Tōjirō Knives: Bringing the Tsubame Brand of Cutting Quality to Global Kitchens

Tsubame cutlery used in the formal dinner commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the Nobel Foundation in 1991, on display at the Tsubame Industrial Materials Museum.

Clockwise from upper left: The exterior view of the Tōjirō Knife Gallery; gallery head Ogawa Masato explains the blades on display; a gallery showroom, with knives starting at ¥3,000 and running up to some ¥160,000. The best-selling blades are in the ¥8,000 range.

Tōjirō excels at Damascus steel forging, a sophisticated technique in which elegant ripples appear with repeated forging of stainless steel with two differing levels of hardness. These high-end products have a lacquer finish on the handle and sheath.

Clockwise from top: Tōjirō’s traditional forged blades; stainless-steel blades for professional use are a mainstay of the company’s product line; stainless-steel plates from which knife shapes have been punched piled in a corner of the factory.

Clockwise from upper left: The Tsubame Industrial Materials Museum; chief curator Saitō Yūsuke discusses the region’s history of metalworking; an exhibition room in the museum’s new building.

Smoking pipes on exhibit in the Tsubame Industrial Materials Museum. The region’s artisans mastered techniques from metal-forming to chasing and polishing in order to create works like these.

Clockwise from upper left: The Tsubame Industrial Materials Museum displays a selection of Japanese nails, a reproduction of a Tsuiki copperware workshop, and a special exhibition on the history of the local metalworking industry.

Clockwise from top: A factory worker carefully checks a blade; a female artisan carefully polishes a weld; blade-sharpening work is repeated many times.

Artisans at work seen from visitors’ walkway (right side).