Makabe Uchihamono Hand-Forged Kiridashi Knife: Where to Buy [2026]

A kiridashi (切り出し) is the simplest blade in the Japanese workshop: a single-bevel marking and carving knife, ground flat on one face, with a wedge of carbon steel set into a plain wooden handle. It is the tool a joiner reaches for to scribe a line, pare a peg, or sharpen a pencil to a chisel point. The example covered in this guide is hand-forged in Makabe (真壁), a former castle town at the eastern foot of Mt. Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture, where blacksmiths have shaped edged hand tools for the farms and workshops of the Kanto plain for generations.

What makes a Makabe kiridashi worth a second look from outside Japan is the lineage behind it rather than any single feature. The town’s smiths — known collectively as Makabe no kaji (真壁の鍛冶, “the Makabe blacksmiths”) — built their trade supplying sickles, hoes, and edged tools to rice and produce farmland. The kuro-uchi (黒打ち, “black-forged”) finish and the single-bevel grind on this knife are signatures of that agrarian tool-making tradition, carried over from field implements into woodworking and craft use.

This article is written from a Japan-based editor’s perspective, working out of Toyama and Nara. It is for woodworkers, leather and paper crafters, and collectors of hand tools who want to understand where this object comes from, how to buy it from outside Japan, and where it sits against other Japanese single-bevel and hand-forged blades. We cover specs, provenance, international shipping paths, and honest caveats — carbon steel is not maintenance-free, and listing data on this particular knife is thin.

🗓️ Published: June 7, 2026  ·  🔄 Last updated: June 7, 2026  ·  ⏱️ Read time: about 11 minutes

Who this is for — and who should skip it

Product overview (from published specs)

Listing data on this specific knife is thin. Only the Amazon JP listing snapshot is available; live pricing and exact dimensions may have shifted since the writing date, and the search snapshot did not return a structured spec sheet. The table below therefore states what is verifiable from the product identity and the maker tradition, and marks the rest plainly rather than guessing.

Spec sheets for hand-forged tools are often incomplete because each piece is made in small batches. Treat the rows marked “Unconfirmed” as items to verify on the live listing rather than as known facts.

Where this comes from — place, era, and the craft tradition

Ibaraki Ibaraki · Kantō

Makabe sits on the northern part of the Kantō plain, at the eastern foot of Mt. Tsukuba — the twin-peaked mountain that dominates the Ibaraki landscape and that Tokyo residents can see on a clear day to the north. The land around it is flat, fertile, rice-growing country. That agricultural setting is the whole reason a hand-forging trade took root here: a plain full of farms is a plain full of demand for sickles, hoes, and edged hand tools, and the smiths who could make and repair them clustered where the work was.

The mountain gave the town a second resource. Mt. Tsukuba’s granite fed a stone-working economy, and Makabe became nationally known for Makabe ishidōrō (真壁石燈籠, “Makabe stone lanterns”) cut from local granite. Stone and steel grew up side by side in the same small town — one shaping garden lanterns, the other shaping the tools that worked the fields.

Makabe began as a castle town of the Makabe clan in the medieval period, then settled into its long working life under Edo-period domain governance as a market and craft town. That history is still legible in the streets: rows of merchant houses (machiya) and storehouses survive in the old core, the kind of fabric that only persists where a town stayed economically alive without being flattened and rebuilt. The blacksmith and stone trades grew up inside that fabric, supplying the surrounding villages.

“A kiridashi is a farm-tool tradition pointed at finer work — the same black-forged carbon steel that cut rice, now scribing a line on a tea-box lid.”

What “still being made here” means for a kiridashi is modest but real. This is not a famous-name kitchen-knife town like Sakai or Echizen; it is a regional smithing tradition that survived by being useful. The continuity case rests on the technique rather than on volume — the single-bevel grind and the black-forged scale are the same practices that produced field tools, applied to a smaller, finer blade. The agrarian trade did not vanish; it narrowed and adapted, and the kiridashi is one of the forms it adapted into.

📌 How does it compare?

Related guides on jpmono.com — other Kantō blades, Japanese single-bevel knives, hand-forged tools, and Ibaraki crafts.

Yuki Tsumugi necktie (same Ibaraki silk heritage)
Chiba Koshogu hand-forged sickle (Kanto farm-tool kin)
Tokyo Tsukiji yanagiba (Kanto single-bevel blade)
Echizen hand-forged santoku
Kaga hand-forged nakiri
Sakai Takayuki gyuto
Suwada precision-forged nipper
Chichibu Meisen stole (Kanto craft)

Which finish should you choose?

This piece is listed in 2 finishes. The photos below are the actual 色 options on the listing right now — pick the one you want and confirm it on the product page before ordering, since hand-finished wares vary slightly piece to piece.

シルバー

🇯🇵 Amazon JP Global Store →

ローズ

🇯🇵 Amazon JP Global Store →

Price snapshot across stores

Pricing on this specific knife was not returned in the data available at the time of writing. The JPY price is the authoritative figure for the sourced listing; verify it on the live page before buying. USD figures elsewhere in this guide are approximate estimates at a ¥150/USD baseline.

What it does well

Weaknesses and things to verify before buying

1. Carbon steel rusts. The blade must be wiped dry and lightly oiled; left wet, it will spot and corrode. This is not a maintenance-free tool.
2. Single-bevel knives are handed. The listing data did not confirm whether this is a right- or left-hand bevel. Left-handed buyers in particular should verify before ordering.
3. Dimensions are unconfirmed. Blade length and weight were not in the available data. If size matters for your work, confirm on the live listing.
4. Pricing was unavailable at the time of writing. Only the Amazon JP listing identity was available; the current ¥ price and shipping cost must be checked on the page.
5. It is a craft tool, not a kitchen knife. A kiridashi is for marking, paring, and carving — not for food prep, and it ships expecting hand-sharpening upkeep.
6. The kuro-uchi finish is cosmetic forge scale. The black flats are traditional and functional, but they are not a stainless coating and do not prevent rust on the cutting edge.

Conclusion — which buyer type are you?

Other ways to approach this purchase

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jpmono.com is curated by a Japan-based editorial team (working out of Toyama in the Hokuriku region and Nara in Kansai) and is independent. We do not take payment from the makers we feature; income comes from affiliate links. We do not physically test every product — we read maker specs and source listings.

🤖 This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against the source listing data. Specs, pricing, and availability should be confirmed on the retailer’s page before purchase.

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