Many of you may not be aware of the brand “Sakai Jikko”, yet is a very well-known brand in the Japan domestic market with a long history of making premium professional kitchen knives in Sakai, Osaka. Established in 1901, it is now in the hands of the 4th generation owner Toshiyuki Jikko.
In the past years, they were mainly focused on the domestic market, as a result, many of us have barely heard of them until probably recently, yet, Jikko is among the biggest Sakai knife brands with a full range of single and double bevel knives in varies materials. It has a designer showroom / workshop in Sakai’s main street: Kishu Highway.
Upon entering the showroom, there are a few large grinding wheels and sharpening stations, if you are lucky, you can see the them doing some sharpening work.
The upper level is one of the most exquisite showroom of ANY kitchen knife maker in Japan. I was literally blown away by how much attention was paid to create such an impressive Japanese style showroom.
And of course there are a lot of super nice Jikko knives in there :)
Jikko also has a long history of partnering with some of the top Sakai makers. The late Tatsuo Ikeda (elder brother of Yoshikazu Ikeda) use to work mostly with Jikko and now his son Ryoichi Ikeda is doing the same. Kenichi Shiraki is another master that works a lot with Jikko, mostly responsible for Jikko’s Blue steel and honyaki blades.
Knives and Stones is very happy to work with Jikko and will introduce some very unique knives to my fellow customers.
[Restored October 2026: this 2016 post was lost in a site migration and has been brought back from the Internet Archive. The logo is the original image; the four photographs are our own, taken at Jikko in Sakai in October 2016.]