Japanese Knives

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.

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 are specially designed for slicing poisonous fugu fish into very thin slices for sashimi. They have a thin, flexible blade.

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 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.

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).

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 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.

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.