ウェブサイトは？

Hawatari - japanese knife specialist

ホーム
日本
Minato-ku, Tokyo
Hawatari - japanese knife specialist

Japanese knife specialist in Helsinki, Finland. Import of authentic Japanese kitchen knives from Japan. Knife restorations.

Freehand sharpening of knives, scissors, razors, woodworking tools and more. Handcrafted handles and saya wooden blade guards.

29/09/2026

🔥 Ikakku Oboro VG-10 Damascus yanagiba knives from our webshop 🔥

Authentic Japanese kitchen knives and sharpening equipment directly imported from Japan available from our webshop! Link to the webshop is found in bio!
____________________________________
In our webshop we are offering exclusive Japan-made Damascus yanagiba knives from Ikakku Oboro series. Ikakku Oboro knives are forged from stainless steel with VG-10 super-steel being used for the "core".

Each Ikakku Oboro blade has a completely unique Damascus pattern. Every knife is also accompanied by a Japan-made saya, made from Japanese magnolia wood.
__________________________
Ikakku Oboro knives are forged in the city of Seki, central Japan. Seki is often called the capital of Japanese cutlery industry and for a good reason - majority of cutlery tools made in Japan come from this small rural city located nor far from Nagoya, one of the biggest Japanese metropolitans.

Ikakku Oboro Damascus knives are forged from Japanese stainless steel. The knives are forged with VG-10 high carbon “super steel” as the “core”. VG-10 is manufactured by Takefu Special Steel corporation, located in Echizen area of Japan. VG-10 is a fantastic choice of steel for kitchen knives, this steel has great edge retention and also very reasonable toughness. In Ikakku Oboro series VG-10 is hardened to 60-61 HRC.

The entire Damascus laminate of the knives from Ikakku Oboro series is forged from high quality Japanese stainless steel. The maker of these knives utilises modern technical manufacturing solutions - f.ex. the logo markings on Ikakku Oboro knives are cut in with lasers.

Wa-handles for Ikakku Oboro knives are handcrafted from made from rosewood and pakkawood (used for the ferrule). Ikakku Oboro series are very elegant looking knives and they are also very well performing knives as well.
_____________________________
Ikakku Oboro Damascus yanagiba knives are available from "Sashimi knives" section of our webshop!
__________________________________
#関の刃物

25/09/2026

A bit backdated post - a quintet of 當 Ataru saya (blade guards) made on spare time in-between other jobs. These saya were made for the some of the latest additions to the Japanese Knife Types Collection.

For safe storage each knife from the collection is provided with a saya. The collection contains many very unusual blades of various shapes and sizes. Handcrafting saya for some of the trickiest blade shapes during many years was a great learning curve.

Several of these knives belong to very unique knife types and one is even so different in structure that it needed an entirely different style of saya. Not only the blade is inserted horizontally into the saya, the locking pin is added at the tip area and not at the heel, as opposed to the most common solution...

Most of these saya are of 3 layer construction. 3 layer saya are considerably easier to manufacture and they can be made in a shorter timeframe, than our handmade 2 layer variants. We almost never offer 3 layer saya commercially, as we focus on offering 2 layer saya - they are much more durable in structure and can easily survive abuse. 3 layer saya does not offer the same level of durability, unfortunately. Even though we don't offer 3 layer saya commercially, we have been making them a number of times over the years, strictly for our personal use...
_____________________________________________
#當

22/09/2026

🔥 Prepping for yakiniku with sujihiki 🔥

Authentic Japanese kitchen knives and sharpening equipment directly imported from Japan available from our webshop! Link to the webshop is found in bio!
___________________________________
Sujihiki is the Japanese version of the Western slicer. Sujihiki knives are mainly intended for meat work - slicing to thin slices, separating fat etc.

Japanese word "sujihiki" (筋引), if broken into separate kanji, stands for "muscle" & "pull". Sujihiki is most efficient when used with long pulling cuts - especially longer sujihiki knives suit well for a serious meat slicing job.

The video above contains a quick presentation of slicing a chunk of meat into thin slices for yakiniku (焼肉) dish.
___________________________________
Knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in the city of Seki, central Japan. Seki is the main knife manufacturing centre in Japan, and is often called the capitol of Japanese cutlery industry. Kanematsu Kōgyo is manufacturing high quality professional kitchen knives, with a large portion being single bevel knives.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in many different types, styles snd from different steels as well. As material for their knives, Kanematsu uses both pure carbon and various stainless steels made by Yasugi Special Steel corporation.

The knives from the professional sujihiki line by Kanematsu Kōgyo that we carry were forged from Japanese high quality carbon steel (SK-4). Not only the blade, but even the tang is made from carbon steel - these knives need a bit of regular care to keep them in prime condition and to avoid rusting.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo that we offer feature exclusive natural wood handles. Each knife is also equipped with a complementary saya (wooden blade guard). Both the saya and the handles are handcrafted in our workshop in Helsinki, Finland.
_____________________________
Professional sujihiki knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are available from "Slicers" section of our webshop!
_______________________________
Musicscore - Akiko Yokoyama Jazz Trio (c) 2023
__________________________________
#筋引包丁

18/09/2026

Fitted into same sharpening session - 4 knives from 2 different customers and one of our loaners, that was dropped by a customer and sustained some minor damage to the tip (before/after in the last pic).

The Masahiro duo, seen on the right, became quite thick, and a thinning job for these blades is already seen on the horizon. For improving their cutting ability in their current state, I have crafted heavily asymmetric edges for both Masahiro knives (see picture 2 for illustration). The ratio is very close to nearly 90/10.
_______________________________
Those 2 Tsuchme blades in the middle are, apparently, a fresh purchase from Musashi store found at Kappabashi street in Tōkyo. Musashi belongs to a breed of new knife shops that in the last years have popped up in Kappabashi, Tsukiji, Toyosu and also other tourist-heavy areas of Tōkyo and other cities, like Kyōto. Most of these merchants live off foreign tourist customer base and, personally, I'm not big fan of them.

Being a sort of traditionalist and a frequent visitor to f.ex. Kappabashi since 2008, I tend to encourage people to support time proven traditional knife stores at both Kappabashi and Tsukiji (as Tokyo is my base in Japan, I feel that I should only be recommending Tōkyo shops as I'm best familiar with them).
___________________________________________

15/09/2026

🔥 Professional sujihiki knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo 🔥

Authentic Japanese kitchen knives and sharpening equipment directly imported from Japan available from our webshop! Link to our webshop is found in bio!
_________________________________
We have added to our webshop a new line of professional sujihiki knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo of Seki, Japan. These sujihiki knives feature very long blades - 300mm. The entire blades of these professional knives are forged from high quality Japanese carbon steel (even the tang!). Thanks to the pure carbon steel these sujihiki knives stay sharp for longer than their stainless counterparts do (even though carbon steel does require a good care taking routine, obviously).
___________________________________

Knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in the city of Seki, central Japan. Seki is the main knife manufacturing centre in Japan, and is often called the capitol of Japanese cutlery industry. Kanematsu Kōgyo is manufacturing high quality professional kitchen knives, with a large portion being 片刃 "kataba", or single bevel knives.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in many different types, styles snd from different steels as well. As material for their knives, Kanematsu uses both pure carbon and various stainless steels made by Yasugi Special Steel corporation.

The knives from the professional sujihiki line by Kanematsu Kōgyo that we carry were forged from Japanese high quality carbon steel (SK-4). Not only the blade, but even the tang is made from carbon steel - these knives need a bit of regular care to keep them in prime condition and to avoid rusting.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo that we offer feature exclusive natural wood handles. Each knife is also equipped with a complementary saya (wooden blade guard). Both the saya and the handles are handcrafted in our workshop in Helsinki, Finland.
_____________________________
Professional sujihiki knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are available from "Slicers" section of our webshop!
__________________________________
#筋引包丁

11/09/2026

I was recently asked about how to efficiently pack knives into "paper pockets" for transport/postage/etc. We regularly use these kind of paper pockets for safe packing of knives we return to our customers.

Here is a small step-by-step tutorial:

First prepare 2-3 sheets of paper (A4 or bigger) and 3 pieces of scotch/tape, each piece approximately 5 cm in length. When all of the above is prepared, you can start.

1) Put sheets of paper together. Bend one side to create a square. After that bend one corner of the side where you've made the first bend.

2) Put knife's blade inside the paper square that you have just made, with the back towards the left. Bent the paper around the edge - this will create an extra layer of protection for the delicate edge (check "Step 2" picture).

3) Close the corner to lock the chin of the blade - this will keep the knife inside the pocket and not let it slide out.

4) Continue to roll the paper around the blade, closely following the geometry of the blade.

5) Tightly roll the leftover paper at the top around the tip of the blade, the idea here is to create a dense bulge, to prevent the tip cutting through the paper during transport of the knife.

6) Last step - use your prepared scotch pieces to connect the pocket together. Place tape around the tip, under the chin and somewhere at the middle of the blade. The goal is to close all open "seams" so the paper pocket would be tightly connected and would not open up.

A knife packed in this manner can be safely transported in a bag, sent by mail, put to storage - the paper pocket would protect the edge from damage and also protect the user from being damaged by the edge.
_____________________________________________

08/09/2026

🔥 Honesuki-maru in action 🔥

Authentic Japanese kitchen knives and sharpening equipment directly imported from Japan available from our webshop! Link to our webshop is found in bio!
____________________________________
Honesuki-maru is a versatile Japanese boning knife. This knife is designed for various meat work - cutting meat off the bones, cutting through cartilage & smaller bones. The tip of the blade can be used for digging inside joints. The lowest part of the blade, near the handle, is left unsharpened and is used for scrubbing meat off the bones.

In the video above you can see a quick example of how working with honesuki-maru generally looks like.
___________________________________
Knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in the city of Seki, central Japan. Seki is the main knife manufacturing centre in Japan, and is often called the capitol of Japanese cutlery industry. Kanematsu Kōgyo is manufacturing high quality professional kitchen knives, with a large portion being 片刃 "kataba", or single bevel knives.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in many different types, styles snd from different steels as well. As material for their knives, Kanematsu uses both pure carbon and various stainless steels made by Yasugi Special Steel corporation.

The knives from the professional honesuki-maru line by Kanematsu Kōgyo that we carry were forged from Japanese high quality carbon steel (SK-4). Not only the blade, but even the tang is made from carbon steel - these knives need a bit of regular care to keep them in prime condition and to avoid rusting.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo that we offer feature exclusive natural wood handles. Each knife is also equipped with a complementary saya (wooden blade guard). Both the saya and the handles are handcrafted in our workshop in Helsinki, Finland.
_______________________________
Honesuki-maru knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are available from "Butcher knives" section of our webshop!
_______________________________
Musicscore - Akiko Yokoyama Jazz Trio (c) 2023
__________________________________
#骨スキ丸

04/09/2026

Once again knife sets from 2 different customers fit into the same sharpening job.

3 Japanese chef knives - 1 Mac Mighty, 1 Kai Shun and 1 piece from a brand called Misen. The other set included a chef/santoku combo made from what looked like Damasteel.

Some minor fixes and new edges - the usual treatment package.

P.S.: Damasteel knives were surprisingly on the thicker side - check the last picture for blade comparison.
_____________________________________________

01/09/2026

🔥 Professional honesuki-maru knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo 🔥

Authentic Japanese kitchen knives and sharpening equipment directly imported from Japan available from our webshop! Link to the webshop is found in bio!
____________________________________
We have added new knives to our webshop - from Kanematsu Kōgyo of Seki, Japan. These knives include professional honesuki-maru and professional sujihiki knives.

Honesuki-maru is a versatile Japanese boning knife that has originated in Kansai region (modern Osaka). In fact another name for honesuki-maru is sabaki-nishigata, which is translated as "western style cutter" (western style in this case stands for Kansai or Osaka area).

The shape of honesuki-maru differs from the common eastern style honenuki. Yet their blade structure is quite similar as both knives have same asymmetric grind: the backside is almost flat while front side has a clearly present bevelled structure.

We will talk more about honesuki-maru knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo in our next post that will be published next Tuesday.
___________________________________
Knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in the city of Seki, central Japan. Seki is the main knife manufacturing centre in Japan, and is often called the capitol of Japanese cutlery industry. Kanematsu Kōgyo is manufacturing high quality professional kitchen knives, both 片刃 "kataba" (single bevel) and 両刃 "ryōba" (double bevel).

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are forged in many different types and from different steels as well. As material for their knives, Kanematsu uses both pure carbon and various stainless steels made by Yasugi Special Steel corporation.

Professional knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo that we offer feature exclusive natural hardwood handles. Each knife is also equipped with a complementary saya (wooden blade guard). Both the saya and the handle for each knife are handcrafted in our workshop in Helsinki, Finland.
_______________________________
Honesuki-maru knives from Kanematsu Kōgyo are available from "Butcher knives" section of our webshop!
__________________________________
#骨スキ丸

28/08/2026

Another set of Germans along with a couple Japan OEM (or rip-offs). Total number 12 pieces, with half of them thinning scissors.

German brand selection was quite wide, with a number of different brand names. Several pieces from German brand Jaguar were among the lot. (Jaguar is marketed as a premium barber scissors brand from Solingen, Germany. They are owned by Zwilling Henkels).

In the end the most fun scissors from this set were - not surprised - a Japanese piece. Joy to sharpen and clearly a good cutter as well (picture 4).
___________________________________________
#美容 #シザー

住所

Minato-ku, Tokyo