Know Your Knife: Anatomy of a Japanese Kitchen Knife

At first glance, the difference between a Japanese and a Western kitchen knife may seem slight, until you put them to use. 

The handle of a Japanese kitchen knife is a separate object, usually octagonal or D-shaped, friction-fit onto a hidden tang rather than sandwiched between riveted scales: light in the hand, replaceable when it wears out, and balanced forward toward the blade. There's no bolster. The spine runs thin. And the profile is flatter, with far less belly, because these knives are meant to be pushed and pulled through food rather than rocked against the board.

The steel is the real departure. Japanese blades are typically hardened well beyond what a German knife will tolerate, which buys an edge that takes a finer angle and holds it far longer, at the cost of some forgiveness—these are knives that chip rather than roll. Many are laminated, a hard cutting core clad in softer iron, and that construction leaves a visible line along the blade face where the two meet.

Which brings us to the vocabulary. Nearly every feature here has its own name, and the names are worth learning, because they tell you what the maker was thinking. The shinogi is where the bevel begins. The ago is the corner you use for scraping. The sori is the amount of curve you have to work with.