What’s the Difference Between Western and Japanese Chef’s Knives?

Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash

Knives are an essential kitchen tool used to chop, mince, slice, and dice. And the one knife every home cook should have is a chef’s knife. These versatile blades are usually around eight inches long and come in a surprising variety of shapes and sizes. This article focuses on Japanese and Western styles, which have subtle, but important differences worth knowing about.

Chef’s knives, while ubiquitous in both professional and home kitchens today, have murky origins. According to Josh Donald, co-owner of Bernal Cutlery in San Francisco and author of the book Sharp, there’s no way to pinpoint an exact ancient predecessor to the chef’s knife. Instead, Donald postulates the birth of the modern, Western-style chef’s knife is more recent and had more to do with the origin of the chef than innovation in cooking implements.

“This lands us squarely in post-Revolution France, in the days of Marie-Antoine Carême, and the birth of a la carte restaurant cooking that made a chef’s knife (along with a shorter, narrower utility knife, ‘office,’ or large paring knife) an essential kitchen tool,” he says. The repetitive nature of chopping and cutting large amounts of food requires a larger, sturdy knife that was both versatile and durable.

The Japanese chef’s knife came about in the late 19th century when Japan opened up to trade with the West and, as Donald notes when Western food and ingredients were introduced to the island nation. “Beef being added to the Japanese diet made for the necessity of a new knife for non-seafood, animal protein processing,” he says.

“The Japanese chef knife originated from Western-made chef’s knives as Japanese blacksmiths began to learn Western knife-making techniques. Japanese chef knives were often made with Western-style handles until very recently, and the hand forged Japanese handled chef knife that looks very traditional is a recent phenomenon, though it still draws on traditional craft.”

The Blade Angles Are Different

“Traditional Japanese knives come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, which are designed to perform specialized tasks, such as butchering fish and cutting vegetables, noodles, sashimi, eel, or blowfish (if cutting blowfish is something you aspire to do). These knives have historically featured single-beveled blades, meaning that they’re angled only on one side and are therefore right- or left-handed. These blades then taper into a tang that’s knocked into a wooden handle.”

On the other hand, Western-style chef’s knives are what home cooks in the US are most familiar with. Their blades are sharpened symmetrically on both sides, creating a double edge, which means they’re ambidextrous by design. “Classic Western knife handles are also typically made from two pieces of wood or composite material that are used to sandwich the tang and then are secured with rivets.

Japanese-Style Chef’s Knives are Harder and More Brittle

Japanese knives are typically made of harder steel with a higher carbon content. In contrast, Western-style chef’s knives are usually made of tougher steel with less carbon.

Metal hardness is expressed as a number on the Rockwell Scale, which measures how much pressure it takes to press an indentation into a material, and, in the case of steel knives, is usually expressed as an HRC number.

“Western knives are typically tempered between 52 and 58 Rockwell hardness, while Japanese chef’s knives are around 58 to 65 Rockwell,” Donald says. “ More carbon at a higher hardness means the blade will be more brittle, but it will also hold an edge longer and work at a finer polished edge.”

The softer steels used in many Western knives are less brittle, so their micro-thin blade edges can roll to one side or another before they break; a rolled edge can be reset with a honing rod, something that won’t work well with the more brittle, harder steel of a Japanese knife. When it comes time to touch up a Japanese blade, you’ll need a whetstone.

These distinctions only get you so far, though, since many Japanese knife-makers go beyond traditional Japanese styles to sell a wide range of hybrid knives that blend Japanese and Western characteristics — santoku and gyuto knives are relatively commonplace examples. In some cases, Japanese companies are putting out knives that have far more in common with their Western counterparts than they do with more traditional Japanese ones.