Sakai Kyuba KYU Knife Set: Santoku, Nakiri, Petty
Quality in cut. Beauty in design. Drawing from a 600 year old blacksmithing tradition, The Sakai Kyuba 堺久馬 kitchen knife set is designed to intensify pleasure from cooking. The three knives: Chef’s, Vegetable and Paring knife are the only 3 knives you will ever need. Blades are set in a premium-cut, waterproof stabilised maple burl wood dyed Mediterranean Blue. The knives come in a handcrafted, minimalist wooden box wrapped in a unique illustration strip. The set comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Lifetime warranty
Every knife we have ever made, covered for life.
Free UK delivery
Included on every order over £90.
100-day returns
Use it for three months. Send it back if it isn't right.
Hand-finished box
Hanko-stamped certificate, 5 yen coin tucked alongside.
Why this knife
The blade, and the thinking behind it.
The Last Knife Set You'll Ever Need
The Sakai Kyuba Japanese kitchen knife set in Mediterranean Blue includes three knives, each perfectly balanced with optimal sharpness, precision and durability:
- A Chef’s Knife 190mm / 7.5in – The Santoku – a daily knife, a versatile all-rounder slicing knife, a typical Japanese shape, shorter than Gyuto
- A Vegetable Knife 160mm / 7in – The Nakiri – thin and sharp, perfect for chopping and dicing vegetables;
- A Paring Knife 150mm / 5in – The Petty – extra nimble to tackle the smaller, more intricate chores like peeling or carving.
With these three quality Japanese knives you will be able to perform any cutting task in the kitchen with ease and efficiency. The Santoku, Nakiri and Petty are the only knives you will need, a beautiful knife set that will last for generations. As unique and everlasting as the memories you will create using them. You will love using them.
The Blades: Sharpness, Versatility and Tradition
The blades in this Japanese kitchen knives set are designed to make cooking more enjoyable as cutting through produce will become an effortless task.
The blades in this Japanese kitchen knife set are handcrafted by skilled Japanese blacksmiths in Sakai, Japan with premium Japanese AUS10 stainless steel. AUS10 is a stainless steel with a high carbon content, making it harder than most stainless steel types. With AUS10, you get the hardness of a carbon steel but the corrosion resistance of stainless. Hence, AUS10 steel offers an excellent balance between toughness, durability, and a razor sharpness.
The blades have a Rockwell Hardness rating (HRC) of 62 which means the edge stays noticeably sharper for a longer time. This means you won’t have to worry about sharpening them often. They are forged with 46 layers of Damascus steel which is legendary for its plasticity, hardness and distinctive patterns. The blades will allow foods to be easily and promptly cut with precision.
No Handle Pattern
Is The Same
The beautiful handles are made with extremely limited European maple burl dyed in an Mediterranean Blue colour and feature a subtle copper ring under the oak bog wood kakumaki (collar of the handle). The wood has to be dried for two years before it undergoes the process of stabilisation. This ensures the wood is completely waterproof to avoid bacteria growth and is able to last generations.
The Japanese kitchen knife set’s kakumaki (collar) is made with oak bog wood. A wood ranging from 2,500 to 5,000 years in age. Its age and living conditions give it a unique character and rich natural colour variation determined by its age. Giving you a knife with a rich history.
The stabilised premium-cut maple burl is shaped into an octagonal shaped ambidextrous handle to give you a firm grip on the knife. Not only are the handles aesthetically pleasing, they are also perfectly balanced, light and comfortable. This allows for maximum precision and more controlled movements during use.
Please note that no two handle colours or patterns are ever the same as the natural properties of each wood block are unique and will absorb the colour dye differently. This will give each knife a beautiful unique look.
Because Presentation And Packaging Matter Just As Much
All Sakai Kyuba kitchen knives set come in a handcrafted, minimalist European Oak wooden box with a delicate waxed finish. The box is wrapped in a Oishya signature illustration strip featuring the Onna Bugeisha – Japanese female warriors.
Inside, you’ll see a beautiful note with a genuine 5 Japanese yen coin for luck. There’s an ancient superstition that giving someone a knife is bad luck because it cuts the relationship between the giver and the recipient. The way around this is to attach a coin of symbolic value to the knife, which is then returned to the giver as a form of payment. As we want you to maintain your relationships with your loved ones, here is a 5 yen coin.
The Japanese for five yen go en (五円) is a homophone with go-en (御縁), which means relationship, connection and bond. So by exchanging this coin with the receiver you no longer have to worry about this superstition.
The blade
Specifications.
| Weight | 1.7 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 45 × 10 × 6 cm |
| Maker | Oishya |
The hands that make it
Sakai. Six hundred years of blade-making.
Sakai, in Osaka, is the birthplace of the traditional Japanese kitchen knife — a craft passed down for six hundred years, descended from the methods used to forge samurai swords. KYU is the flagship of our range, forged there by a master blacksmith whose family has been at this work since 1927. We make his blades under the name Sakai Kyuba.
The steel is AUS10, folded into 46 hammered Damascus layers and hardened to HRC 62. Each blade passes through around two hundred and twenty separate steps over roughly three months — the forging, folding, quenching, grinding, polishing and sharpening all done by hand, on a small scale.
The handle is finished in Małopolska, Poland, by craftsmen who shape every one by hand: a stabilised maple burl body and a bog oak ferrule — the kakumaki. Blade and handle meet at a single hand-fitted copper ring, set with a soft tap of a wooden mallet, in an octagonal profile.
Care, briefly
Three habits, and it outlasts you.
01.
Hand wash, dry immediately.
Never the dishwasher. Sixty seconds at the sink, then a soft towel. Water on hard Japanese steel is the only thing that rusts it.
02.
Wood boards only.
Glass, stone and marble are harder than the steel and dull the edge in a week. End-grain hardwood is the right choice — hinoki cypress if you can find it.
03.
Sharpen on a stone.
Never a honing rod — the steel is too hard, it chips the edge. A 1000/6000 whetstone every three or four months keeps it keen.
What you receive
In the box.
- The knife, sharpened, oiled, wrapped in cloth.
- A hand-finished box for the knife.
- A Certificate of Authenticity, hand-stamped with the maker's hanko, naming the smith and certifying the blade.
- A 5 yen coin tucked alongside. "Go en" — the Japanese for five yen — is the homophone for luck, connection and bond. Returning the coin to the giver turns the gift-knife into a symbolic purchase, neutralising the old superstition that a knife as a gift cuts the bond between giver and receiver.
- A care card with the sixty-second wash routine and a link to Knife School.
- Your lifetime warranty, registered to you automatically when the order ships.
Frequently asked.
Is it dishwasher safe?
How often will I need to sharpen it?
Can I use it to cut meat?
How long does shipping take?
What if it isn't right for my kitchen?
From the people who cook with it
Reviews.
Love my knives! Beautiful and sharp, I love chopping with these!
I’ve been a homecook for 6 years now and it has always been a dream to own a high quality knife set and I can say that getting it from Oishya was a great decision. The knives are amazing on all fronts, their team is very easy to communicate with and every maintenance question you have will be answered.
So if you’re hesitating, DON’T!!
I have given Oishya 4/5 stars having only to do with wait time, not the knives themselves, or the customer service. The customer service was pretty excellent. Kamila stayed in touch with me, and was quite responsive to my emails inquiring about the order along the way. Given the ridiculous wait time, she graciously upgraded me to the RYU line of knives and, I have to say, I’ve never enjoyed such amazing knives in all my life. They’re perfectly balanced, light as a feather, and the strongest feeling blades I’ve ever wielded in the kitchen. And they’re of course works of art. I’m very gratified by the product and the service. However, the website suggested it would take about 6 weeks to get the knives. Although it worked out for me wonderfully in the end, 7 months is a fairly long time to wait these days. In any event, I regard these knives as amazing, the customer service attentive and responsive, but the wait time out of control. Nevertheless, I will be showing these knives off to my friends and will happily recommend them to everyone.
Although the procedure and waiting time were a little long, it was worth the waiting, for the quality of the bundle and the esthetic are both amazing. I can’t be more happy with the acquisition.
Superb knife set! Each piece is perfectly balanced and razor sharp. The oak wood handles are beautiful.
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