Sukenari ZDP-189 Hairline K-tip Gyuto 240mm, Ebony Handle with Blonde/Marble Ferrule

Not quite - and it is the single most common point of confusion when people shop for a kiritsuke. The two knives share the same striking angled, reverse-tanto tip, but underneath that tip they are very different tools.

A K-tip gyuto is normally a double-bevel knife: it is ground on both sides like any Western-style chef's knife, so it is forgiving to use, and sharpened exactly the way you would sharpen a normal gyuto. You get the dramatic kiritsuke look with the everyday usability of an all-purpose chef's knife.

A traditional kiritsuke, including the kiritsuke-yanagiba (slicer), is a single-bevel knife, ground on one side only. It is historically a master chef's knife: it takes real practice to use well, is set up for right-handed users by default, and needs single-bevel sharpening technique to maintain.

So if you want the kiritsuke silhouette with no learning curve, choose a K-tip gyuto. If you specifically want the traditional single-bevel discipline - and the precision it allows on fish and vegetables - choose a true kiritsuke. At Knives and Stones we stock both, and each product page tells you which construction you are looking at.

ZDP-189 is a powder metallurgy steel. Proterial lists the carbon at 3.00% and the chromium at 20.00%, and does not list the other elements. Proterial gives a hardening hardness of over 65 HRC.

Knife Steel Nerds' testing puts roughly 30% of the steel as carbide. In Knife Steel Nerds' CATRA test it scored 162% against 440C, where 440C is 100%, but it stayed below S90V, which Larrin Thomas attributes to chromium carbides adding less to edge retention than vanadium carbides. In Knife Steel Nerds' water-spray test the steel rusted, and Larrin Thomas judged that it does not qualify as stainless. He notes that Hitachi's own corrosion data looked better than his result.

It suits a cook who already sharpens on stones and treats knives gently. We would not make it your first Japanese knife. Our SG2 vs ZDP-189 page has the full comparison.

On Proterial's own figures, ZDP-189 carries 3.00% carbon and 20.00% chromium, with the molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium and cobalt figures kept closed.

Proterial describes it as a stainless blade steel made by a powder metallurgy process, lists its hardening hardness as over 65 HRC, and gives it for custom knives and high-quality cutlery tools.

They come from different steelmakers, and both are made by powder metallurgy. Takefu lists SG2 as a blade steel created by powder metallurgy, with its composition not disclosed; SG2 runs 61 to 65 HRC depending on the maker.

Proterial describes ZDP-189 as a stainless blade steel made by powder metallurgy, lists 3.00% carbon and 20.00% chromium with its other elements not published, and gives a hardening hardness of over 65 HRC.

Sukenari's own site carries both names together, titled the official site of 株式会社スケナリ with 佑成 named as a registered trademark. 佑成 is the house mark that appears on the blades.

So one house answers to both names: Sukenari is the company, 株式会社スケナリ, working from Fuchu machi in Toyama City, and 佑成 is its mark on the steel.

Yes. Sukenari says its knives are made by craftsmen by hand, one at a time, at its workshop in Fuchu machi, Toyama City.

The Sukenari lines we stock carry the workshop name in their titles.

The workshop says the 佑 of its registered mark 佑成 (read Sukenari) is written with the person radical and 右, right, and that the character carries the wish for its tools to become the cook's indispensable right arm.

The company's own site title reads 登録商標 佑成 (registered trademark), and 佑成 is the house mark on its blades.