A mukimono (剥き物), or mukimono knife, is a small single-bevel knife named after the craft it serves: mukimono is the Japanese art of peeling and decoratively cutting vegetables and fruit. The blade is thin, light and straight, with spine and edge running parallel and the front cut off at an angle down to a sharp point on the edge line. It is ground on one side with a concave ura on the other. 180mm is the most common length.
It is made for garnish and fine work: peeling in the hand, turning vegetables, carving decorative shapes and precise cuts with the point, while the straight edge still makes clean push cuts on the board. Compared with an usuba, it is thinner, shorter and more nimble, and its point does work a square-tipped Kanto usuba cannot. Compared with the kamagata usuba, its point comes from a straight angled front rather than a curved spine.
