Hatsukokoru Kaijin Blue 2

Hatsukokoro Kaijin(海神, Sea God), is a rather budget friendly line for its name, it has a pretty plain look with polished edge and sandblasted bevel, and zero additional design feature. But I have to say, if your next knife purchase is all about performance, this can deliver it at a price that is very hard to beat.

The key in a good cutting knife is the combination of an edge that cuts aggressively and a bevel geometry that penetrates and releases off food smoothly, and Kaijin does both fairly well. The steel choice is Blue No.2, a common carbon steel produced by Hitachi that excels at producing a really “bitey” edge. This type of edge can slice open soft items like proteins and tough surfaces like skins, and it’s an experience that stainless steel just couldn’t deliver. 

The magic of simple carbon steel is, they can be heat treated to a higher hardness and still retain a more decent toughness than most of the conventional stainless steel, this means they can perform when the edge gets pretty thin. In this case, it is exactly what Kaijin did. The bevel of Kaijin gets sharpened to a very low thickness near the edge, and this thickness gradually increases, transitions into two parallel surfaces. This type of convex grind and an extremely low thickness behind the edge is the key in delivering a smooth food penetration and food release, and it’s not an exception in the case of Kaijin. Although in some cases the very thin slice of food would stick to the flat zone of the blade, this still outperformed most of the knives we’ve tested on potatoes outside of the ones with more complicated hand grinded bevel.

Completing the package is the latest dyed and stabilized blue curly maple handle, paired with an elegant stainless steel ferrule. This modern handle not only looks striking but also improves durability and balance, it is our interpretation of "the ocean", adding significant value and complete the blade into one refined package.

Despite the carbon steel core used on the Kaijin, I still consider it as a rather practical line as the cladding is stainless. So the downside of the line really is the small amount of care needed to keep the exposed core steel dry and clean and a rather delicate edge that can’t handle much of a beating. I recommend this knife to anyone who already has some experience on an entry level VG10 or other stainless steel, and looking to upgrade into a carbon steel. This Kaijin line would deliver the desired smooth cut while keeping the maintenance and cost very manageable.