A Bunka Bocho knife is a Japanese all-purpose kitchen knife with a pointed, somewhat triangular-shaped, blocky tip and a medium-thick blade. Meant for home use, it can be used for meat, fish or vegetable.
Japanese Knives
Deba Bocho Knives
A Deba Bocho knife is a Japanese knife that is good for cutting through bone and skin. It can cut meat, fillet fish, and chop through fish bones. This is a knife that you would use to cut fish into large pieces, before switching to a finer knife to make thin sashimi slices.
Fugu Hiki Knives
Fugu hiki knives are specially designed for slicing poisonous fugu fish into very thin slices for sashimi. They have a thin, flexible blade.
Furutsu Naifu Knives
A Japanese fruit knife (“Furutsu naifu”) is a small inexpensive knife made and sold in Japan. It comes with a covering sheath for the blade to make the knife safely portable.
Gyuto Knives
Gyuto knives are Japanese knives which look somewhat similar to a French chef’s knife. They are used in restaurants to cut thin slices of meat and fish.
Japanese Knives
Japanese knives are prized for their craftmanship and technical refinement. Some Japanese knife makers have been in business 400 to 700 years.
Kazari Bocho Knives
Kazari Bocho Knives have long, rectangular blades that angle down to form a sharp tip at the very bottom, at the end of the cutting edge. They are used for making decorative cuts from vegetables. The technique is known in Japanese as “kazari-giri.”
Nakiri Knives
A nakiri knife is used in Japan for slicing, dicing and mincing vegetables in homes. It has a long, very thin blade. The tip can be rounded (Osaka-style) or square (Tokyo-style).
Oroshi Knives
An Oroshi knife is a Japanese all-purpose cooking knife, but used particularly for fish. It looks similar a European chef knife. The blade is about 9 inches (23 cm) long. It is sharpened on one side only. An oroshi knife can fillet a tuna fish in single cuts. Language Notes “Oroshi” in Japanese means “wholesale.”
Petty Knives
A petty knife is a Japanese paring knife. It is somewhat longer than Western paring knives. It is used for various fine tasks with vegetables and fruits such as peeling, slicing and shaping.
Soba Kiri Cleavers
Soba kiri knives are large, cleaver-like Japanese knives used to cut soba dough into thin long noodles. A wooden handle allows you to press directly down on the knife while you chop.
Unagisaki Hocho Knives
A Unagisaki knife is a special Japanese knife for filleting eel. The blade’s nose is a straight 45 degree angle from top to bottom.
Usuba Bocho Knives
A Japanese usuba knife is a thin-bladed knife designed to cut through vegetables and fruits without crushing the cells, which can lead to discoloration and loss of texture. The knife can make paper-thin slices. There are three different blade tip styles available.
Yasai Bocho Knives
A Yasai Bocho knife is a Japanese knife for chopping vegetables. It has a blade that is 15 cm (6 inches) long, about the height of a French chef’s knife, but that is completely rectangular, and square at the end. The handle is wooden. It looks like a stunted version of a cleaver.