Sakai's history of forging blades goes back to Japan's Kofun period. Because forging skills were handed down over such a long time, Sakai's craftsmen were in great demand during the Sengoku period. In that era Sakai was an independent city, subject to no domain. It was then that the Portuguese arrived with the matchlock musket, bringing a new technology, and it was Sakai's craftsmen who studied and produced those muskets
and changed the course of warfare dramatically
When the Edo period came, demand in the gun market fell. Even with better designs, guns could no longer find a market. But the Portuguese came to Sakai's aid once more, this time with a new commodity: tobacco. Sakai began producing tobacco knives and selling them all over the country
Today tobacco is cut by machine, so tobacco knives are far less needed, and the craftsmen turned instead to forging knives for cooking. Sakai knives are distinguished by a divided process, with each part made by a craftsman who specialises in it
This kind of collaboration is what produces high-quality Japanese knives, and in Showa 57 (1982) knives from Sakai began to spread across the world