TokifusaIizuka飯塚解房

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The story

Tokifusa Iizuka (飯塚解房) founded Shigefusa (重房), the three-man family forge in Sanjo, Niigata, whose kitchen knives are among the hardest to find in the world. They are hard to find for a simple reason: a father and two sons make roughly a thousand blades a year, almost entirely by hand.

Born in Sanjo in 1942, Iizuka joined the Sanjo Seisakusho workshop in 1961 and apprenticed under the razor-smiths Kōsuke and Shigeyoshi Iwasaki, father and son, before founding his own forge in 1964. Niigata Prefecture certified him a Master Craftsman of Niigata (にいがたの名工) in 2007 and a Traditional Craftsman (伝統工芸士) in 2012, and he has served as a master instructor (師範) of the Sanjo Blacksmith Collective. Today his elder son Masayuki (正行) and second son Yoshihide (佳英) stand at the forge as successors.

The process runs to roughly thirty distinct stages. Iron and steel are forge-welded in the hearth under hand- and spring-hammer. The blade face is flattened with a sen (銑), a two-handled hand scraper used where most workshops reach for a grinder, and finishing runs through progressively finer Japanese waterstones. Iizuka once bought a surfacing machine. It sits unused.

The steel is part of the mystique: the workshop has never formally identified it. It is widely reported to be a Swedish carbon steel, hardened around 63 to 64 HRC. Iizuka himself just calls it "spicy".

Collectors also study the kanji. Here is the rule as we know it firsthand, and the collector guides bear it out: Shigefusa mei are stamped, except single-bevel kitaeji knives, which are hand-chiseled and carry an extra 作 ("made") character. Some blades also carry 三条製作所 (Sanjo Seisakusho) or 特製 (special make) stamps.

We don't sell Shigefusa. Almost nobody reliably can. We tell the story because Sanjo's forging tradition, from the Iwasaki razor lineage to the sen and the natural-stone finish, is the same well our own Sanjo makers draw from.