A Good Knife Is Not Only About the Steel

CASSANDRA LORD wrote . . . . . . . . .

A hammering reverberates through the green fields of Ibaraki Prefecture’s countryside. Inside the spartan workshop at Isamitsu Knives, a blade, glowing red from heat, is being pounded into shape.

The manufacturer, located in Sakuragawa, may be small but it has attracted customers far and wide for its craftsmanship, a reputation earned from its use of high-quality steels known as Aogami Super and Shirogami.

The team at Isamitsu consists of just three smiths: Naoko Abe, Gaku Kanatsu and Isamitsu Abe. After spending 15 years working at a traditional knife workshop in the prefecture, Abe, 45, found himself wanting to start his own company, driven by a desire for autonomy and the freedom to improve upon old techniques.

“I started to notice things that were lacking in the process here and there, and I wanted to do things my own way,” Isamitsu says.

Since 2022, Isamitsu’s knife-making process differs from industrial manufacturers in small but significant ways. For example, when steel drops to a certain temperature after being heated, most smiths no longer hammer it due to risk of breakage. Some workshops might choose to hammer the steel as fast as possible when the temperature is high, but at Isamitsu, they do it differently.

“Instead, we move between the furnace and the hammer over and over again using a low heat,” Abe says. “By doing so, the steel’s structure becomes denser and tougher. We specifically choose to use the best steels, so we want to use them to their full potential.”

While Abe notes that it’s quite common elsewhere for knife makers to specialize in discrete parts of the process, the small team at Isamitsu necessitates that everyone has a hand in each step.

“When everyone has their own station, it’s hard to know how it will affect the next step,” he says. “This way, we’re thinking about the next step while working on the current one, making it easier to improve the final quality.”

Rather than making each knife one by one, the team makes their knives in batches. Key to this is coke, a special type of slow-burning coal the team uses to forge the knives. Coke takes a long time to cool down — in some cases, coke can burn 45% to 90% longer than normal coal — and forging in batches makes the most of that slow burn, which would otherwise be wasted in making a single blade.

Batch orders can take six months to a year to fulfill, but by intentionally overproducing, remaining knives can go onto the market for the general public. This allows Isamitsu to sell its wares online and via local pop-up stalls.

Still, part of the reason for this deliberate overproduction is an attempt to mitigate one of the drawbacks of working with high-quality Aogami Super and Shirogami metals: They are highly sensitive.

“The metals are hard to use,” Abe says. “If you get the temperature just a tiny bit wrong, they start to crack. When working with fire, the most difficult and most important part is temperature control.”

This is evidenced in the multiple lengths the smiths go to to maintain that careful control. In addition to coke for forging (compressing metal into a desired shape), pine charcoal and mizuyaki (water quenching) are used for quick heating and cooling during tempering (a process that makes steel harder and more elastic).

The many hours of manpower are exactly what you pay for when you buy an Isamitsu knife, and they don’t come cheap. According to its online shop, Isamitsu’s cheapest knife is a 90-millimeter Shirogami paring knife priced at ¥17,600 (about $112), while the most expensive blade is a 330-millimeter Aogami Super gyūtō (butcher’s knife) at ¥189,200 (about $1,203).

“When I bought my knife, I wasn’t used to the length,” says Taeko Dada, owner-chef of Dada Shokudo in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. “Once I started using it, I realized that the length was effective especially when cutting large pieces of meat. It felt easy to use and cut without a concerted effort.”

The low yen also makes the knives more effective from purchasers overseas, with chefs singing Isamitsu’s praises from as far away as Southeast Asia and Europe.

Nicolas Tam, head chef at Singapore’s one-Michelin-starred Willow, uses a variety of knives at his restaurant but turns to his Isamitsu-made sujihiki (literally, “flesh slicer”) for cutting meat, and as a showpiece when preparing ingredients in front of guests at the counter.

“(My knife) has an amazing heat treat — which allows (it) to hold its edge for a long time — as well as a good grind and a striking and unique appearance,” Tam says. “To be honest, there aren’t any cons I can think of. I use it daily and don’t have any complaints.”

Dutch knife shop owner Elwin de Veld echoed Tam’s praise of an Isamitsu edge.

“A good knife is not only about the steel,” says the owner of Rangelrooij, a specialty Japanese knife store located in The Hague. “Many factors will influence the quality. Abe-san knows these factors by heart: thin, razor-sharp edges and a very good geometry.”

The thought and creativity that goes into Isamitsu’s work is another element customers cite in their appraisals. Canadian knife collector Franco Alo, who goes by the moniker “Kitchen Knife Guy” on YouTube, lauds Isamitsu’s modern approach to the craft.

“They are attentive to the needs of the community,” Alo says. “I don’t doubt if you asked me years from now that there would be changes, because they aren’t stuck in the ways of the past.”

Alo points out, however, that the high price point means Isamitsu knives likely “aren’t for everyone.”

“Their knives, given how sharp they are, how thin they are, are for a more experienced kitchen knife user,” he says. “That doesn’t mean you need to be a professional chef, but you need to have proper cutting technique, use the proper cutting surface and know how to maintain your knife well to appreciate an Isamitsu. Fail at any one of those three and you’ll likely chip your knife.”

While word may have already spread overseas about the knives themselves, Abe hopes to inspire others to follow in his footsteps and take up the craft of making knives themselves.

“These days, it’s difficult to find a place where you can learn (knife-making techniques),” he says. “So eventually I want to create a kind of video manual for setting everything up and doing it yourself.”

Source : The Japan Times