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.

Awesome, Seth. Another place on my Tokyo visit list...

The people there are very helpful. I have been having an email discussion regarding a finishing stone. They have been very obliging and clearly very knowledgeable.

Claude

Thanks for the post. Very nice to learn a little more.


Richard

Only one thing we are missing in this great review.. a lot of pictures

I'll donate a razor to the cause

Thanks for sharing! Thanks button does not work so I post it here.

Wish I were in Tokyo!

Congrats Seth. Looks like you've found a good HAD enabler

Well one week later I was back at Morihei to show him a couple of my hones. I took my suita and my coticule. I asked him what he thought of my suita and he asked if he could hone a bit on it. He moistened the surface of the hone and started rubbing it to feel the surface of the hone. He looked at it closely and said, this is an Ohira. Which of course it was. How he knew, I'll never know, but if he says it is something then he will be right about it 99% of the time, I am sure.

Anyway, he took out a plane that he must use to test hones. It was odd; he would go back and forth a few times and then start at the top doing small back tracking back and forth honing, leaving a trail of dark metal particles. He would then see how they moved when he touched them with a wet finger tip. All the while explaining about characteristics of the hone. It turned out that he said it was a softerhone but at very fine and high quality one. He asked if I was satisfied with it, which I am, and went to get a hone out of the cabinet.

What he brought me to look at wasn't very much to look at. He said this is a very rare Ozuku suita that has no su. If you feel it and hone with it it feels rough. But that is not the outcome. It is a very hard and very fine hone that can be mistaken if not tested. He took the same plane and did the same sort of trail leaving honing and said look how much finer this one is. But feel the surface. I did and it did feel like it was a lower grit. My suita is rated at #36000. And this other hone he had out was even finer. Even I could see what he was talking about.

He said that the Ozuku suita are all but gone, yet he has about 50 of them as he saw and knew their value when he first got ahold of one. After that, aquisition disorder kicked in and he had to have as many as he could get. I had to chuckle and say I know how that goes.

He had also mentioned that he gets emails from people saying that they have a Nakayama Maruichi Maruka for razor use only hone and that they want a harder hone than what they have. He looked at me and asked if I know how many different types/layers of Nakayama there were. I had no idea so he brought out a number of trays with hones of all size and colour and said when we got a Nakayama that had chracteristics that were unlike ones we had in the past we added a sample to our collection. They have a sample of probably every single type of Nakayama that came out of the mine. He said a few are on loan so there are some missing but her they are. Take a look for yourself.




Needless to say they were of all levels of hardness and for some of those emails that said they wanted a harder hone, it would be impossible to gauge without handling the hone in person.

He was also perplexed as to why all of the razor guys wanted hard hones. I guessed that people want to hone with nagura and that a harder hone is better than a soft one for that type of honing. He was also perplexed as to why people only consider Nakayama to be the best when there was so many better options, granted Nakayama's can be premium stones. I said it is probably propaganda from a certain person in Kyoto. And we left it at that.

Just before I left I saw a Nakayama Nashiji hone that was only 1.5 inches wide by about 8 inches long. I said this is an odd size to see. I like the narrower hones and would love to see more if you have them. He said he did but it would have to wait until next time, as I had to get back to work. Not something I wanted to do as I had/have an urgent translation to complete before the end of the week. Ohh well I had my fun and had my hone assesed and pronounced excellent but with the knowledge that there were finer hones out there.

I would go there a few times a week, except he seems so busy and I don't want to impose. But I will probably go once a week and add to my knowledge each time I visit.


As I have met and interacted with Mr. Morihei a couple of times now, I can see that he is a very nice man, and one to go out of his way to accomodate his clients. Yet I hope that my posts here are not causing people to send him a bunch of questions that aren't well thought out and just waste his time. He doesn't speak English and any emails he replies to are translated by a family member who does so after they get home from their full time job. I would say if you contact him have some specific needs ready and explained so that he knows how to proceed. He doesn't hone razors but is a master of his craft and that is hones. So if you say what kind of steel you are going to hone and how hard the steel is. Whether it is stainless or carbon he will better be able to serve you.

I don't even know where to find the contact information for Morihei, but I am enjoying reading all this, and that is enough for me. Thanks Seth!