Japan's Knife Towns Compared: Sakai, Echizen, Tosa, Sanjo, Seki

Seki (関), in Gifu Prefecture, accounts for 46.2% of Japan’s recorded kitchen-knife shipments by value, and Gifu Prefecture as a whole for 57.4%. Those are the 2020 Census of Manufacture figures as Seki City’s industry report gives them. Yet Seki is the only one of the five knife towns in this guide with no Traditional Craft designation. So what does a town’s name on a knife tell you?

It tells you where the knife comes from, not how good it is. Sakai (堺), Echizen (越前), Tosa (土佐), Sanjo (三条) and Seki are often lumped together as “Japan’s knife towns”, but they began by making different things, work in different ways, and hold different official status. What you can check is the town name together with a named maker, and several of the town names are also registered regional trademarks. If you are still deciding which shape of knife you need, start with our guide to types of Japanese knives.

The five towns at a glance

Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry designates some products as dentōteki kōgeihin (伝統的工芸品, Traditional Crafts of Japan). Seven kinds of uchihamono (打刃物, hand-forged blades) are on the list: Echigo-Yoita, Echigo-Sanjo (越後三条), Shinshu, Echizen, Sakai, Banshu-Miki and Tosa. Four of our five towns are among them. Seki is not.

	Sakai	Echizen	Tosa	Echigo-Sanjo	Seki
Prefecture	Osaka	Fukui	Kochi	Niigata	Gifu
National Traditional Craft	Yes, 1982	Yes, 1979 (the first knife region)	Yes, 1998	Yes, 2009	No. “Seki no Hamono” is a regional collective trademark (2008)
Roots	Tobacco-cutting knives, from the 1570s	Sickles, said to date from 1337	Farm and forestry tools, early Edo period	Sickles, hoes and hand-forged nails, early Edo period	Swords, from the late Kamakura period
Known for	Professional kitchen knives, made by specialists	VG10 steel, developed in the city	Free forging to order	A wide range, from kitchen knives to planes and chisels	A sword-making tradition, and the largest recorded kitchen-knife shipments

Sakai (Osaka): one knife, many hands

Sakai’s story begins with smoke. The Portuguese brought firearms and tobacco to Japan in 1543, and from the Tenshō era (1573 onward) Sakai smiths were making tabako-bōchō (たばこ包丁), knives for shredding tobacco leaves. The Tokugawa shogunate let them sell under the Sakai-kiwame (堺極) stamp, and that mark made Sakai blades known across Japan. By the Edo period (1603–1868) the town was making deba (出刃, fish-butchering knives) and other cooking knives too.

Traditional Sakai knives are made by forge-welding a soft iron body (jigane, 地金) to a high-carbon steel edge (hagane, 刃金). The producers’ federation puts the town’s strength this way: skilled forging, plus sharpening that gets the most out of it, which is why Sakai is respected for high-end professional knives. Osaka’s tourism bureau passes on the often-heard figure that Sakai has around 90% of Japan’s market for the professional knives used in Japanese cuisine, while Sakai City says more cautiously that many professional cooks choose them.

What sets Sakai apart is the division of labour. Forging, sharpening (hatsuke, 刃付け) and handle-fitting are done by different craftsmen; the federation describes ten forging steps and seven sharpening steps. Smiths specialise too. In the federation’s words, Sakai smiths broadly divide into deba-ya (出刃屋), who make deba and other thick blades; moroha-ya (もろ刃屋), who make double-bevelled knives such as the vegetable knife nakiri, sushi knives and Chinese cleavers; and usuba-ya (薄刃屋), who make thinner blades such as yanagiba and usuba. Edo (Tokyo) knife-making is the contrast. A single Edo craftsman, the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education notes, carries out every step from forging to final sharpening.

The federation is also candid about the present. Asked in its Q&A what makes it hard to keep the craft going, it names a shortage of successors: “In Sakai, the craftsmen who will carry on the work are few enough to count.” It adds that even when people want the work, there are few places to take them on, and that demand for traditional Japanese-style knives (wabōchō, 和包丁) has fallen sharply now that supermarkets sell cut vegetables and prepared fish.

Echizen (Fukui): the first knife region on the list

Echizen’s origin story has a date and a name. In 1337, the Kyoto swordsmith Chiyozuru Kuniyasu (千代鶴国安) came to the area looking for a good place to make swords, and made sickles for the local farmers. During the Edo period the Fukui domain (福井藩) protected the trade, and Echizen blades were sold all over Japan.

In 1979 Echizen became the first blade-making region in Japan to be designated a Traditional Craft. Its listed products are sickles, hatchets, shears and kitchen knives, and the designation names two techniques of its own, mawashi-hagane-tsuke (廻し鋼着け) and nimai-hirogé (二枚広げ).

Echizen also matters for modern knife steel. Takefu Special Steel (武生特殊鋼材), based in the city, developed V-Gold No. 10 (V金10号, VG10), a stainless knife steel the maker says resists corrosion and is easy to sharpen. It also makes Super Gold 2 (SG2), a powder-metallurgy stainless steel. Takefu Knife Village (タケフナイフビレッジ), a shared workshop of 14 companies, is where visitors can see the work.

Tosa (Kochi): forged to order

Tosa’s blade-making grew fast in the early Edo period. The Genna reforms (元和改革) of 1621 promoted forest resources and new rice fields, and that raised demand for farming and forestry blades.

The craft was designated in 1998 and covers axes, saws, sickles, kitchen knives and hatchets. Its best-known method is jiyū tanzō (自由鍛造, free forging). Tosa smiths can make a tool from nothing more than an order sheet with the size and shape written on it. That lets the region make many kinds of tool in small numbers.

Echigo-Sanjo (Niigata): born in the off-season, built on nails

Sanjo’s craft grew out of the quiet months in the fields. From around the early Edo period the region made sickles and hoes, and farmers forged wakugi (和釘, traditional Japanese nails) when there was little farm work to do.

Echigo-Sanjo was designated in 2009, the most recent of the four. Its listed products show how wide the skills run: kitchen knives, kiridashi kogatana (切出小刀, small carving knives), kanna (鉋, planes), nomi (鑿, chisels), hatchets, sickles and nails.

Seki (Gifu): from swordsmiths to Japan’s biggest knife output

Seki dates its blade-making from sword-making in the late Kamakura and Nanbokuchō periods; tradition credits the swordsmith Motoshige (元重), who moved to the town. In the Muromachi period smiths such as Magoroku Kanemoto (孫六兼元) and Kanesada (兼定) worked here, and at its peak Seki had more than 300 swordsmiths in the Mino tradition (美濃伝). Their blades were said to “not break, not bend, and cut well.” When demand for swords fell in the Edo period, many smiths turned to kitchen knives, small knives and scissors, and pocket-knife production from the Meiji era made Seki a modern cutlery centre. Gifu Prefecture’s tourism site speaks of 700 years of Seki smithing.

“Seki no Hamono” (関の刃物, Seki cutlery) became a regional collective trademark in 2008. Seki City calls the town Japan’s number-one blade-making centre, and the census figures at the top of this guide bear that out. Local makers are also developing new knives in Damascus steel, so the old sword town is still making new things.

For comparison, the same census gives Osaka Prefecture 7.8%, Fukui 3.6%, Kochi 2.2% and Niigata 26.9% (a prefecture-wide figure, not Sanjo’s alone). It counts only businesses with four or more employees, so very small workshops fall outside it, and a town with many small workshops, such as Sakai, may look smaller here than it is. Read it as a guide to scale, not quality.

Visiting the knife towns

Most of the towns’ workshops and classes need booking, and some run only on irregular days. Read the official page before you plan around one. For what each session involves, prices and booking, see our guide to knife-making and sharpening experiences in Japan. Check it too for which places are closed or not taking bookings right now.

How to buy from a knife town

Use the town name as a check. The Japan Patent Office lists “Echizen Uchihamono” (越前打刃物), “Seki no Hamono”, “Sakai Uchihamono” (堺打刃物), “Sakai Hamono” (堺刃物) and “Tosa Uchihamono” (土佐打刃物) as regional collective trademarks, held by local groups rather than by individual firms. So a listing that names a town together with a maker or smith gives you something you can verify; “Japanese steel” does not. Our checklist on how to tell if a Japanese knife is really made in Japan covers the trademarks and the certification sticker. If you buy from abroad, pick a shop that names the town and the maker for each knife.

Plan for resharpening. Kiya (木屋) of Tokyo accepts only knives it sells, and Sakai Denshokan (堺伝匠館) takes knives in every day but does the sharpening at weekends. None of the pages we read mentions orders from abroad, so check each counter’s terms first; our care and sharpening guide covers resharpening in full.

The five towns, one line each

• Sakai: one knife passing through the hands of a smith, a sharpener and a handle maker.
• Echizen: from sickles in 1337 to the home of VG10 steel.
• Tosa: a smith who can forge whatever the order sheet asks for.
• Echigo-Sanjo: off-season nails that grew into a town of knives, planes and chisels.
• Seki: swordsmiths first, now the largest recorded kitchen-knife shipments in Japan.