Thread: Morihei – Japanese Hones In Tokyo

I saw the hone that Traskrom recently posted his impressions about. His initial post about the hone detailed the place he got it from was in Tokyo. Well I’m in Tokyo too, so I decided to see where he got the hone and it turns out it was a shop not far from where I work. Who knew? I had oogled the store’s website for years and never thought to look up the address.

I had the time to visit him for a quick introduction over my lunch hour today and thought I would post my impressions.

The shop is mostly hones. Their website shows other items: knives, chisels, plane blades. But on arrival you can quickly see wall to wall, floor to ceiling hones, and only a small corner of blades. I also was informed that their basement and several floors above were all hones too. Mr. Morihei is a hone distributor. His family has stockpiled hones mostly from the 1950’s, although his shop has been there for 80 years. He grew up surrounded by hones. He said that they supply hones to other shops to resell.

He was very welcoming and invited me to come back repeatedly to try out different stones on a razor. Something I will definitely do.

Before I left he brought me to his back lounge to show me one more thing. He had a glass cabinet full of different blades of various sorts. He said that people from all over Japan send him their tools to asses. He says it is very time consuming but he also asses the steel of some tools and recommends what honing procedure would be best. He took out a freshly honed single bevel Japanese chef knife and handed it to me.

The bevel was close to an inch wide. It was entirely the same ‘colour’ (sand blasted look) and there were no scratches from lower grits. None. I, without thinking (just a reaction I guess) performed a thumb pad test down the whole blade and then pulled back my sleeve and did a forearm hair test. Realizing what I was doing I looked up and he just smiled. I put the knife down and he said something to the effect of “In Japanese we say ‘put on an edge’ when referring to honing. We don’t want to take away any of the existing blade geometry and thus we hone softly so as not to take anything away from the blade. When a sushi chef takes their ‘Yanagi’ and softly slices a fresh piece of sashimi, if the sashimi just falls over and doesn’t stick to the blade, you know that the final finish is what it is supposed to be. If the sashimi sticks to the blade, there is more work that needs to go into the honing.”

He walked me back down stairs and to the front of the shop (which is completely open with the honing station set up at the entrance). I looked at the honing station and noticed he didn’t have any water in the tub below the hone sitting atop it. I asked if you soak Japanese hones and he said no. He pointed to a dropper and dropped a few drops of water on the hone that was sitting there and said that’s all you need.

At this point what could I say? I thanked him for his time and excused myself, with the promise to bring a razor and my hones the next time I visit. All I can say is ‘Wow!!’ Even though I didn’t have time to eat it was one of the best lunch hours I have had in ages.