Kuwahara Kaji Kobo / Nagasaki

Way down the coast from Nagasaki but still within the city limits lies the township of Kayaki-cho, traditionally one of three hotspots of blade craft in Nagasaki prefecture. Not so much nowadays, the hammers have gone quiet apart from those in Kuwahara san's workshop.

In the Japanese language 'ka' is mosquito, and 'yaki' is derived from 'yaku', the verb meaning to burn, hence 'kayaki', and this led to local forging techniques being referred to as 'mosquito forging'.

It's published widely that the name of the locality is mysteriously derived from these knifemaking techniques, but we've established that it is actually from local agricultural practices. Good story though.

There's always more to the story. These days it's mainly Kuwahara san's sought-after knives.

We've been offering Kuwahara san's work for a few years now and in that time his approach has evolved. He now pays even more attention to final sharpness, and produces knives at a more artisanal tempo.

As a result there are modest variations in blade length and height that affect price. This makes the promotion of Kuwahara san's knives as 'standard' offerings an impractical proposition. We don't hold stock of his knives and on numerous occasions we've found ourselves playing the role of broker on longer, shorter, taller and variously priced approximations of a product listed on Knife Japan. Time consuming and not always fruitful.

We've now revised our approach to help customers reach Kuwahara san through Knife Japan and while you won't see any products listed here they are only ever a phone call (or ten) away.

Price is the thing. Please be aware that Kuwahara san's knives now sit what we could comfortably describe as the upper echelon of pricing.

If you're interested please feel free to Contact Us. We can share product photos and the most recent price information. 

(Please note that members of the mailing list we had for Kuwahara san's product availability updates should not expect further messages. Thank you for participating!)