Sakai Takayuki White 3 Japan Kinse Yanagiba 270mm

A yanagiba (柳刃包丁) is a sashimi knife for slicing raw fish. A knife maker's guide says a sashimi knife cuts without breaking the fibres of the flesh, and that it is longer and narrower than other knives because slicing sashimi with crisp edges needs the length.

The whole length goes through one pulling cut. The Sakai cutlery association calls the yanagiba the sashimi knife used mainly in the Kansai region.

Size a yanagiba to the fish you prepare: a knife maker's guide gives 270 to 360 mm for professional use and 240 to 270 mm for home use, with 270 mm at home if you slice larger fish.

The guide says the whole length goes through one pulling cut, so do not choose too short a knife, and at home it points to the size of your board and your work space. We list the yanagiba (柳刃) from 210 to 360 mm, some made for left-handed use.

No. The Sakai cutlery association describes the yanagiba (柳刃包丁) edge as so acute that it cannot be used on hard things such as bones.

For bones the association describes the deba (出刃包丁), whose heel is used to hit them.

An encyclopedia describes sashimi knives as thin and narrow, calling the pointed ones yanagiba and the unpointed ones takohiki. A sakimaru takohiki is the rounded-tip variant, so it has a rounded point despite its takohiki name.

A trade body, the Sakai cutlery association, calls the takohiki (たこ引き包丁) the Kanto-type sashimi knife, and the yanagiba the sashimi knife used mainly in Kansai, with an acute edge that is not for bone.

A sujihiki is a long, double-bevel knife for dividing larger pieces of meat into their parts, and its length lets it slice sashimi too; a yanagiba is the sashimi knife.

The Sakai cutlery association describes the yanagiba (柳刃包丁) edge as so acute that it cannot be used on bone or other hard things, so choose the sujihiki for meat and the yanagiba if sashimi is the main job.

Proterial, which makes Shirogami 3 (白紙3号), lists it for chisels, sickles, axes, planes, gravers, kitchen knives and saws, and describes it as a carbon steel with minimum impurities and middle hardness.

Its page gives the steel 0.80 to 0.90% carbon, and as a carbon steel it can rust, so wash the knife and dry it after use.

White 1, White 2 and White 3 are Proterial's Shirogami 1, Shirogami 2 and Shirogami 3. Proterial lists carbon at 1.25 to 1.35% for Shirogami 1, 1.05 to 1.15% for Shirogami 2 and 0.80 to 0.90% for Shirogami 3, with the same silicon and manganese ranges for all three and no chromium listed.

Proterial describes all three as carbon steel with minimum impurities, at highest, high and middle hardness in that order, and gives a hardening hardness of over 60 HRC for each.

Sakai Takayuki (堺孝行) is a brand of Aoki Hamono Seisakusho (青木刃物製作所) in Sakai, Osaka, and the company's own page says so directly. The trademarks for 堺孝行 and 堺菊孝 were registered in 1964.

The company started in Osaka in 1947 as a wholesaler of Sakai forged knives, set up a sales office in Sakai in 1963, and built a factory in Sakai in 1977. So when you see the Sakai Takayuki name, that is Aoki Hamono's own line.