Okay, back to where I started at the beginning: arriving in Kyoto. We visited Nishiki market, ate some great food, and then began making the knife store rounds. In the first day we walked for about six hours, ate at two restaurants and visited five knife shops. They were all fun and interesting, but I didn’t see anything that really pulled my culinary heartstrings. In fact, after seeing nearly as many knife stores in one afternoon as I’d seen so far in my whole life, I was getting a bit dispirited. Most of the Kyoto shops felt more like souvenir peddlers than real blood, sweat, and steel blade forgers. Perhaps my problem stemmed from the fact that I already had eight different knives, each woven into a different time or experience of my gastronomic development. Unfortunately I just wasn’t seeing anything that felt really original or particularly essential for me. But I still enjoyed visiting the different shops and talking to the vendors there, so it was far from wasted effort.

On the second day of our three-day trip we woke early and headed back to the market for breakfast. The previous day left me feeling a little drained in the blade department, so we made the more usual Kyoto sights our first priority. It was a rainy day but we didn’t let that deter us. After about three hours of wandering around, ogling the ancient structures and monuments, Mariko pulled out her maps and once again we set out in search of Japanese steel.

It was about five thirty when we reached Yasushige. The sky was overcast and a cold wind blew mercilessly. My legs ached. I was tired and hungry, on the verge of collapse, or death, or something worse – the abandonment of my Kyoto knife-dream. The last two knife shops on our itinerary for the day were located about a block from one another one the same street. They shared not only the street, but similar names: Shigeharu and Yasushige. The former was more well-known than the latter, and was also one of the three on my own meager list. I had some reserved hope for it, as I’d heard that Shigeharu was a more authentic hole-in-the-wall than most other Kyoto kniferies. I didn’t know anything about Yasushige, and the shop itself looked weathered, perhaps closed, and at the very height of positive thinking, unwelcoming.

Mariko and I decided to go first to the less promising of the two in order to get it out of the way. We suspected that it wasn’t even open, as the signboard outside was unlit. “Maybe the place is just so old that they don’t have electricity?” I ventured. We chuckled, but that turned out to be slightly truer than I imagined.

We peeled back the outdoor curtain and peered inside the small glass panels of Yasushige’s sliding storefront door. It was dim inside. There was a bicycle parked in the corner. The knife display case was small, unlit, and cluttered. I was about to declare the place abandoned when Mariko jumped. “Eek!” she grabbed my arm and then whispered, “There’s a ghost in there!” I looked in the direction she indicated, and sure enough, an old man, pale and haggard, sat cross legged on a section of raised flooring just beyond a low display counter full of scissors. He fiddled, focused and deliberate, with some metal object upon an impromptu desk made from a toaster-sized wooden block.

We were debating whether or not to enter or flee when the old man noticed us. Without really looking up, making eye contact, or even ascertaining that we were in fact customers, he made a swift jerk of a wave with his hand, and with that we were drawn into the shop.

It was quiet inside to the point that the sliding and scraping of the door was deafening. The place was obviously old, but didn’t smell of dust, moth balls, or wood stain like most old buildings do. It felt ancient but sturdy, well cared-for despite the cluttered knife cabinet and haphazard displays.

“Konnichiwa…” Mariko and I both murmured as we crept inside. The man returned the greeting. Mariko asked if the store was open for business.

“Yeah, sure,” the man said. Actually, I’m not sure if those are the actual words he said. The truth is, he spoke with a heavy Kansai accent, which for Mariko was difficult to understand, and thus incomprehensible to me. But I could catch words here and there and was able to fill in a lot of blanks by reading his intonation, body language and general atmosphere. So, my apologies, but what I’ll present here is more or less my reconstruction of the gist of the conversation.

“Where are you all from?” the old man asked, still poised with his tools.

“Shizuoka,” Mariko replied.

“Huh?” the man asked.

“Shizuoka,” Mariko said more slowly.

“What?”

“Uh… Shi-zu-o-ka,” she said.

“Are you foreigners?”

“I’m not. He is,” she said, looking to me. “He really likes cooking and Japanese knives, though,” she added.

“Hmph,” the man grunted. “Oh, Shizuoka. Ok, ok.” Mariko and I looked at each other. Both our looks said, ‘He still didn’t get it.’

“Have a seat, don’t just stand around,” the man said, waving his palm at a row of chairs situated beside the display counter. The shop had a unique setup. I’d never seen a place where the proprietor works out on the sales floor, or where there are chairs for customers to sit facing the work area. But that spot was clearly one of his primary work spaces. Hammers, pliers, and chisels were strewn all around him on the right, and on his left was a pile of half-finished thread snippers. Behind him rose a heavy, dark wooden shelving unit. Some shelves were big, some were small, and more than half of them had the finish rubbed off around the worn brass handles. Not scratched – the finish was worn off by what could only have been years of fingers grazing one spot as they reached to open a drawer. Just looking at the various levels of wear – on some drawers the wood around the handle was white, on others a hazel, and others the finish was only beginning to fade — I could imagine the level of utility of each drawer’s contents. But besides that, the unit was in pristine condition, beautiful and ancient-looking.

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’re just looking today.”

“I don’t care,” the old man sighed. “Have a seat if you like.” I felt like leaving. I couldn’t really see into the knife cabinet, but what I could see looked old, disorganized, not at all like the immaculate red velvet, magnetized displays I’d seen at the other shops. I wouldn’t even know what to ask to see, I thought. And that’s where the mystical difference of Yasushige began to emerge.

I was busy staring intently at the knife case, so the old man asked Mariko how long we were in town. “We got here yesterday morning and will head out tomorrow night,” she said. He seemed surprised.

“Three days, eh? Not bad.”

“Yeah, we’ve been seeing the sights, eating the food, and visiting the, well…” she paused, “kitchen stores… around town.”

“That’s good,” the man said. “There are lots to see.” He turned his gaze to me and eyed me for a moment. “Why don’t you quit looking over there and come have a seat?” he offered again, this time somewhat less cordially. I was anxious to get over to Shigeharu and see what they had to offer before it got too late, but I felt somewhat ensnared by the old man. I looked at Mariko. She shrugged. We both sat down at the counter. The old man set down his tools and looked us over.

“So what brought you here?” he asked. I only understood the question once Mariko had answered it and I’d been able to use that context and go back over what he’d said originally.

“Cooking is his hobby,” she said, “so we like visiting places like this.”

“Yeah,” I chimed in rather awkwardly, “I really like Japanese food. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons I came to Japan. To learn about food and cooking, I mean.” The old man gave me a strained look. I think it was as difficult for him to understand my Japanese as it was for me to understand his. At last he responded.

“How long are you going to be here?”

“In Kyoto, or uh… Japan?” I asked.

“Japan.”

“At least two years,” I said. “But, I’ve only been here eight months so far, so it’s hard to say…”

“Hmmph,” the man grunted. He shifted his weight around and leaned his elbow on one knee.

“How old is this store?” Mariko asked.

“Ah,” the man said. “Well, yes, here, this store was built about 300 years ago.” He spread his arms, as if to embrace everything around him and bring it into his story. Every gesture he made, every word he spoke had an unusual sense of being both deliberate and quite natural. “Even a lot of the stuff inside here, that cabinet, and this big chest of drawers behind me,” he waved casually over his shoulder to indicate the complex of worn little drawers, “it’s the same age, 300.” His speech built momentum, driving forward into what seemed like an often-practiced, yet sincere account of his family business. “We started out forging swords when the capital was still located here, and later when swords were banned we switched to making tools and kitchen knives. But it’s the same technique, that’s never changed. A lot of the other families and companies here have changed their techniques, switched to machine presses. But I still do things the old way.”

At this point he was speaking about 30 percent to me and the rest to Mariko. I couldn’t understand much of what he said, but she explained later. After World War II, he said, the infatuation with western powers and methodologies caused many knife makers to abandon the “old” hand forging techniques and start mass producing blades with machine presses. Yasushige, however, was one of the few who stuck to its roots and kept pounding out knives by hand. Unfortunately, that meant production was slow and didn’t result in a perfect knife every time. So the makers who used western techniques became more widespread throughout Japan.

When there was a pause in conversation I asked if I could see a 30 cm yanagiba sashimi knife. He frowned. “Hmm… I’m sure there’s one here somewhere.” He rose, surprisingly spry for his age, and moved to the knife case. He slid open the glass panel door and began sifting through the stacks of knives, with a hand as unabashed and familiar as someone rooting for a certain necktie in their closet, rather than a razor sharp piece of steel. A moment later he emerged with a knife that looked exactly like what I had in mind. He set it on the counter before me and began explaining that it was the sort of knife created specifically for cutting delicate things like raw fish; that if used for anything else, its spectacular hardness made it prone to chipping and cracking.

As I held the knife, I was at first skeptical about the material. The steel had a slightly unfamiliar sheen and texture. The weight and balance were also unusual but suited me quite well. Another surprise was that the blade itself was oiled. I knew that this was common practice to prevent the steel from rusting if it was to be stored for an extended period of time. But this was my first time to encounter an oiled blade in a shop. I would find out later that this particular knife was 30, perhaps even 40 years old. In any case, it was surely created before I was born.

“Is this knife made of white or blue steel?” I asked. The difference is somewhat arcane, but does make a big difference when it comes to blade hardness and difficulty of sharpening.

“What? Neither!” he scoffed. “I never use that kind of steel. It’s cheap, worthless! I only use Swedish steel, which is much higher quality. Plus, it’s hand-hammered, so the steel doesn’t have any of the impurities you might find in a pressed blade.” He went on to explain that not every knife he makes lives up to his expectations – his ideal knife.

When forging a knife by hand, the old man explained, a huge number of factors come into play and affect the resulting blade. Not only the skill of the forger, but the season, humidity, temperature, precipitation, elevation, mood of the craftsman, what he had to eat for lunch, whether or not he has a headache, and a hundred other things can have a significant impact on the finished product. That’s what makes a hand-forged knife so special. All of these factors combine to result in a knife that is either an unparalleled masterpiece, or a disappointment that’s below machine press grade.

And so he has a number of perfectly functional, quality blades that turned out somewhat differently than the perfect blade held in his mind’s eye – maybe the width of the spine is slightly off, or a scar appears during the hammering process – and these he’s willing to sell at a lower price. This particular yanagiba wasn’t a masterpiece, he said, but was still far superior to anything that could be produced by a press. “If you buy this knife,” he grinned, “and then go to work in a restaurant, everyone will say, ‘Where did you get that knife?! Amazing!’” He beamed at me.

The bit about Swedish steel explained the difference in weight and texture for me. I learned about that sort of steel while researching brands like Misono, which are famous for their use of it.

“So, because this is Swedish steel, does that mean it doesn’t rust?” I asked.

“Of course it rusts,” he replied, taken aback. “You can never have it both ways. A stainless knife if worthless if you really care about sharpness.”

All this was beginning to feel like a hard sales pitch to me. He was throwing out a lot of unusual information. I’d never heard of a traditional Japanese blade being forged of Swedish steel. But despite that he seemed genuinely passionate about his craft, and deep down I really wanted to believe in him. Under his heavy, wrinkled brow, the old man’s eyes sparkled and rolled affectionately, his voice leaping with enthusiasm as he talked about his work and his knives.

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