers in Sakai that both forge and sharpen (everything from rough grinding to finishing) in the same shop, but there are a few that buck this historical trend. While there are many very talented knifemakers outside of Sakai who both forge and sharpen their own knives, the idea of specialization has been encoded into the DNA of the small, often multigenerational family-run businesses located there. When walking through a dense residential neighborhood, the only clue one would have to being next to a blacksmith shop is the staccato banging of a spring hammer or the sound of a sharpener’s stone wheels at work coming from behind a house. Sometimes equipment in the garage gives away the identity of the house, but mostly you might never know.
Visiting some of these shops for the first time in 2014 with Kosuke Kawamura from Konosuke, I not only got to meet some of the people behind the knives I had been selling but I got to see the scale of many Sakai workshops. On the same trip, the other Kawamura Hamono in Sakai, Sakai Kikumori also showed me around. They introduced me to Tanaka Hamono, a shop led by a father and son team who forged knives for both the Kawamura Hamonos. The intricate web of networks between craftspeople and brands was starting to reveal itself but also the confusing nature of why some craftpeople’s identity was kept secret was also being revealed to me.The complex relationships between craftspeople and brands were becoming clearer, but so was the confusing reasoning behind keeping some craftspeople's identities secret. I was beginning to realize that the secrecy served a lot of different purposes for both the craftspeople supplying their customers' competitors and for maintaining a hierarchy in the crafts between the older and younger generations.
One important thing that I learned and what inspired me to write this is, as I sold more Japanese knives (from Sakai and elsewhere) the more I noticed that while certain elements of the execution of craft were very old and a continuation of centuries of development, many designs that seemed equally as old were quite new and actually changing during the years I handled them. The first that I had this experience with were Sakimaru Takobiki knives.
Sakimaru means “round tip” and takobiki often translates to “octopus puller” or “octopus knife.” Takobiki sashimi knives came from a pattern that began in the Edo period in modern-day Tokyo and are still an old-timer Tokyo sushi chef’s knife. Just like in other parts of the world at different points of time, regional styles of knives evolved in Japan to distinguish one area of cooks, foodways and knife-making from another. Edo chefs and knife makers distinguished themselves from the chefs and makers of the older capital of Kyoto in the Kansai region (which includes Osaka and nearby Sakai) through their blade designs. Where sashimi knives in Kansai might be pointed, in the Kanto region of Edo knives were made with squared-off tips. There are competing stories to explain this: the Edo sushi chefs cut their sushi while sitting at their street carts and were better served by a straight blade, or the numerous Samurai and Feudal leaders from around Japan that were kept in line by the Emperor by being forced to live in Edo were offended by a sharp pointed knife in their presence so knife tips were blunted to accommodate their sensibilities; a bit like the history of European sailor's knives being blunted to reduce their effectiveness in mutinies and table knives being rounded in 17th century France. In any case, the takobiki for the most part kept a straight spine, a flat dull tip with a small grind that looks like it should form an edge and was thinner and lighter weight than the pointed ‘willow leaf’ yanagiba of Kansai.
Fast forward to 2011-12 when I met my first Sakimaru Takobiki. The once flat 90-degree squared-off tip had the spine extended and the flat tip moved into a sweeping 45-degree angle, looking much more like the kissaki (tip) of a Japanese sword. While more sword-like in its appearance, this tip section was still dull. The first ones I handled from Sakai Konosuke (and subsequently different Sakai makers of this era) were all like this. Over the next few years, heavier, yanagi weight sakimaru appeared, but still typically with a dull tip. Every now and then, a sharp tip would appear, or a customer would request theirs to be sharpened. Meanwhile, the tips became thinner behind the edge and easier to sharpen.
Over the last 10 years, heavier, sharp-tipped sakimaru have been the norm. I strongly suspect this is in response to a new audience outside of Japan that does not reference the takobiki when considering the tip’s lack of sharpness. Anecdotally, when we first started carrying sakimaru, we received a number of complaints and returns of ‘defective’ sakimaru with dull tips. I doubt we were the only ones. The invisible hand (and complaint box) of the marketplace seems to have had its way with the sakimaru tip, or maybe the heavier yanagi-like weight won out in the same way the standard yanagi vs takobiki competition ended up.
Over the years, I’ve observed that it’s not only the mechanics of knife design that evolve (hi taller wa-gyutos) but also the very nature of traditional Japanese knife-making. These developments have taught me that “traditional” doesn’t mean static; it adapts and grows with time. Just as with food itself, culinary knives are part of an evolving changing field. In the case of Japanese knives, the profusion of non-Japanese users over the last 20 years has definitely worked its way back to the craftspeople. Certain things in Japanese knife-making are fairly set,一not many blacksmiths or sharpeners in Sakai are going to increase their workforce 200% even with demand increasing 2000%一 but despite the serious face and folded arms that you often see in photos of Japanese craftspeople, there is usually a looser creative side to the craft. When I was introduced to Hiromi Morimoto ‘Morihiro’ by Kosuke Kawamura in 2014 I expected a serious, maybe even stern person based on the precision of his grinding work but instead I found a super easygoing guy who wanted to talk to me about sharpening but also show me his scars from moto cross racing. I’m not sure if that was the very moment that I realized my expectations were off but it did clue me into the possibility of lightening up a little myself.