Why Sushi Chefs Pay Up to $20K for These Knives | WSJ Coveted 

I absolutely love to watch true craftsmen no matter what their discipline is.

thats the cleanest knife maker workshop i have ever seen.

Wow! What beautiful knives. I love the quest for perfection. There is never true perfection, but they get close. Thanks 🎸🔪

Improving on traditional methods is an innovation that someone will continue to improve the process.

This is an outstanding video and WSJ should keep working with this crew and make more content just like this. Great job!

Respectful. Any hand-made yanagiba, with passion and dedication, is a beautiful thing. Not an easy knife to craft and finish. I got mine from Sakai years ago, it's a masterpiece and it's such a pleasure when I get to use it.

incredible skills

Very interesting!

Excellent reporting

This video got you a subscription. Love stuff like this. People who they take their craft to extreme bordering on insanity. I approve!

Would love to visit this company

This is pure material physics and every movement in heating and forging can be calculated as it is known how materiel behaves but these guys are talking from pure experience.

Can whoever does the closed caption subtitles make sure that they're not obscuring the burned-in subtitles?

yea forging most kind of stainless causes the grain structure to swell and a lot of the chromium to burn off. at least in my experience. 304 and 404 are not good but perhaps a high vanadium alloy might work

Awesome 😎

Powder steels may give you more control over the blade during the forging process. I've never seen a sushi knife made of Magnacut steel.

outstanding viewing content here.

Fascinating exploration of the evolving craftsmanship in sushi knife making! Sawada innovative approach with stainless steel challenges traditional norms and could reshape the future of culinary tools. 🔪

Interesting how many people are opposed to craftspeople being paid fairly for their time and effort and skill.

So will the meat cut by 20k$ knife taste better than a 100$ knife?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Japanese in my life, they know how to drag a job out

Respect 🫡

I have varying knives for different tasks. And all are high carbon stainless. My most expensive on is almost $200, and I keep them as sharp or sharper than a razor. $20K? Yeah, you go boy.

Sounds like my $400 Japanese knife is just trash...

Does it make the food taste better?

There should be tests done with these knives to show that they are actually better, I kind of find it hard to believe that these knives are that much better than knives of made of comparable steel. If it’s just about status like Gucci or whatever that’s fine, but don’t hum up as some sort of super fantastic thing you can’t find anywhere else.

There was an awful lot of marketing hogwash in this video but fair play to him for getting people to buy it, that's business.

👇The most important question is👇 Are these knives precise enough to avoid irritating the sensitive skin while shaving privet parts in one run?🤔

I use the plastic knives in take out orders for my at home sushi making

I'm confused. I was under the impression that the high price from Japanese knives came from the tamhagane process and then the polishing stages. Industrializing the process that makes this uniquely Japanese (handmade with Kaizen attitude) seem like it should have a lower price. Thinking about this as a westerner looking in doesn't help. If it is Japanese chefs that are driving demand that is different than western chefs who tend to covet the older ways and hours invested from the sword making aspects.

No water cooling on the grinders? hmm.

"yusuke continues to speak foreign language" blocking the actual subtitles is such a bad oversight

i hate the wsj, but love this video

Quentin Tarantino reincarnated as a Japanese knifemaker.

They talk as if its rare yokai magic or something. Its impressive craftsmanship, but they exaggerated as if their lives were dependent on it.

I have a small knife from these guys its ok may be a bit over rated and a bit tough to keep an edge on

Look no further than CPM Magnacut steel. It's the best knife steel there is. Harder than carbon steel and ultra corrosion resistant. A crucible steel made just for knives.

Give me Nakagawa, Tanaka, Ikeda, Togashi or Doi any day. These are way overpriced. Those first four are the best in Sakai.

Буквально: Ножи: 😑😑😑 Ножи из Японии: 🥵🥵🥵

I prefer my carbon steel knives 😊

These knives are razor sharp because you have to sharpen them all the time. Chefs want them because they’re a status symbol.

Everything in japan is hand crafted with passion, .. japan is the best country to live in...

Very well produced, but this make Nenohi seem like the non plus ultra of japanese knives, which they aren't. They are way overpriced and for a fraction of the price you get way better knives.

Why not just inflate the price to $100,000, if you’re going to sell knives for $20,000? 😂😂😂

Well for a number of reasons: 1. Prestige 2. Charge more for sushi 3. Prestige 4. Charge more for sushi

With super steels in the market, these will loose relevance

Did these generational blade makers make blades for Unit 731?

always surprised how many people in the comments don't realize watching this youtube channel is same as watching commercials, paid programming, or reading a tabloid near the checkout.... this channel is very clear that everything they say is paid for, yet occidentals take it extremely seriously 😂

The dude in the video straight up admitted he’s only buying these knives because of who’s making them. Not due to the quality at all. 😂😂😂

Makes no sense to hammer forge on plate steel they are using. Best knives are drop forge knives. I would experiment with flint or obsidian materials since that is the sharpest materials on earth.

Many, many better Japanese knife makers than Nenohi, whose knives are middle of the road.

So basically there is no reason, they just love expensive things because they think it`s better, gotchu. Same with the fruits, japanese will pay hundreds of $ to get "perfect" fruit...

My 10$ knife keeps me well fed

That price won’t make you a better 👨‍🍳

For 20K the knife better be capable of talking.

Anybody who pays $20K for a kitchen knife is demented!

$20,000 for a knife that's still just cut from a sheet of heavy gauge stainless steel.

Stainless takes your edge taking and edge holding abilities down compared to carbon steel. Knowing firsthand what it takes to forge a knife and charging no where near what they want, there is no way in this world I would pay a 10th of that for a cut out blank with a little grinding on it.

Never pay for that price. Theres a lot out there. Way better.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Japanese people always find a way to make something normal expensive for no reason.

Knife performance drops off drops off after the $100 mark. After $1000 there is probably no amount of money/effort that can make the knife better. This is just bragging rights and stupidity.

Japanese knives are made with expensive Japanese labour, hence expensive!

As a chef of 25+ years I would never waste money on one of these knives.

Kind of ironic considering historically Japanese metalwork was terrible and brittle. Europeans perfected and experimented with better refinement techniques for strengthening and protecting steel since the middle ages whereas Japan was quite stubborn with metalwork all the way up to WWII and it showed.

2 dollar knife and the salmon fish will still taste like a salmon.

Because the few of them that do spend that much are truly stupid.

They’re gorgeous but insanely overpriced!!! Haha 😂 do your research people, you’ll see.

Expensive knives are so overrated. Many cheap knives can be made very sharp as well. What matters is how how long a knife stays sharp without having to resharpen it, but you’d rarely see that discussed because even expensive knives have to be re-sharpened as well. Cheap knives can simply be thrown and re-purchased and you’d still come out ahead pricewise over a lifetime.

Lol, the only thing this video shows is why sushi chefs SHOULDN'T be paying up to $20K for these knives. They should've focused more on the making of those handles because the making of the blade is certainly not it.

Because people are stupid, plain and simple

Trainee usually have zero to none salary and subjected to abuse, and those guys work as a trainee for at least 10 years? Sounds like a Black enterprise to me

take my money

Everything in Japan overpriced. Everything in India underpriced.

There's plenty of handmade stainless steel from other knife makers for a much better price, this is just brand hype

So all he is doing to make these. Is cut its shape and a few hits with a power hammer, a lighter one. Then a tempering oven and air cool. I imagine given its stainless peobably a water quench at this point which would be odd. I call this out as hype. If your want a knife that does not drag its down to polish and grain structure. He gave away enough here a smith could come up with the heat treat orocess. With stainless steal there are sources for the information. Overly hard edge might not be the goal here. No there are many budding smiths in the eorld who are coached by very good smiths. Talent is there and they draw out the bilet by forging, not cutting to a template.

What a scam artist. He spends all that time heat treating the steel then ruins it by dry grinding the edge, this process anneals the edge losing its hardness. Wet grinding its the only way to do it, all professional knife makers have whetstones for wet grinding to keep the edge at a constant temperature while sharping to retain the metallic structure.

if japanese product is little better quality than China 🇨🇳 or normal product, than prices will be 100's times higher😠but quality is not that good overrated products as usual by Japan 🇯🇵

So much hilarious opinions. Trying to convince customers who have no idea that somehow forging mono stainless makes it more uniform in grain structure? The steel comes perfect from the factory you and your power hammer and coal forge ain't making it better... The amount of gold flaking Japanese knife makers add to their products these days is hilarious. You're plasma cutting out the shapes and stock removing it with a few light taps on the hammer for the video. 😅

That's kinda dumb.

Japanese think they have a monopoly on high end knives. Nothing rare about them. Best blades are made in Germany and USA.

To take three years to make a tool to cut fish is pure fetish. So too to pay them $20,000.