Kai Wasabi Black Yanagiba Knife, 8 1/4-Inch

The five stars factors in the price point, so not saying these knives perform as well as a $300+ knife. I ordered the Nakiri, the Deba, and the Yanagiba because I wanted to start experimenting with Japanese style knives without jumping into the deep end of the pool right away and spending thousands of dollars. These are great, arrived as described and I couldn't be happier. The Nakiri is the perfect veggie chopper/slicer, and I've already prepared multiple sashimi platters at home with perfect, restaurant quality glassy cut edges.Mine were factory sharp out of the box, didn't need immediate sharpening at all and I have just used a quality steel for honing so far. Haven't needed to use a whetstone yet.I saw a confused review claiming that the Nakiri was single beveled like a Usuba. Mine is double beveled as a Nakiri should be and was quite sharp out of the box.The carbon steel seems quality, mine have held their edge with regular honing so far.I would equate the reviews claiming rust/corrosion spots and chipping to misuse and/or neglect. Some people just shouldn't have nice things.

Considering I've been an avid knife collector for quite some time and the fact that I also sharpen knives professionally, I consider myself a bit of a knife snob at this point. That being said, I honestly wasn't expecting very much when I saw these kitchen knives at a price of less than $30 per knife. I am very familiar with KAI and the fact that they also manufacture Zero Tolerance, Kershaw, and Shun knives, which was honestly probably the only reason that prompted me to pull the trigger on these knives and give them a try. Boy was I surprised!!!The handles are crafted in a style that pays homage to traditional Japanese cutlery (i.e. wooden handle with resin ferrule) but in this case, to keep costs down, KAI went with Poly handle and steel ferrule. Honestly, I found it rather attractive looking, and even more attractive once I got the product in hand.The blade steel far exceeded my expectations in a few different ways. First, the blade came very sharp right out of the box! This isn't a very big deal to me, as I've received many very high-end knives that didn't come exceptionally sharp out of the box, and also the fact that no matter how good a knife is, they all need to be sharpened at some point. But it is always a pleasant surprise to see a company send you a razor sharp knife right out of the box, especially with a knife this affordable!Second, after touching the knife up on one of my very fine grit ceramic rods, I was very quickly able to bring this knife to popping hairs off my arm without even touching skin! Just stop and think about that for a moment.... Lousy quality steel will usually NEVER take an edge like that. So this clearly demonstrated to me that KAI is using a good quality steel with a superb heat treat in these knives! They obviously care as much for their economical housewares line as they do for their Kershaw and Shun lines as well! Good job KAI!Furthermore, one thing I've always enjoyed about all of KAI's brands such as Shun and Kershaw is that they are not afraid to put very acute grinds on their knives which allow them to acheive superior edge geometry and slicing ability! My guess is that like Shun, these sister company Wasabi knives are also probably ground to the same 16 degree edge. Very cool! I've also been using these knives for a while now and they seem to hold an edge just as well as my $100 Wusthof knives. And oh, did I mention that these Wasabi knives are made in Japan? That's right, these knives are actually made in Japan folks! So you're getting Japanese quality at an exceptional value here.The one and only complaint I have about these knives is that the spine and bolster (rear section of the blade your fingers rest against) of the blade were ground and left at a rather sharp 90 degree angle that digs into your finger, which I could see possibly causing irritation with prolonged use. This was a very easy fix however. I simply rounded off the sharp corners with a very fine grit ceramic sharpening rod. It only took a few minutes, and presto, I have a high-performance, good looking knife at a fraction of the cost!So far I own the Kai Wasabi Santoku and Nakiri knives and I love them both! I will post this same review to both models because my review would be the same anyways. I also plan to purchase the Chef knife and Paring knife soon.Bottom line: I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU TRY THESE KNIVES! They are a truly exceptional value for the money, and their made in Japan by a company that knows knives. You can't go wrong! Give them a try.

It's a great beginner's knife to practice on your sharpening stones (whetstones). I bought this knife for the explicit purpose of practicing sharpening on whetstone -- and for that matter I bought a cheap set of stones to match this cheap knife! Why? So when I buy the $300 knife and the $100 stone I will not harm either the knife or the stone. And so on, until one upgrades to $1000 knife and .. so on.It's stainless and that means you don't really need to pay attention to it. If you are going buy a real carbon steel yanagiba you BETTER pay attention to that. It will require you to hone it, wash it, dry it, all that without a moment of laziness. You can't toss it in the sink and come back to it later. You can just toss the knife anywhere. You can't treat a $300 or $1000 knife like that. It will hate you. It will hate you so bad it will rust on you, dull on you, and take your money and make you cry. BUT, hey, if you buy this $30 knife to practice, and to get all that neglect out of your system, you will be ready when you finally get that $300+ product that you have always wanted.Make sure you practice 15 degree blade angle on the whetstone. Make sure you validate how well you have done your sharpening on a piece of fish. Stainless is softer steel than carbon steel so you will need to keep this sharpened more regularly which, hey, hones your skills! Carbon steel will stay sharp longer but will rust sooner if not careful so don't let it rust. But carbon steel can be made a lot sharper on a whetstone than stainless steel. But stainless steel gives me that laziness buffer if say I want to eat the fish instead of washing my knife, I can toss this stainless blade aside and eat my meal before I go back to washing it. Or watch some TV then go wash the knife. Or wait until tomorrow. Don't ever do that to a carbon steel blade.So, this blade served the purpose of inexpensive Yanagiba practice -- sharpening and using. It helps you get all your kinks out and train you how to take care of a blade like this. This blade 8.5 inches long and a typical carbon blade yanagiba is 10 inches long or even 12 inches. The longer it is the harder it is to use properly. Remember you can only pull back on the blade as you cut instead of pushing down. You can only cut with one motion with Yanagiba--pulling back from heel to tip. That's why the blade is so long--to give you a long cutting edge for without you slicing back and forth like sawing a piece of meat.I give it 5-stars because I love the purpose it served. The knife itself is not that great of a knife. Again, it's a generic stainless steel blade on generic material without much artisan involvement. Probably machine made from end to end. The knife I got was slightly bent and slightly tilted. But hey, what do you expect out of a $30 machine-made knife vs a $300 (at bare minimum starter basic) carbon steel yanagiba? For a tenth of the cost I got my kinks out. It's worth the 4-5 star rating.