Yu Kurosaki

The story

Yu Kurosaki (黒崎優) found his trade in a job listing. He told the story to NHK himself: he was at the public employment office, a posting for Echizen uchihamono caught his eye, and a knife bore an engraving that read by Kintaro of Echizen. The man who made it became his first master.

He comes from Sabae, in Fukui. The Takefu Knife Village profile records twelve years of training at Kanehiro Uchihamono (カネ弘打刃物) from 2002 before he founded his own workshop, 黒﨑打刃物, in 2014, and the business became a company in May 2020. The national directory of traditional craftsmen records his certification in Echizen forged blades on 25 February 2019. James, who deals with him, says he trained under both Hiroshi Kato and Takeshi Saji. His company's legal notice lists 株式会社黒﨑打刃物 in Echizen City, with him as president.

The same profile lists the knife shows he has exhibited at since 2009, among them Seki, Taiwan and Matsumoto, and from 2016 sharpening and forging demonstrations in Europe, Canada and Hong Kong, with an exhibition in New York.

In his own words to NHK, until then no one had been polishing tsuchime knives up to a luster, and he wanted to make knives that were like jewellery. In a 2022 NIHONMONO interview he named five designs as his own, Shizuku, Fujin, Raijin, Juhyo and Senko, and described his knives as thin, sharp and tough.

His own store lists the series he makes now: Senko, Shin-Gekko, Shizuku, Juhyo, Fujin and Raijin, across petty, bunka, nakiri, gyuto, sujihiki and kataha, with outdoor knives and sharpening stones alongside them. We carry a lot of his work, including Senko, Fujin and Shizuku in SG2, Raijin in VG10W, Gekko in VG XEOS, Kokusen in Aogami Super and Sasame in COSP.

NHK records a Ginza sushi restaurant that asked him for jet-black lacquered knives, a job that ran about a year and needed a lacquer artisan working alongside the smith, and names clients in Tokyo and San Francisco. He told NHK that international customers made up 70 per cent of his orders and that he had five apprentices.

His name is 黒崎優, and his company's name uses a variant of the surname character, 黒﨑打刃物. His elder brother, Makoto Kurosaki (黒崎真), is a sharpener.