View “How a Japanese Factory Makes a Knife”

Photography by The Editors of Craftsmanship Quarterly
Written by Todd Oppenheimer

Kramer examining the origins of today’s Japanese kitchen knife: a Samurai sword.

And a moment with its maker, Kanefusa Fujiwara, a 25th-generation swordmaker in Seki City, an age-old cutlery center.

A display in Fujiwara’s shop showing the many stages of “tamahagane,” a traditional and exceptionally pure form of blade steel. Composed of only carbon and iron, tamahagane is first baked for days, then re-heated, hammered, and folded repeatedly into the myriad layers that form a top-notch blade.

A common scene in any Japanese cutlery shop: a basket of knife-shaped blanks initially stamped out by machine, gray from hardening during their first heat treatment.

The initial edge grind. No matter how large the production in most Japanese factories, the shaping and sharpening of each knife is done by hand. This man is laboring in one of the Seki City factories run by Kai, Japan’s largest cutlery manufacturer.

For most Japanese knife, a gradual profile finishing with a thin edge is everything. The surest way to test this is by using your own fingers, like a pair of calipers.

A final stage of sharpening and polishing–once again, by hand.

The Editors of Craftsmanship Quarterly launched this online magazine in 2015, and have since developed it into a multimedia publication with more than 120,000 readers.
Todd Oppenheimer is the editor and publisher of Craftsmanship Quarterly, and the executive director of its nonprofit umbrella organization, The Craftsmanship Initiative.

previous post: View “The Art of a Hand-Stitched Purse”
next post: View “Kramer’s Tools: A Photo Essay”