Oishya

Oishya kitchenware. Made to last. Used to create joy. Timeless and unique Japanese knives. Shop handmade Japanese kitchen knives & Home Accessories.

Designer products made of Metal, Wood and Stone. Our mission is to bring beautiful, raw and unique Japanese inspired products to European homes.

13/08/2026

Astronomers waited years for that alignment. We just wanted breakfast.

10/08/2026

Last month, our woodworker in Poland found a maple board. Four metres long, forty centimetres wide. It cost more than one of our knives.

That's before cutting it, before the resin, before six months of drying, before stabilisation - which may or may not work. Nobody can tell you in advance. Not him, not anyone.

Maple burl is nearly impossible to source in Poland now. Ukraine, once the main supply, is closed off by war. What's left gets bought as whole trees, because nobody sells boards in the quantities we need.

So when you hold one of our handles, you're holding the end of a very long, very uncertain hunt.

We wouldn't have it any other way.

24/07/2026

Prep, before the dinner exists.

No guests yet. No plates. Just late afternoon light on a Mallorcan farm, a stone counter, and Andy from .to.table.mallorca working through fennel with a blade that was forged nine thousand kilometres away.

Look closely at the second photo. That ripple in the steel is not decoration. Thirty three layers of Damascus folded around a VG10 core in Seki, Japan. A city that has forged blades for eight centuries. Every RYU blade carries a different pattern because every fold lands differently. The knife in Andy's hand exists once. Like this evening will.

This is the part of dinner nobody sees. The hour when a Michelin-trained chef stands alone with vegetables pulled from the ground a few steps away. Fennel. Peppers. Shallots. Each cut a small decision about how tonight will taste.

The Santoku translates as three virtues. Meat, fish, vegetables. Tonight it only needs one.

The guests arrive at dusk. The table fills. The dishes come out and the knife goes quiet.

But this hour. This is where the meal is made.

16/07/2026

Some dinners begin long before the guests arrive.

They begin in the field. With shallots pulled from the earth. Fennel cut at its peak. A chef who knows exactly when an ingredient is ready because he grew it himself.

Watching Andy from .to.table.mallorca work reminds us why we make knives the way we do. Not for perfect social media cuts. For moments like these. Where every slice is part of a bigger story.

Farm to table isn't a trend here. It's the rhythm of the day. Harvest. Prep. Cook. Gather. Eat.
Good ingredients ask for very little. A sharp knife. Skilled hands. And a table worth bringing people together around.

06/06/2026

Every brand has a first. Ours was the Sakai Kyuba KYU Gyuto.

We found our blacksmith in Sakai, Osaka. His family has been forging steel since 1927. Three generations of hands shaping the same kind of blade. AUS10 stainless steel. 62 Rockwell hardness. Forty six layers of Damascus folded around a hard core.

We couldn't put his name on the blade. Geolocation exclusivity. So we built a name together. Sakai Kyuba. 堺久馬. Kyū (久) meaning long lasting. Ba (馬) meaning horse. Endurance. Longevity.

The handle came from craftsmen in Poland. Stabilised maple burl dried for two years, dyed Mediterranean Blue, set around a collar of bog oak that is thousands of years old. No two handles look the same.

Japanese steel. European craft. Three months from forge to box. The knife that proved the idea could work. More than 10 years later, we're still here thanks to your love for our products.

We're forever grateful 🙏.

28/05/2026

Two words people use as if they mean the same thing. They don't.
Honing realigns the edge. The microscopic teeth of the blade bend with use, and a honing rod straightens them back. It takes thirty seconds. For soft Western steel, it's the single best daily habit you can build.

But Japanese knives are different. The steel is harder. Much harder. Most Japanese blades sit around 60 to 63 on the Rockwell hardness scale. Western knives are closer to 54 to 58. That extra hardness is what gives Japanese knives their sharper edge and longer edge retention. It's also what makes honing rods dangerous for them.
Hard steel doesn't bend. It chips. Run a Japanese knife along a honing rod and you risk micro-fractures along the entire edge. Tiny chips you can't see but you'll feel every time you cut. The edge gets worse, not better. A honing rod assumes the steel is soft enough to flex back into place. Japanese steel doesn't flex. It breaks.
Sharpening is the other word. Sharpening removes metal. It rebuilds the edge entirely. You do this much less often. A few times a year for most home cooks. Whenever the knife stops cutting cleanly through a tomato skin.

For Japanese knives, a whetstone is both your honing and your sharpening. A quick session on a high grit stone does what a honing rod does for Western blades. It realigns and polishes the edge without the impact force that causes chipping. A lower grit stone reshapes the edge when it's truly dull.
One tool. Two jobs. No honing rod in sight.

Most people sharpen too often and maintain too rarely. Flip that. A few minutes on a whetstone every couple of weeks. A proper sharpening session a few times a year. Your knives will last decades longer.

26/05/2026

When your new blade is SO sharp it humbles you on day one :)
We got this message from a lovely customer this week (finger now recovering, we're told!) and honestly... it's the most relatable thing ever.
Here's the truth nobody warns you about: a properly sharp Japanese knife doesn't need force. The moment you stop pushing and start letting the blade glide, everything changes. Finer slices, less effort, and a lot more respect for that edge.

Two things that'll save your fingertips:

1. The claw grip. Tuck your fingertips under, knuckles guiding the blade. Your nails should never be in the firing line.
2. Match the knife to the job. Petty for the small, fiddly stuff (garlic, shallots, peeling). Gyuto for the bigger cuts where you want length and control. Santoku for your everyday all-rounder. Nakiri for powering through cabbage, carrots and stacks of veg. And Bunka when you want that all-purpose feel with a sharper tip for precision work.

And remember, the sharper the knife, the safer it actually is... once your hands learn to trust it. Pinky promise. And if you keep that claw grip, you'll still have the pinky to make good on it :)

Heal up, friend. The finer slices are just the beginning.

08/05/2026

The joy of trying your new premium knife.

06/05/2026

Every Oishya handle starts as a raw piece of wood. Maple burl or ancient bog oak. And from that moment, it takes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years before it's ready to hold a blade.

Maple burl is one of the most unpredictable woods to work with. It grows in tight, knotted formations inside the tree. Beautiful to look at. Difficult to source well. Our craftsman selects each piece by hand. Healthy grain, minimal ingrowths, the right moisture content. Out of a full harvest, only a portion meets the standard.

The wood is cut into small blocks. Then it has to dry. If you rush this, the wood cracks. No shortcuts. Some batches need two weeks. Some need months. Bog oak, which has already spent thousands of years transforming underground, still needs careful drying and stabilisation before anyone can shape it.

Once dry, each block is stabilised. Infused under pressure with resin that penetrates deep into the grain. This makes the handle waterproof and resistant to everything a kitchen throws at it. Hot water. Cold water. Oil. Citrus. A stabilised handle can take all of it without swelling, warping, or cracking.

Then the dyeing. Each block coloured individually. The wood from different parts of the tree behaves differently. Lower trunk polishes beautifully but needs 72 hours to set. Every piece has its own character.

From there the blocks go to our second craftsman. He shapes each one into a handle. Sands it. Fits it. Glues and mounts it onto the tang of a blade that was forged thousands of kilometres away in Japan.

There is no assembly line. One person sources the wood. One person dries it, stabilises it, dyes it, cuts it. Another shapes it and mounts it. Each handle passes through multiple hands and months of patience before it reaches yours.

This is the part of the knife you touch every day. We think it deserves the same care as the steel.

20/04/2026

Last week our Japanese agent Shuhei visited Izumo Taisha. One of the oldest and most sacred Shinto shrines in all of Japan. It sits in Shimane Prefecture, facing the Sea of Japan, and has been a place of worship for longer than most countries have existed. The shrine is dedicated to Okuninushi, the deity of relationships and human connection. Every year in October, according to Japanese mythology, all eight million gods gather at this exact shrine. The rest of Japan calls that month Kannazuki, the month without gods. In Shimane they call it Kamiarizuki. The month with gods. Because that's where they all go. Even in April, the weight of that place is something you feel the moment you walk in.
Shuhei brought our knives with him.

He wanted to have them blessed at the shrine. Official prayers for products weren't permitted inside the grounds, so he photographed the box just outside the entrance, with the great torii gate behind it. Then he walked in, knives inside, to let them absorb the atmosphere of a place that has stood there for centuries.
This morning we woke up to his message. He is sending us a kifuda, a wooden prayer plaque from the shrine. He prayed for two things on our behalf. Kanai Anzen. Safety and well-being for your family. And Shogan Joju. The fulfilment of all your wishes.

He told us to place it somewhere important in our office. No need for anything complicated. Just offer a prayer for Shobai Hanjo, business prosperity, from time to time. And express gratitude.
He did this on his own family holiday. Nobody asked him to bring the knives. Nobody asked him to pray. He just thought of us.

This is what our relationships look like. With our blacksmiths. With our partners. With the people who help bring these knives from Japan to your kitchens. We don't talk about this side of Oishya very often. The quiet things. The prayers. The messages at seven in the morning. The plaques sent across the world.

But this is what holds it all together.

Address

London

Website

https://oishya.com/

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