Kai PRO 9.5" Yanagiba Knife, Hand Sharpened Japanese Sashimi Knife, German DIN1.4116 Stainless Steel Blade, Full-Tang POM Handle, NSF Certified, Versatile Kitchen Tool

Great knife Very useful

I decided to buy this knife out of curiousity when the price dropped to $35. I have the Kai Pro Boning Knife and am extremely happy with it so I wanted to find out if the Yanagiba was any good. I know that at lower price points many Yanagibas lack distinguishing features such as a Single Bevel and a hollowed back so I asked in the question section about this. The seller (manufacturer) responded saying, “ Thank you for your question. Yes, the back side of the blade has the traditional Urasuki, hollow ground back.” This could technically be true, but it is so slight that it’s practically non-existent, nor has it been flattened or honed at the edges. Now we get to my real issue with the knife, it has a very significant secondary bevel, which is not shown in the product image. It is pretty steep, if I had to guess the edge angle is around 25-30 degrees. It isn’t a microbevel either it’s probably almost 1.5-2mm so grinding it away would take an unreasonable amount of time. The fit and finish is pretty nice unfortunately it will never excel at what it is meant to be used for because of critical design flaws.