My wife and have always been amateur "chefs". In that guise, we had the obvious collection of German and French cooking knives curated during more than a decade. While on a trip to Japan in the early 1980's, we wandered into a knife ship in Nishiki Market in Kyoto, we visited a knife shop. They spoke o English and we spoke no Japanese. I asked the price of a good-looking mid-sized knife and was taken aback. I thought I had made a decimal place math error when it worked out to $400 (remember, this was in the early 1980's when a buck was still a buck). Sheesh, I was just looking for a souvenir! When I made it known that it was out of my budget, he brought over a "petite" knife with around a six inch blade made off high-carbon steel for about $60. While this was a lot more than I anticipated for a cheap knife (and more than I had paid for any of my "good" knives), I paid for it. Instead of throwing it into a bag (like I expected), he went to the back of the shop and spent about twenty minutes sharpening it, during which time his wife performed a tea ceremony for us. Afterwards, he explained how to sharpen it (including selling me a rather expensive fine-grit stone).


I love that story! My wife and I are also amateur chefs and enjoying cooking. However, she has informed me that we have enough knives. Still, we have informal plans for a ski trip to Japan and I would love to go knife shopping.

Until about 1873 in the time of the Meiji Restoration consumption of red meat was mostly banned in Japan. So their cutlery was designed for seafood and vegetables (with specialized knives for each), hence the high strength steel and very sharp edges. This type of knife is not great for breaking down things with bones and gristle however, and generally too brittle for lots of western-style cooking tasks.

Out of the need to cut beef came the gyuto (which means "cow blade") which is a chef's knife that sort of blends Japanese and western knife philosophies. Later came the santuko ("three uses" or "three virtues") which as the name suggests was designed to cut meat, fish, AND vegetables, instead of having one knife for each.

Versatility is fine, but what fun is that? My ideal knife block would have a western-style chef's knife, santuko, nakiri (rectangular vegetable knife), yanagiba(sushi knife), a deba (fish butchering knife), Chinese cleaver, regular cleaver, a brisket knife, bread knife, and some paring knives.

To start with, anyway.