KAIZEN Hamono · 改善 · continuous improvement
Fire, water,
patience.
Twelve smiths in Seki forge three hundred kitchen knives a year — by hand, one billet at a time.
(01) — The atelier
Twelve smiths.Three hundredknives a year.
Seki has made blades for seven hundred years. We are a small part of that: one forge, one stone room, and the slow habit of making each knife a little better than the last. That habit has a name — kaizen.
By Mori Tetsuo, in a shed behind his house in Kajiya-machi.
Four forge, four grind, two sharpen, two fit handles.
Never more. The waiting list is eleven weeks.
Sixty-four folds of Damascus around a hard carbon core.
(02) — Fold after fold
1layers
One bar of steel
Heat, hammer flat, cut, stack, forge-weld. Six folds make sixty-four layers; wrapped around a hard core of carbon steel they make sixty-seven.
(03) — The collection
Six shapes,one hand.
Every knife is forged, ground and sharpened by the same smiths. Choose the shape for the way you cook.
All knives ↗
240 mm · from €1,180Gyuto 牛刀
The chef’s knife.
180 mm · from €980Santoku 三徳
Three virtues: meat, fish, vegetables.
165 mm · from €920Nakiri 菜切
A square blade for vegetables.
135 mm · from €640Petty ペティ
The small one.
300 mm · from €1,460Yanagiba 柳刃
The willow-leaf blade for raw fish.
190 mm · from €1,040Bunka 文化
The santoku’s sharper cousin: a reverse-tanto tip for fine work, a flat edge for everything else.
鍛 · The forge
The fire is litat five.
(04) — On the stone · 研
220grit
Arato — shaping the bevel
Edge sharpness
0% · four stones, two hours
(05) — The smiths
Fourth generation,first light.
Mori Kenji took the hammer from his grandfather in 1994. He still forges every yanagiba himself.
Around him, eleven smiths — the youngest twenty-four, the oldest seventy-one — each with a mark struck into the tang of every knife they touch.
Meet the smiths ↗In the forge
“A knife is never finished. It is only finished for today.”
Mori Kenji · master smith
(06) — Commission
Forged forone kitchen.
Choose the shape, the steel and the handle wood. We engrave your name in the blade and send you a photograph from every stage — the billet, the quench, the stone.
Eleven to sixteen weeks from the first fire to your door.
Configure your knife ↗
