Yoshikane White 2 KU Nashiji Honesuki 150mm Stainless Clad Ebony by Hatsukokoro

Yoshikane is a knife maker in Sanjo, Niigata, founded in 1919 by the first generation, Kanekichi Yoshida, in the district of Shimotajima. More than a century later the company still works from Sanjo, and it has been incorporated as Yoshikane Hamono K.K. since 2022. Kazuomi Yamamoto (山本和臣) has held the name as the fourth generation since 2013.

In his greeting, Yamamoto writes that Sanjo is known nationwide as a hardware town, a standing that comes from the history of the smiths who made blades and carpentry tools and the hardware wholesalers who traded them, carrying the work from one region across the country. He says Yoshikane has carried on the old Sanjo smithing line through its century of work, making knives one by one by traditional methods, and its site says its craftsmen make each knife by hand. Yamamoto works under the motto Fueki Ryuko (不易流行), which he explains in his own way: amid the way things change at speed, some things stay firmly the same. He writes that in the knife making he puts his care into, he tests the deep meaning of those words every day.

The company's own history marks 1919 as the year it began making Japanese knives under a brand of its own and as OEM work for Sanjo hardware wholesalers; 1922, when the second generation took the name and the company added two further house brands; 1948, when the third generation began making double bevel knives; and 2002, when it moved to the Kaneko Shinden industrial estate and showed at Ambiente in Germany under the Yoshikane name, which began its export in earnest.

The Yoshikane knives we list are the Hatsukokoro x Yoshikane SKD Nashiji line in gyuto, K-tip gyuto, santoku, bunka, petty and sujihiki, along with a White 2 Nashiji sujihiki, and the Yoshikane White 2 Nashiji knives, some stainless clad and some under the Hatsukokoro name, in bunka, nakiri, petty and sujihiki.