Masutani Hamono 増谷刃物

Who is Masutani Hamono?

Masutani Hamono is the trading name of Masutani Hamono Seisaku Co., Ltd., a knife workshop the Echizen Uchihamono Cooperative lists at Hokufu, Echizen City, Fukui, with Masutani Kunio named as its representative on the cooperative's own member page. The workshop's own site describes its home as the old townhouse district of Takefu, where cobblestone streets remain. It says plainly that it has carefully preserved and passed down the 700 year tradition of Echizen Uchihamono across four generations. The workshop is direct about who the knives are for: it makes home use knives rather than professional ones, on the reasoning that a household rarely has the storage space or the maintenance routine that a professional's larger set of knives assumes.

Where does the Echizen Uchihamono tradition come from?

Echizen City's own history page dates the start of Echizen Uchihamono to the swordsmith Chiyozuru Kuniyasu, who travelled from Kyoto to Fuchu, now Echizen City, in search of a good place to forge swords. He is said to have taught the district's blacksmiths advanced sword forging techniques while also making sickles for local farmers, though the city's own page notes that the exact year of his arrival is disputed. What is better documented is what came after: under the protection of the Fukui domain in the Edo period, blacksmith guilds organised in the district, and the city's own account credits lacquer tappers, who carried Echizen sickles with them on trips across the country to gather lacquer, with helping spread the sickles' reputation and sales nationwide. In January 1979, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry designated Echizen Uchihamono Japan's first nationally recognised Traditional Craft product among blade producing regions.

How does Masutani Hamono make its knives?

The method recorded for Echizen Uchihamono is a forging one: the blade steel is heated in a furnace, then hammered out and widened, with a double edged blade built up by folding two layers together before quenching, which is done by coating the steel with mud, then cooling it rapidly. Edge setting, sharpening and finishing are all done by hand under the same recorded method. Masutani Hamono's own account of its knives stays close to that description: each one, the workshop's own site says, is made carefully one at a time by a craftsman, thin yet springy, sturdy yet supple, with attention paid to how the knife looks as well as how it handles. The steels behind that are VG10 and VG1 stainless, and the workshop's own site credits VG10 with holding its edge for a long time, with every blade finished individually by an Echizen sharpener regardless of which steel it is cut from.

What do we carry from Masutani Hamono?

What we have on hand runs to seven knives across two steels. In VG10 there is the Kokuryu line: a 165mm nakiri, a 180mm gyuto and a 170mm santoku, each with a tsuchime hammered face over the VG10 core, plus a 135mm small santoku in the plainer Sairyu finish. In VG1 there is a Tsuchime line of its own: a 185mm gyuto, a 165mm nakiri and a 170mm santoku. Every knife in the range is sanmai construction, a stainless clad core, on a Western handle. Browse the knife collection to see the rest of the range we carry from other makers, since the shelf shifts as pieces sell through. Our guide to choosing a Japanese kitchen knife is worth a look if you are still deciding on a shape, and how to sharpen a Japanese knife alongside our guide to whetstones cover the waterstone routine that keeps the edge in shape.

How do you choose between a santoku and a gyuto?

Masutani Hamono's own guide to its range puts the santoku first for a first knife: light, easy to handle, and capable of vegetables, meat and fish alike, which is why the workshop calls it the shape most people already picture when they hear the word knife. Its own example runs a 170mm blade, the same length as the VG1 Tsuchime santoku we carry. A gyuto, the workshop's own guide says, grew out of Western cooking and carries a sharper point that goes into food more easily, suiting meat and fish preparation and cooks who already feel comfortable in the kitchen; its own example runs 185mm, again matching the VG1 Tsuchime gyuto on our shelves. Put simply, in the workshop's own words: choose a santoku for a first knife, and a gyuto if you want to get further into cooking. On steel, VG1 and VG10 sit close together in what they trade off; VG1 favours durability and corrosion resistance at a friendlier price, while VG10 favours an edge that holds longer, and either is a reasonable place to start.

What marks Masutani Hamono's work?

The workshop's own site names its finishes as options rather than one house style: tsuchime, the hammered face carried across both the Kokuryu VG10 and VG1 lines we stock, which the workshop describes as a finish where every hammer mark carries a trace of the craftsman's own hand; and sekisou, the rippled, layered face the workshop's own guide names among its options, which is the layered look our own listing calls Damascus cladding on the plainer Sairyu santoku. Every knife in the range we stock is sanmai, a core steel of VG10 or VG1 set inside softer stainless cladding, on a Western style handle. Masutani Hamono's own site also lists newer finishes it has added to the santoku and gyuto shapes since, including sekka, a snow crystal pattern, though those are not part of what we currently carry.