Kyoto A-GoGo Pt.3
I held the yanagiba in my hand, gauging its weight and trying to get a feel for the length. As I did so, I inadvertently glanced over at the knife cabinet to see if there were any other knives that I could test my first impression against.
“Don’t look over there,” the old man said, “what you want is in front of you.” He stabbed his index finger in my direction, and then dismissed the cabinet with a flick of his wrist. “Don’t think about those.”
“I do really like this knife,” I said, “but I’m also interested in seeing what other kinds you have.”
“No,” he sighed. “You should just stop thinking and buy this one. 13,000 yen is a steal for it. You’ll never find that kind of price for a knife like this anywhere.” His tone and face showed more exhaustion than eagerness to make a sale. He sat, reclined at his wooden block workbench. His head a neck craned forward, nodding vigorously as he spoke words like, “quality,” “old days,” and “life’s work.”
“This knife isn’t my best work,” he said heavily, “but you’re both young and a foreigner. You don’t need a top quality knife. In fact, that’s a waste. But this is, by any standard, an excellent knife. I picked it out because I felt that it fit you.” All this he said with a weary expression, not unlike a parent who’s grown tired of telling their child what is obviously best for them. And, in fact, this part of the experience took place on the third day of the trip. He explained a lot of the history of his shop on the first visit and then the details about how he makes the knives on the second. I took the liberty to piece the story together for readability’s sake. But on the second visit when we returned, he dug back into the knife cabinet, removed a few different yanagibas that fit my specifications, but finally settled on the one from the first day to bring back over to the counter for me.
“See,” he said, “I’m quite old. In fact, I’ve died once already, so I really can’t bring myself to sell anything shoddy.”
“Already… what… once?” I asked. I was confused because it had sounded like he’d said “died.”
“Died once. I already died once, but they brought me back,” he replied.
“Sorry,” Mariko offered timidly, “What do you mean by ‘died?’”
The old man leaned back, putting his weight behind him on his arms. “Last year my heart stopped,” he explained. He went on to say that after being rushed to the hospital, they sliced open both his chest and thigh, taking an artery (or something like that) from his leg to repair his heart. But during that time he was technically dead. He pulled down the neck of his shirt, exposing a long, dark scar down the center of his chest. “All in all, my life is quite short,” he said, letting the shirt collar rise back into place, “especially compared to the lifespan of these knives. And since they have my name carved into them, I don’t wish to let anything but my proudest creations out into the world.”
It appeared that he could tell that I was unsure about the quality of the knives and his methods. His words were relatively unverifiable, after all. He had his reputation, sure, but his shop wasn’t the kind regularly featured in magazines or sold online. So he reassured me by positing his own life as a voucher for the quality of the knife.
At this time, on my second trip to the shop, the old man’s son, a man perhaps in his late 30s to early 40s, was in the shop as well, seated on the floor beside his father. He hammered intermittently at a small pair of shears with some unrecognizable tool, but mostly just listened to his father talk. During a pause the son picked a business card up off the floor and placed it on the counter. The old man glanced at it.
“Many times forgers inch closer and closer to creating the perfect knife,” he said, “but then slip over the edge and destroy it.” He illustrated his point by placing the palms of his hands together, one lower than the other. He slid them slowly yet forcefully together, indicating that right at the point when they were about to align, it was easy for one to slip past the other, as the fingertips of his right hand arched quickly and violently over the others. “So the trick is knowing where, when, and how to finish. But it’s not easy. I don’t always get it right myself.”
Then he turned his attention to the business card. “Ah, that…” he muttered. It seemed as though the son had presented the card in hopes of using it as some sort of advertisement. I couldn’t tell if the father’s reaction to it was part of a larger sales scheme or genuine indignation. “We don’t need that anymore,” he said and pushed it aside.
The son was bashful, but interposed, “This man came in the other day. He’s Japanese but runs a restaurant in France.”
“And he wanted 30!” the old man broke in. “Thirty knives! All for his staff. He came in here and said, ‘I’m buying 30 knives, so you should give me a discount.’ What kind of attitude is that? I told him I wouldn’t do it and sent him on his way. Who knows how long until I die again. I don’t want to see my life’s work flung out over the earth and wasted on the likes of him. Telling me, ‘I’m buying 30 knives from you.’ Hmph!”
Mariko and I looked at one another. The father scowled. “I don’t care about money at all,” he said. “I’m an old man. Why do I need money? What I want is to see my knives, all my creations, make people happy – help people who are working for their dream.”
And so, at last, I said, “Okay, I want to buy this knife.” The old man bowed deeply and thanked me, but seemed unsurprised and unimpressed.
“What do you want engraved on the blade?” he asked. “Your name?”
Unlike the last time this question was posed to me, I answered firmly, “No. Your name.”
“Eh?” he grunted. “Well, if you say so.” I handed him the knife, and he took it gently and placed it on his wooden block, which was covered by an old blue dust cloth. A piece of nylon string was stretched over the towel and secured on both sides of the block in order to help hold the knife in place. The old man then set to work with a small hammer and a thin metal chisel about the size of a square nail. He worked for seven to eight minutes, hammering methodically but with his own sense of style and confidence. He etched in a long series of characters, striking the flares and intricacies with an unexpectedly nimble hand.
Everyone in the room – Mariko, me, the man’s son – sat in silence, mesmerized by the subtle movements and sound of metal striking metal. When he’d finished, he presented me the knife for approval. It was beautiful. I handed it back to him and he passed it off to a person I assumed to be his daughter, who had appeared without warning from the other room. As we waited the old man explained to me how to care for the knife and what to keep in mind while sharpening it. I have a pretty solid foundation already when it comes to caring for Japanese knives, but this would be my first yanagiba, which is a particularly delicate style of knife. “I wonder if you can do it,” he said and laughed, referring to grinding the blade against a whet stone. “Above all else,” he said seriously, “be sure you use a flat stone. Don’t get lazy and let your stones become warped.”
Moments later the daughter returned with the knife, boxed and wrapped in paper. Mariko and I rose to go, thanking the man not only for the knife but also for his stories. He smiled and nodded. At the door I thanked him one last time for all the information. “Not at all,” he said, and then added, “Kawaigattekudasai.” I didn’t understand what that meant, but did my best to express my appreciation with a small awkward bow. Then Mariko and I were once again out on the streets of Kyoto, me clutching a long narrow box under my arm.
“That was really nice,” she said. “I think you got a really good knife.”
“I think so, too,” I said.
“And what he said at the end, did you catch it?” she asked. I shook my head. “I guess it means ‘take care,’ but the real meaning isn’t as casual as that sounds in English. We use that word when entrusting a valuable possession to somebody, or to take care of a child or something like that. Literally it means something like, ‘please be affectionate,’ or ‘please love it.’”
And so, of the eight or nine knife shops we visited during out three-day trip, I think Yasushige was by far my favorite. When I returned home, sharpened and used the knife I found it to be a really good fit for me. Although, I still wasn’t sure about how it measured up against similar knives by other makers. I didn’t have to wonder about that very long, though.
About a week after the Kyoto trip I was spending a Friday night at the local pub I frequent. There I met a guy who turned out to be the head chef at a nearby restaurant, and he told me that he’d worked as a chef all over Japan, including a three-year stint in Kyoto. I told him about my recent trip there and we talked for some time about Kyoto foods and sights. Then I asked if he knew of Yasushige. He said he did, but that he was more of an Aritsugu guy. Aritsugu was one of the first shops I visited in Kyoto and was actually the one I spent the least amount of time in. While Aritsugu has earned itself a reputation as one of the premier knife makers in Japan, the shop in Nishiki market was packed with tourists and lacked the kind of unique, really special personality that I tend to favor. That, of course, has no bearing on the quality of their knives, but with so many shops to choose from I wanted to spend my yen on a knife that really meant something to me.
Anyway, the guy said that Yasushige knives are quite good, but that their best feature – their extreme hardness of steel – makes them a bit troublesome to sharpen. He prefers a knife, like those from Aritsugu, that has a good balance of hardness and convenience of use. That made a lot of sense to me, and was consistent with what I’d experienced while sharpening the Yasushige yanagiba (it had taken about half an hour to grind a really keen edge). But in any case, that’s just fine for me. As its sole purpose is slicing raw fish and the like, I won’t be using the knife nearly as much as a professional Japanese chef would, and so the extreme hardness and thus long edge-retention of the Yasushige knife serves me pretty well. Sure, it takes a long time to sharpen, but as a home cook I can afford the leisure of spending the extra time and effort.
So, I think I can say now that I have good peace of mind about the knife and can fully enjoy it both as a valuable cooking tool and a memento of my visit to Kyoto as well as my time in Japan.
Here are two dishes using my new knife. The top picture is (from left to right) “buri” yellowtail, horse mackerel, and minced tuna. The bottom picture is an original, kind of weird creation that puts vinegared horse mackerel on a thin bed of perilla over a block of silken tofu. The whole thing is cut into small blocks, one for each piece of fish, to make it easier to eat. And a dot of grated ginger tops each piece of fish.