Takamura Chromax Tsuchime Santoku 170mm

Both are all-purpose Japanese knives, and for most home cooks either will handle the bulk of daily prep. The choice comes down to length, blade shape, and how you like to cut.

A gyuto is the Japanese chef's knife, with a gently curved edge that lets you rock and slide through cuts as well as chop. Tojiro's guide to Western knife shapes gives 150 to 210mm as the household size for a gyuto and up to 360mm for professional use. The extra length and pointed tip give you reach and versatility, from proteins to large produce.

Tojiro's guide to Japanese knife shapes gives 165 to 170mm as the household size for a santoku, which has a flatter profile and a rounded sheep's-foot tip. It rewards a straight up-and-down push cut, feels nimble in smaller hands or tight kitchens, and is the classic Japanese household knife.

Rule of thumb: choose a gyuto if you want one do-everything knife with more reach, or a santoku if you prefer a compact, easy-to-control blade. Plenty of our customers end up owning both.

Match the shape to your stroke. Rock chopping keeps the tip on the board and rolls the curved belly through the food, so a gyuto or a Western chef's knife suits it, and Japanese knives rock fine as long as you rock gently.

Up-and-down chopping, the Chinese style, wants a straight run of edge, so a nakiri, usuba, santoku or bunka suits it better; a curved edge chopped straight down easily leaves pieces joined. Neither shape is better; it depends on how you cut.

A Japanese dictionary explains the name of the santoku (三徳包丁) as coming from the three things it handles: meat, fish and vegetables. The same dictionary entry points from the santoku to the bunka (文化包丁), treating the two as one knife.

One Japanese knife maker guide distinguishes the two by the tip. It says that in the Showa era the bunka was made with its tip cut at an angle, and the santoku came after it by rounding that tip.

Not fully, which is why our Chromax steel page calls it semi-stainless. Takefu calls this stainless-clad composite Stainless Chromax: a core of its V-Gin1, Gin2 or V-Gin3B steel clad in soft stainless steel, with the core forming the cutting edge.

Those core steels carry 4.5 to 8% chromium, under the 10.5% that defines stainless steel, so the edge can rust, though Takefu says V-Gin1 resists corrosion far better than carbon steel. Dry the knife after washing.

The workshop is known by the mark 高村作, read Takamura saku, which means made by Takamura. The workshop's own site introduces Takamura Hamono Seisakujo by that mark.

The site tells how the founder, Isamu, set the workshop up after the Second World War, and speaks of his three sons.