Yu Kurosaki is an Echizen smith who has run his own workshop, Kurosaki Uchihamono, since founding it in 2014, and who was certified as a traditional craftsman in 2019. Our visits to his workshop go back to 2015, and on 10 June 2026 we visited his new studio.
Eleven years of visits
Our first visits to Kurosaki san were in 2015, in July and again in October. The October photos show him smiling with tongs in hand beside a large black power hammer and a red brick forge.
The old workshop as we knew it
The workshop we walked into in 2015 was a working smithy from wall to wall: a grey corrugated exterior with an open roller shutter, mustard yellow interior walls, a brick forge with a chimney pipe, heavy belt driven grinding machines, and a large mechanical press on a concrete plinth. In the forging clips from both 2015 visits he works glowing steel with tongs on an anvil under a power drop hammer, the forge fire roaring beside him.
The new studio, June 2026
The studio we were welcomed into on 10 June 2026 could not look more different from the outside. The entrance is a striking, minimalist concrete structure with bold calligraphy and clean geometric lines, and inside, the workshop's name, 黒﨑打刃物, is brushed in calligraphy on a concrete wall with a red seal beside it.
Outside, a quiet garden does the rest of the first impression: sunlight and leaves paint fleeting patterns on the concrete walls, and a solitary tree casts intricate shadows across them.
Inside, one part of the building is finished like a small gallery: a polished stone floor, cream colored cushions, a floor to ceiling glass wall, and a separate courtyard view with concrete, gravel and a leather armchair. The working half is just as considered. English signage reading SHARPENING ROOM hangs on the upper wall of a bright room with a polished concrete floor and large industrial grinding and buffing wheels near the station. Along the length of the workshop, dark walls and exposed silver ductwork frame multiple blue surfaced grinding benches, a rotating wheel finishing station, and a glass wall looking out to greenery, while a clean, industrial room stands lined with grinding machines and ventilation systems.
Knives on the wall and on the table
On a dark display wall hung finished knives with damascus blades, some on handles of natural wood set in clear resin. On a table nearby lay two hand forged blanks with a deep tsuchime texture, still waiting for their handles.
We were also shown a technical specification sheet for Takefu Special Steel's VG10W, the steel of the Raijin line we list.
What has changed, what has not
The forge fire and the power hammer of 2015 are not what we were shown in 2026, and we are not claiming they are gone. What struck us is how the same maker moved from a corrugated metal workshop to a concrete studio with a garden and a gallery, without the knives becoming anything other than working tools. His site describes his knives as Echizen forged knives made one by one by a craftsman's hand, with time and care, and in a 2022 interview with the magazine NIHONMONO he describes them in his own words as thin, sharp and tough.
Kurosaki lines we stock
We carry a lot of his work. His maker record credits five original designs, Shizuku, Fujin, Raijin, Juhyo and Senko, and we list two of those designs: the Raijin in VG10W with K&S Amboyna handles across gyuto, bunka, nakiri and petty sizes, and the Shizuku in SG2 in nakiri and petty sizes. Alongside them our active Yu Kurosaki catalog holds the Senko and Senko Ei lines in SG2/R2, the Gekko line in VG XEOS, the Fujin in SG2, the Kokusen and Kokusen Ei in Aogami Super, and the Sasame in COSP, from petty to sujihiki, in ebony, ironwood and special handle options. We also stock a small Makoto Kurosaki selection, the Samidorizuki SGStrix gyuto, santoku and petty plus the Coreless Kaen Tsuchime petty.
Read the rest of Echizen
If this whets your appetite for the town, we have written it up before. Our Japan Trip, July 2019, Day 2: Echizen (Takefu) covers a full day of workshops, and Yu Kurosaki and Four Other Takefu Knife Village Makers Receive the Dentokougeshi Award records the 2019 recognition. For the table rather than the forge, try our four At the Maker's Table posts: Tonkatsu Ebisu-an, Echizen, Dinner at Midoriya, Echizen, Ramen and Gyoza in Takefu, and Lunch by Echizen Harbour.