The First 3 Japanese Knives for Culinary Enthusiasts

• 04/10/2026
• The dialogue, Blog

 

 

A beginner’s guide to the usuba, deba, and yanagiba, the sharpening stones that keep them sharp, and how to shop for both on Tokyo’s Kappabashi kitchenware street.

By Kenji Kitabayashi, sushi instructor, Tokyo Omakase Sushi Class

My own career as a sushi maker began with three knives: the usuba, the deba, and the yanagiba. If you’re serious about preparing sushi or sashimi at home, these are the three traditional Japanese knives I recommend starting with — each one built for a single job, and each one shaped the way it is for a specific reason. Below, I’ll explain what each knife does, what to look for in blade material, which sharpening stones to pair with them, and how to navigate Kappabashi, the Tokyo street where you can find all of it under one roof.

The First 3 Japanese Knives for Serious Cooks

1. Usuba (薄刃包丁) — The Vegetable Knife

The usuba’s blade is thin and rectangular, and it is sharpened on one side only. That single-edged, thin blade is what allows the fine work Japanese cooking asks of vegetables: katsuramuki (turning a daikon into one long, paper-thin sheet), fine julienne for sashimi garnishes, and decorative cuts. It takes a little practice to cut straight, but it rewards you with cuts no double-edged knife can match.

2. Deba (出刃包丁) — The Fish-Butchering Knife

The deba’s blade is thick and triangular in profile. That shape gives it the strength to cut through small bones as you fillet, and after the fish has been split into two halves, the triangular tip makes it easier to remove the collarbone (kanbara) cleanly.

3. Yanagiba (柳刃包丁) — The Sashimi Knife

The yanagiba, also called a sashimi knife, is long and slender for a specific reason. The core principle of Japanese knife technique is that you pull the blade through the cut in a single stroke — you don’t saw back and forth. To draw the knife through an entire slice of fish in one continuous motion, the blade needs enough length for a long stroke. That’s why the yanagiba is built the way it is.

Knife	Blade shape	Primary use	Cutting motion
Usuba	Thin, rectangular, single-edged	Vegetables: katsuramuki, julienne, decorative cuts	Straight down and push cuts
Deba	Thick, triangular	Filleting whole fish	Cutting through bone, separating the collarbone
Yanagiba	Long and slender	Slicing sashimi	Single long pulling stroke

My own path into sushi began with these three knives, so I recommend them to anyone who genuinely wants to learn to make sushi at home. Of the three, the deba and the yanagiba are the ones I’d call essential.

A Word of Caution: Why You Shouldn’t Cut Meat With a Deba or Yanagiba

The reason is in how these blades are made. A deba and a yanagiba are sharpened and hardened for the specific task of cutting through fish — flesh, and in the deba’s case, fish bone soft enough to yield to a clean stroke. That hardness is exactly what gives the edge its sharpness, but it also makes the edge brittle against the kind of lateral impact that meat bone delivers. Strike a rib or a joint with a deba or a yanagiba, and you’re not testing the knife, you’re risking it. A chip in the edge doesn’t sharpen itself back out; it has to be ground away entirely, taking a piece of the blade’s working life with it.

This isn’t a modern design oversight so much as a reflection of what these knives were built to do in the first place. From 675 AD, when Emperor Tenmu issued Japan’s first formal ban on eating meat, until the Meiji government lifted that restriction in 1872, meat was largely absent from Japanese cooking for well over a thousand years. Traditional washoku cuisine, and the knife culture that grew up around it, developed almost entirely around fish, vegetables, and rice. The deba and yanagiba were shaped, quite literally, inside a food culture where cutting through animal bone for meat simply wasn’t part of the job. Asking one to do it now is asking it to do something it was never designed for.

If cutting meat is something you actually want to do, the knife to reach for is a gyuto (牛刀) — the Japanese version of a Western chef’s knife. Unlike the deba and yanagiba, a gyuto is double-beveled and built with meat in mind, which makes it a far more appropriate, and more durable, choice for the job.

Just Want One Knife? Try the Santoku

Not everyone wants three separate knives for three separate jobs — and that’s fine. If you’d rather have one knife that handles fish, meat, and vegetables all at once, the santoku (三徳包丁) is the one to get. “Santoku” literally means “three virtues,” referring to the three tasks — fish, meat, and vegetables — it’s designed to handle. For most households, a single santoku is genuinely all you need.

Choosing Your Blade Material: Stainless vs. Carbon Steel

Once you’ve decided which knife shape fits your needs, the next decision is what the blade is made of. Broadly, Japanese knife blades fall into two categories:

• Stainless steel — the recommended choice for beginners.
• Carbon steel — sharper, but higher-maintenance.

Carbon steel takes an excellent edge, but it rusts as soon as moisture sits on it, so it demands careful drying and upkeep after every single use. For that reason, I recommend stainless steel to anyone just starting out.

If you still want the edge quality of carbon steel without the maintenance burden, look for what I informally call a “hamburger” knife — properly known as a clad or san-mai (three-layer) construction. In this build, a carbon steel core is sandwiched between two outer layers of stainless steel. You get carbon steel’s sharpness at the cutting edge, while the stainless steel cladding protects it from rusting. It’s genuinely the best of both worlds.

Beyond the Basics: Understanding Stainless Steel Grades

Stainless steel itself splits further into specific grades, most commonly labeled Ginsan (銀三, “Silver-3”), VG-1, and VG-10. For a beginner, it’s not an exaggeration to say these grades are nearly impossible to tell apart in daily use. My honest advice: pick based on your budget, and don’t worry too much about the label.

Choosing the Look and Feel: Damascus Patterns and Handles

Once you’ve settled on the knife type and the steel, two choices are left. They are as much about how the knife feels in your hand as how it performs.

Usuba or nakiri?

Next to the usuba at Kappabashi, you will also see the nakiri (菜切り包丁), a rectangular vegetable knife made for home kitchens. Unlike the single-edged usuba, the nakiri is sharpened on both sides, so it cuts straight down with very little practice. If you mainly chop vegetables for everyday cooking, a nakiri is the easier choice. If you want to prepare vegetables the way they are done for sushi and Japanese cuisine, start with the usuba.

Damascus patterns

Many knives in the shops show a wavy, layered pattern on the blade. This Damascus pattern comes from forging many layers of steel together, and it is often found on clad (san-mai) blades. It is beautiful, but the pattern itself is mostly about looks. The cutting performance comes from the core steel at the edge, so judge a knife by its core steel first and treat the pattern as a matter of taste.

Handle material

• Wooden handles: Traditional and light. They are comfortable to hold and develop character with use, but they need to be dried after washing.
• Synthetic resin handles: Durable, resistant to water and oil, and easy to keep clean. Some have a non-slip surface.

Handle shape

Japanese handles come in several shapes, such as round, D-shaped, and octagonal. The shape changes how the knife sits in your hand and how tired your hand gets during long prep sessions. If you can, hold a few in the shop before you decide.

A four-step checklist before you buy

1. Decide what you will mainly cut: vegetables, whole fish, or sashimi.
2. Choose the knife type: usuba, deba, yanagiba, or a santoku if you want just one.
3. Choose the steel: stainless for easy care, or a clad blade for a carbon edge with less rust risk.
4. Choose the pattern and handle that feel right in your hand.

Sharpening Stones: The Knife’s Other Half

Sharpening stones are graded by grit number, and different grits do different jobs. Here’s the minimum set I recommend, all from Shapton’s “Ha no Kuromaku” (刃の黒幕) ceramic stone line, which is a consistent, reliable choice for anyone starting out:

Grit	Type	What it’s for	How essential
#1000	Medium (chuto)	Everyday sharpening and maintaining an edge	The one stone you must own
#8000	Finishing (shiage-to)	Polishing the edge to its sharpest, cleanest finish	Not essential, but genuinely useful to have
#220	Coarse (arato)	Repairing a chipped edge or reshaping a badly worn blade	Convenient to have on hand for accidents

If you only buy one stone, make it the #1000 — it’s the workhorse grit for regular sharpening, and the minimum any Japanese knife owner should have on hand. The #8000 finishing stone isn’t strictly necessary, but once you own one it will never let you down; think of it as the difference between a sharp edge and a razor-sharp one. The #220 coarse stone is the one you hope you’ll rarely need, but it’s exactly the stone you’ll reach for the moment a blade chips against a bone or a frozen edge.

Don’t Forget the Flattening Stone

One more tool completes this set: a flattening stone, called a menaoshi-ishi (面直し石) in Japanese. Sharpening stones wear down unevenly with use and develop a slight dip in the middle — and a stone that isn’t flat can’t sharpen a blade evenly. A flattening stone corrects this by restoring your sharpening stone’s surface to flat. It won’t excite you the way a new knife will, but it’s the one accessory that keeps every other stone you own actually doing its job.

Where to See Them All in One Place: Tokuzo Knives

Tokuzo’s Kappabashi store sits at 1-5-16 Nishiasakusa, Taito-ku, about a 5-minute walk from Tawaramachi Station, and is open 10:00–17:30 most days of the year, closing only around the New Year and Bon holiday periods — a useful thing to know on a street where many shops close on Sundays. What makes it a good stop for a first-timer is the staff: Japanese knife specialists who explain knife selection and sharpening technique entirely in English, so you can ask questions and shop without a language barrier getting in the way. Their full catalog and store details are on tokuzoknives.com.

If you’re visiting as a tourist, the store also handles tax-free processing on the spot — just remember to bring your passport, since the refund can’t be processed without it. Here’s how the math works: buy three knives at ¥30,000 each, and the ¥90,000 base total has Japan’s 10% consumption tax added at checkout, bringing your bill to ¥99,000. Through the tax exemption, that ¥9,000 in tax is refunded to you, bringing your effective cost back down to the ¥90,000 base price.

Pairing This Guide With a Sushi Class

The reason is simple: in my sushi class, guests pick up and use a deba and a yanagiba themselves, rather than just hearing about them. You feel, in your own hands, how different the two knives really are — the deba’s weight and the resistance it meets breaking down a fish, versus the yanagiba’s length and the single long pull it takes to slice a clean piece of sashimi. That’s a difference no amount of reading, including this article, can substitute for.

If buying your own set of Japanese knives is on your bucket list, I’d strongly recommend doing exactly that: take the market tour and sushi class first, then head to Kappabashi afterward and stop at Tokuzo Knives while the feel of both knives is still fresh in your hands. You’ll shop with a much clearer sense of what you’re actually buying.

Visiting Kappabashi: A Beginner’s Guide

Kappabashi is home to around 160 shops selling everything a kitchen or restaurant could need — knives, lacquerware, tableware, professional-grade stoves, and the famously lifelike plastic food samples used in restaurant window displays. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you spot the giant chef’s head statue that marks the street, along with oversized decorative knives, whisks, and teacups mounted on the shopfronts.

A few practical notes before you go:

• Hours: Most shops open around 10:00 and close by 17:00 — plan an afternoon visit, not an evening one.
• Days: Many shops close on Sundays and public holidays, so a weekday visit is safer if you have specific stores in mind.
• What to bring: If you’re buying a knife to take home, ask about engraving (many shops offer it) and check the store’s policy on tax-free purchases for overseas visitors.

Frequently Asked Questions