Makoto Kurosaki (黒崎真) is a professional sharpener based at Takefu Knife Village in Echizen, Fukui, where he runs his own sharpening workshop, Style K, opened in 2018. He is the older brother of blacksmith Yu Kurosaki, and his work shows a family eye for clean, crisp knife design, but his own role is the one behind the edge: taking forged blades and grinding and sharpening them into knives that actually cut. His Kaen line, with its hexagonal tsuchime patterns and VG10/VG2 coreless damascus, pairs that clean look with thin, light geometry.

In 2020 he was certified a Dento Kogeishi (traditional craftsman), and his recent lines use modern steels such as Takefu's SPG Strix powdered stainless, hardened to 63-65 HRC while keeping a carbon-like sharpening feel. The workshop is now organised as Echizen Kurosaki K.K. (越前くろさき). He is a sharpener (togishi), not a blacksmith, so his craft is the finishing that turns a forged blank into a working knife.