Who Will Make Sakai Knives 20 Years From Now?

  • September 18, 2026

  • How Today’s Craftsmen Are Preparing the Next Generation

    Who will make Sakai knives 20 years from now?

    For someone choosing a Japanese kitchen knife today, this may seem like a distant question. We usually think about the knife in front of us—its steel, shape, sharpness, finish, and the craftsman who made it.

    But every Sakai knife also carries another question:

    Who will know how to make the next one?

    On September 18, 2026, Sakai City announced the recruitment of participants for the Sakai Knife Craftsman Training Program (Sakai Hamono Shokunin Yosei Dojo), an initiative designed not simply to introduce people to traditional knife making, but to help train people who may eventually work and remain in Sakai’s knife industry.

    For those who care about the future of Sakai knives, that distinction matters.

  • A Knife Tradition Built by People

    Sakai knives are often described through materials and techniques: carbon steel or stainless steel, forging, heat treatment, sharpening, polishing.

    But these techniques do not exist independently.

    They exist because people know how to perform them.

    Sakai’s knife-making tradition is particularly dependent on specialized craftspeople. Rather than one person necessarily completing every stage of a knife, different specialists may take responsibility for forging, sharpening, handle fitting, and other processes.

    The knowledge involved is not transferred simply by preserving an old knife or recording a manufacturing procedure.

    Much of it has to be learned through repeated practice—watching, trying, making mistakes, adjusting, and working alongside people who have spent years developing their skills.

    This makes the question of succession fundamental to the future of Sakai knives.

  • From Concern to Concrete Action

    KIREAJI has previously looked at the declining number of officially recognized traditional craftsmen in Sakai's knife industry.

    Numbers help us see the challenge.

    But numbers alone do not tell us what happens next.

    The 2026 Sakai Knife Craftsman Training Program provides a different perspective: what is being done to pass skills to another generation?

    The program is recruiting approximately four participants for the forging course and 18 for the blade-sharpening course.

    Applicants are, in principle, required to be between 18 and 38 years old, and previous knife-making experience is not required. What matters is an interest in manufacturing, the ability to continue the training, and an intention to seek employment in Sakai’s knife industry.

    The program begins with approximately four months of introductory training. Participants visit knife businesses, observe actual workplaces, and experience aspects of the work themselves.

    After that comes a crucial step: matching participants with businesses seeking future craftspeople.

    Those who are successfully matched move on to approximately six months of practical and classroom training. Practical training is planned for roughly five days a week and six hours a day, while classroom sessions cover subjects including the history of Sakai knives and their manufacturing processes.

    During the practical training period, participants can receive a training allowance of up to ¥150,000 per month depending on attendance.

    The objective is concrete: employment in the Sakai knife industry beginning around October 2027.

    This is therefore very different from a short workshop intended to let visitors experience traditional craftsmanship for a day.

    It is designed as a pathway toward becoming part of the industry itself.

  • Learning Where Sakai Knives Are Actually Made

    One detail of the program is especially meaningful to us at KIREAJI.

    The two businesses listed as seeking trainees for the forging course are Enami Knife Manufacturing and Yamatsuka Knife Manufacturing.

    These are not unfamiliar names in the world that KIREAJI shares with its customers.

    Traditional craftsman Tadashi Enami is one of the Sakai blacksmiths whose work we have introduced through KIREAJI.

    And Shogo Yamatsuka, representative of Yamatsuka Knife Manufacturing, is a traditional craftsman whose forged blades are found in many of the knives we introduce to customers around the world.

    That creates a remarkable connection between the knife someone owns today and the knives that may exist decades from now.

    A workshop where an experienced craftsman forges blades today may also become a place where someone currently unknown to the knife world begins learning how to become a blacksmith.

    The significance is not that a successor has already been created. Training a skilled craftsman takes time, and no program can guarantee that every participant will eventually master the trade or spend a lifetime in it.

    What matters is that an opportunity for transmission is being created.
Shogo Yamatsuka

  • This Is Not the First Attempt

    There is another important piece of history behind the 2026 program.

    Sakai has tried this approach before.

    City records show that a previous Sakai Knife Craftsman Training Program was conducted about a decade ago. Eight participants completed that program and went on to employment at knife-related businesses.

    That earlier result does not guarantee what will happen with the new group.

    But it shows that the idea of connecting aspiring craftspeople directly with working knife businesses is more than an abstract response to concerns about succession. Sakai has previously used this model to bring new people into the industry.

    The 2026 program brings that question back into the present.

    Who wants to learn?

    Which workshops need new craftspeople?

    And can the two be brought together in a way that allows knowledge to continue moving from one generation to another?

  • Tradition Is Not Something That Stands Still

    When we see a beautifully finished traditional knife, it is easy to think of tradition as something that has been preserved.

    But preservation is only part of the story.

    A finished knife can survive for decades if it is properly cared for. It can be sharpened, maintained, used, and eventually passed from one owner to another.

    Craft knowledge is different.

    It survives only when someone learns it.

    That means the future of Sakai knives depends not only on protecting existing techniques or celebrating accomplished craftsmen, but also on creating circumstances in which a beginner can enter a workshop, learn from experienced hands, and gradually develop skills of their own.

    Some of the participants entering the training program may decide that this work is not for them.

    Others may continue.

    And perhaps, many years from now, one of the names that is completely unknown today will appear on the story behind a Sakai knife used in a kitchen somewhere far from Japan.

    We cannot know that yet.

    But every tradition that continues requires someone, at some point, to begin learning.

  • Passing On More Than a Knife

    At KIREAJI, we often talk about caring for a good knife so that it can be used for many years—and sometimes passed to the next generation.

    The same principle applies on the other side of the blade.

    A Sakai knife is not only something that can be inherited by its owner. The knowledge required to make it must also be inherited.

    The craftsmen working in Sakai today received knowledge that existed before them. The future of the craft will depend on whether that knowledge can continue its journey into another pair of hands.

    The Sakai Knife Craftsman Training Program cannot by itself answer the question of who will make Sakai knives 20 years from now.

    But somewhere among the people who decide to walk into these workshops and learn, part of that answer may begin.

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