The Japanese cooking knifes are generally called Houchou, which has totally different use from general European knifes. Houchou is designed to slice foods down against a cutting board in one go; wooden cutting boards are made softer than European cutting board in order to support the sharper but softer edge tips and make a clean slice surface and accurate cuts, where European knifes are generally designed to chop or grind foods down against a cutting board.
The Edge of many Japanese knifes are chisel grind style; however has very short edge on other side to support the smooth cut.
The Houchou used by Japanese chefs are made one type per one purpose usually; For soft meat, hard meat, meat with bone, for a small fish, big fish, bonny fish, leaf veges, root veges, specially for eels, tunas, puffer poison fish, octopus etc.
Therefore Houchou has many types and styles per different uses; however majority of us use only one type at home; Santoku (is the proper name even I didn't know till today, but most of us just call it Houchou), shown the picture at the top of this page.
The Japanese knifes imported to UK are mostly in this style.
The main purpose for our knifes are categorized in three; for veges, for meats and for fish; this Santoku - Houchou is in the ideal shape and made to fit for all 3 different purposes by one.
It has the popular chisel grind style with short edge on the other side so it is easier to cut food in straight with clean cutting surface.
The most part of its blade is straight so it can slice veges against cutting board easily, or peal the veges in thin slices.
The blade body is thicker made than a vegetable knifes so it lasts longer and stronger against meat and soft bones to cut, but not thick as a meat knife so easier to use, the body gets thinner towards the point tip and the edge is slightly carved up so it's easier to slice in to fish meat and cut it out from thin bones.
This type of knifes are usually strong enough to cut chicken cartridges, thin bones around wing tip, fish bones, core of corns etc, but not strong enough to chop e.g. chicken thick bones, pork ribs or beef bones.
I use mostly only one of this type knife for all cooking, except some special occasions e.g. slicing a bread.
<Take care>
Because the edge is made in the chisel grind style, the edge gets dull quite often; proper way is to use the special sharping table stone, which may not be easy to find it outside of Japan.
In that case, don't use the knife sharpener for European knifes unless the knife states that is OK (some European made one do that); the most of Japanese knifes are softer than European knifes, the general sharpener in UK will just damage the edge and make it last the life of knife shorter.
Ideal way is using a back of tea or coffee cup; the one has a bit rough cut should do well.
Do this very carefully please.
Firstly sharpen the main grind side - against the edge of cup, place the edge a right-angle to the cup bottom, not totally flat parallel to the surface of the cup bottom but slightly angled just as the grind, slide the knife from bottom to top against the cup bottom. One way only. Do it few times, carefully. Do the same for the other side of edge once. Clean the knifes under running water, careful as the edge should be very sharp now.
Although above process works fine for most of general Japanese home use knifes, if you buy a real better Japanese knifes, you may find them rusts very quickly. Be aware the better knifes from proper Japanese knife makes uses high rate of carbon steel in order making the knife sharper but stronger; in the results those knifes are easier to rust. The knife must be kept dry after use all time, wash it immediately well after cutting lemons.
The sharp pint tip is usually even softer than other part; do not dry the knife in Utensil stand but lay the edge down on the aerial.
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