At KIREAJI, we are fortunate to see this process not only through official records, but through the knives themselves.

One example is the sharpening tradition associated with Tadayoshi Yamatsuka, a Traditional Craftsman whose name appeared on the previous list.

Tadayoshi has now stepped back from active sharpening work.

But the story does not simply end there.

His son, Kohei Yamatsuka, has inherited sharpening knowledge from the previous generation and is now carrying that work forward in his own hands.

Kohei's name does not appear on the current list of certified Traditional Craftsmen.

Yet his work is already very real.

Many of the more recent knives introduced by KIREAJI are sharpened by Kohei Yamatsuka.

This is an important reminder of how traditional craftsmanship actually survives.

The transition from one generation to the next does not happen on the day a certificate is awarded.

It happens much earlier.

At the whetstone.

Inside the workshop.

Through observation and repetition.

Through responsibility gradually being entrusted from one pair of hands to another.

A name may not yet appear on an official register, while the transmission of knowledge is already well underway.

As of June 10, 2026, Sakai City's current list identifies twenty-seven certified Traditional Craftsmen across the blacksmithing and sharpening disciplines: eleven blacksmiths and sixteen sharpeners.

That number matters.

But it should not be misunderstood as the complete size of Sakai's knife-making community.

Around those officially recognized artisans are other craftspeople — younger makers, family members, workshop colleagues, apprentices, and specialists — learning and carrying forward parts of the tradition.

The twenty-seven names are therefore both a record and a window.

They show us some of the highest formally recognized craftsmanship in Sakai today.

But behind them is something larger:

a living chain of knowledge passing from person to person.

That chain is much harder to count.

Modern manufacturing teaches us to think in large numbers.

Thousands of units.

Millions of customers.

Factories capable of replacing one worker with another.

Traditional craftsmanship operates differently.

When skills take decades to acquire, people are not interchangeable.

A craftsperson does not carry only instructions.

They carry accumulated judgment.

A movement learned from a teacher.

A correction made after a failure twenty years earlier.

A sensitivity to steel that cannot be reduced to a specification sheet.

This is why the difference between twenty-eight and twenty-seven deserves attention.

The smaller the number of people carrying specialized knowledge, the more meaningful each individual becomes.

And yet, the emergence of people like Kazunori Sumimoto — and the continuing work of the next generation, including Kohei Yamatsuka — gives us another reason to pay attention.

Not only because something may be disappearing.

But because something is still being passed on.

Many people outside Japan first become interested in Japanese knives because of performance.

The sharpness.

The steel.

The geometry.

The beauty.

But eventually, some begin asking different questions.

Who forged this blade?

Who sharpened it?

Where did that person learn?

Who taught them?

And who will do this work after them?

At that point, the knife becomes more than a cutting tool.

It becomes a connection.

A connection between a kitchen somewhere in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, or elsewhere in the world — and a workshop in Sakai where knowledge has moved from one generation of hands to another.

When we know the names of the craftspeople, craftsmanship becomes human.

And once craftsmanship becomes human, its continuation matters in a different way.

Sakai's blade-making history stretches back centuries.

That history can give us the impression that the tradition is permanent.

It is not.

History alone cannot sharpen a knife.

A museum cannot forge one.

A book cannot replace the hands that have learned to feel steel.

A living tradition survives only when one person teaches and another person chooses to learn.

That is why a new certified craftsperson matters.

That is why a craftsperson stepping away matters.

And that is why the years between those two moments matter perhaps most of all.

Those are the years in which knowledge either crosses from one generation to the next —

or does not.

At KIREAJI, we share changes like this because we believe that people who use Japanese knives deserve to understand not only how they perform, but what makes their continued existence possible.

Behind a Sakai knife are blacksmiths and sharpeners.

Teachers and students.

Parents and children.

Workshops and generations.

Names already recognized.

And names that may appear in the future.

The official number moved from twenty-eight to twenty-seven.

One person.

But perhaps the more important question is not simply how many names are on the list today.

It is whether the knowledge those names represent is reaching the hands of tomorrow.

In Sakai, that work continues quietly.

And every time someone outside Japan learns who made their knife, uses it with understanding, cares for it, and shares its story with another person, that craftsmanship becomes a little less invisible.

Know it. Use it. Share it.

Because preserving craftsmanship begins by understanding the people who carry it.