Yoshihiro KSMC Yanagi knife 210mm Japanese kitchen knife

The Yoshihiro brand is at the forefront of modern kitchen knife making, combining the age-old art of traditional Japanese sword-making techniques with cutting-edge metallurgy.
Yoshihiro's philosophy is that every moment is a unique opportunity. One knife - you can save a lifetime. Yoshihiro specialists strive to ensure that this single knife would be Yoshihiro's knife. Yoshihiro excels in one of the most difficult skills to master, knife making, as she inherited the Japanese tradition of beauty and perfection better than anyone.

Yoshihiro is a company that specializes in making premium handcrafted Japanese kitchen knives. For over 100 years, the Yoshihiro brand of knives has been Japan's leading supplier of high quality kitchen cutlery. However, it wasn't until 2008 that Yoshihiro began selling its knives to the global market, offering over 600 premium Japanese knives. Despite the use of the most advanced technologies on Yoshihiro's production lines, the production of kitchen knives remains, at its core, handmade, with an individual approach of the master to each blade. The origins of the technique used to create Yoshihiro knives can be traced back to medieval Japanese sword smiths of the 14th century, who perfected fire, iron and water techniques. Over the course of 700 years, sword smiths gradually transferred their technology to knives, and the spirit of Japanese sword making permeated the creation of kitchen knives.
Yoshihiro kitchen knives are the culmination of seven centuries of tradition, intertwined with modern innovation inspired by Japanese ingenuity.

One of the varieties of Japanese kitchen exotics are knives for cutting sashimi - Sashimi bocho. This knife is designed for cutting fresh raw fish into very thin slices. The knife has a long, thin and narrow blade, one-sided sharpening with a small angle of descent, since for such cutting the knife must have exceptional sharpness. In order for the cut piece of fish to look perfect, it is necessary to cut in one go. Therefore, the Sashimi bocho knife has a large length (from 200 to 400mm). The most famous variety of Sashimi bocho is Yanagiba - Yanagiba. There are also highly specialized modifications of this knife for cutting certain types of sea inhabitants - octopuses, tuna, puffer fish. This is not to say that the Yanagiba is a vital tool in European cuisine, but its exceptionally aggressive look and extreme sharpness fascinates, and without this knife, the set of Japanese cooks looks inferior.

Yoshihiro's Yanagiba kitchen knives are made from a steel called white paper or Shiro Kami, which is the traditional steel used for this type of knife, as it can provide the greatest sharpness, which is the defining parameter of this knife. Such sharpness characteristics cannot be given by more expensive types of steels such as Aogami (Ao Kami or blue paper). Various varieties of Aogami steel are much better at holding sharpening and resisting blunting, but lose out to Shirogami in the sharpness that can be achieved on the blade. The blade is two-layer, traditional for one-sided type of sharpening. On the concave side - a harder layer, on the convex - softer. Yanagiba knives have one-sided sharpening, which is not quite common for a European user, but does not beg for all the other positive qualities of the knife, and besides, you can get used to it quite quickly.

The length of the Yanagiba blade from Yoshihiro is 210mm, which is not as much as for Sashimi bocho, but often chefs like this knife so much that they make it the main one in their kitchen, and in this case, this knife length is more convenient and quite justified. The blade height is 30mm, and the width in the butt is 3mm. The knife has a magnolia handle, traditional for Japanese kitchen workers, with a plastic bolster. The handle is untreated and before use, it is better to impregnate it with special oil. The handle, the so-called D-type, i.e. with a protrusion for a more comfortable grip. Both this type of protrusion (the side on which it is made), and the one-sided sharpening option, are made for work with the right hand - i.e. under the right The weight of the knife is 120 grams. The knife is sharpened and ready to go.