khashy
Senior Member
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- Nov 13, 2016
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I have come across a knife that was sold as an Ashi Honyaki on one of the usual places for knife and stone sales in Japan, which I believe is in fact not an Ashi.
Let me start by saying that I have no horses in this race, the sale has absolutely nothing with me and I do not know who has bought the knife.
Furthermore I cannot 'prove' this, only present the rationale as to why I believe it not to be an Ashi.
Lastly, if the person that has bought this knife is reading this, I am sorry - I do not mean to offend you, however I do feel that given the premiums that an Ashi honyakis demand, the knife community deserves to know if they are potentially being conned.
Here are the photos of the knife which was sold as an Ashi honyaki for a vast sum of money:
Why I believe this is a not an Ashi Honyaki:
I have had a fascination/obsession with Ashi-san's work for a very long time and my OCD nature has meant that I have spent an astonishingly unhealthy amount of time researching and looking for Ashi honyakis. In the process I have been fortunate enough to get a hold of a few - thankfully this was before the magnificence of Ashi honyakis were widely discovered, otherwise I would not have been able to afford them.
I do realize that this does not make me an 'expert' by any means, however the point I am trying to make is that I have seen a significant number of Ashi honyakis in person or in great details via the grace of other Ashi honyaki owners who have been kind enough to share the details of prized possesions with me.
I think many people will agree that an Ashi honyaki is a piece of art brought to life through the medium of deferentially hardened steel. It is a distinctive blade and the unique style of hamon, profile and polish is like no other blade. Therefore one cannot easily mistake an Ashi honyaki for something else or something else for an Ashi honyaki. This is why Ashi commands such eyewatering prices these days, they are very difficult to come by and those who have them do not tend to let go - when you see one in person, you are ensnared in its infinite beauty...
Please take the time to do a search for Ashi honyaki blades and look at the photos. Compare the hamon, the polish and the profile across several images of different knives. Then compare those to this thing. It should be obvious enough to anyone.
Anyway, poetics aside, this blade looked off to me as soon as I saw it advertised as an Ashi honyaki and in order to make sure I am not going mad, I shared it with a number of extremely knowledgeable people in our community, including some of our absolute oracles to ask their opinions of it.
While a number of them said that they cannot tell one way or another with absolute certainty, not a single person said that they felt this blade is a real Ashi honyaki - not one. I have nothing but respect for everyone I asked about this and would have taken any of their words blindly had a single one of them said that they think this is a legit Ashi.
So, what do we have here? The blade is an Ittosai Kotetsu branded blade. Ittosai Kotetsu are a very well respected brand that work with many craftsmen. They have had Ashi honyakis for sure, however Ashi hamono are not the only suppliers of honyaki gyutos to Ittosai. There are examples of Ittosai branded honyaki gyutos that are not Ashis and were not sold as such. I do not for one second believe that Ittosai would have sold this blade as an Ashi. The con is when the seller on the secondary market put this blade up for sale and went to great lengths, weaving stories of how he has confirmed it with X, Y and Z and his contact and his contact's wholesaler and he assures us that it is definitely an Ashi and that the buyer should trust him.
By the way, this same seller sold another knife for exactly the same price previously. This time it was not sold as an Ashi however the photos of the box posted were the exact same photos as this listing. The photo with the sticker on the box is the exact same photo on both sales.
So maybe calling this blade a 'fake' is unfair - Ittosai sold a honyaki blade as they have been doing. They never called it an Ashi and so this blade isn't a fake Ashi per se, it is 'some' honyaki blade. Then along comes one of the well known knife and stone flippers in Japan and posts it explicitly as an Ashi honyaki and prices it accordingly. Now I do acknowledge that this seller might have unknowingly bought it from someone else as an Ashi and has just flipped it as what he bought it as, and you can go back in this unknown chain as much as you like, but at some point in this chain someone conned someone else and that was subsequently passed down the chain until this very last sale.
For all we know this blade may/will show up for sale again as an Ashi honyaki, so please be mindful of all the malpractice that is going on in the knife world right now before dropping vast amounts of money on these blades.
The truth is that certain individuals in Japan have caught onto our thirst for certain blades. Don't get me wrong I am more than happy to put my hands up and join the massive queues for our most beloved makers - they have become hot property for a reason: they are amazing!
This has resulted in some individuals with access to sought after blades, milking the situations and in doing so - to put it lightly - be less than truthful (knowingly or unknowingly). We have known about fake Shigs for some time now, we see Katos pop up on auction left right and center. These are now being advertised as Blue1 and we know Kato-san does not use Blue1, only Blue2. Then there are the vast swathes of custom orders placed by a lot of us (myself included) for such and such maker and such and such sharpener and in the end after months/years of waiting, we end up with 'some' knife that has not been anywhere near those craftsmen; At least in these instances we are not paying through the nose - at some point I will write more about this with proof of why these blades are lies, but that is for another time.
Then there is this - an overt attempt to con an unsuspecting knife enthusiast into buying their very own 'Ashi' unicorn.
This sale is unfortunately done, someone has paid for it and that cannot be undone. The point of this post was to ask everyone to be mindful of the dirty practices that are going on.
In terms of an Ashi honyaki; If you cannot tell it's an Ashi honyaki from 400 miles away while juggling hippos giving birth to giant size venus fly traps on fire, stop! ask questions, ask the community, ask somebody and verify as much as you can that what you are getting is in fact what is advertised.
Again, these are my own views, I'm happy to (and actually hope to) be proven wrong and I sincerely hope that this knife and more like it do not get mis-sold for eyewatering prices as something they are not.
Let me start by saying that I have no horses in this race, the sale has absolutely nothing with me and I do not know who has bought the knife.
Furthermore I cannot 'prove' this, only present the rationale as to why I believe it not to be an Ashi.
Lastly, if the person that has bought this knife is reading this, I am sorry - I do not mean to offend you, however I do feel that given the premiums that an Ashi honyakis demand, the knife community deserves to know if they are potentially being conned.
Here are the photos of the knife which was sold as an Ashi honyaki for a vast sum of money:
Why I believe this is a not an Ashi Honyaki:
I have had a fascination/obsession with Ashi-san's work for a very long time and my OCD nature has meant that I have spent an astonishingly unhealthy amount of time researching and looking for Ashi honyakis. In the process I have been fortunate enough to get a hold of a few - thankfully this was before the magnificence of Ashi honyakis were widely discovered, otherwise I would not have been able to afford them.
I do realize that this does not make me an 'expert' by any means, however the point I am trying to make is that I have seen a significant number of Ashi honyakis in person or in great details via the grace of other Ashi honyaki owners who have been kind enough to share the details of prized possesions with me.
I think many people will agree that an Ashi honyaki is a piece of art brought to life through the medium of deferentially hardened steel. It is a distinctive blade and the unique style of hamon, profile and polish is like no other blade. Therefore one cannot easily mistake an Ashi honyaki for something else or something else for an Ashi honyaki. This is why Ashi commands such eyewatering prices these days, they are very difficult to come by and those who have them do not tend to let go - when you see one in person, you are ensnared in its infinite beauty...
Please take the time to do a search for Ashi honyaki blades and look at the photos. Compare the hamon, the polish and the profile across several images of different knives. Then compare those to this thing. It should be obvious enough to anyone.
Anyway, poetics aside, this blade looked off to me as soon as I saw it advertised as an Ashi honyaki and in order to make sure I am not going mad, I shared it with a number of extremely knowledgeable people in our community, including some of our absolute oracles to ask their opinions of it.
While a number of them said that they cannot tell one way or another with absolute certainty, not a single person said that they felt this blade is a real Ashi honyaki - not one. I have nothing but respect for everyone I asked about this and would have taken any of their words blindly had a single one of them said that they think this is a legit Ashi.
So, what do we have here? The blade is an Ittosai Kotetsu branded blade. Ittosai Kotetsu are a very well respected brand that work with many craftsmen. They have had Ashi honyakis for sure, however Ashi hamono are not the only suppliers of honyaki gyutos to Ittosai. There are examples of Ittosai branded honyaki gyutos that are not Ashis and were not sold as such. I do not for one second believe that Ittosai would have sold this blade as an Ashi. The con is when the seller on the secondary market put this blade up for sale and went to great lengths, weaving stories of how he has confirmed it with X, Y and Z and his contact and his contact's wholesaler and he assures us that it is definitely an Ashi and that the buyer should trust him.
By the way, this same seller sold another knife for exactly the same price previously. This time it was not sold as an Ashi however the photos of the box posted were the exact same photos as this listing. The photo with the sticker on the box is the exact same photo on both sales.
So maybe calling this blade a 'fake' is unfair - Ittosai sold a honyaki blade as they have been doing. They never called it an Ashi and so this blade isn't a fake Ashi per se, it is 'some' honyaki blade. Then along comes one of the well known knife and stone flippers in Japan and posts it explicitly as an Ashi honyaki and prices it accordingly. Now I do acknowledge that this seller might have unknowingly bought it from someone else as an Ashi and has just flipped it as what he bought it as, and you can go back in this unknown chain as much as you like, but at some point in this chain someone conned someone else and that was subsequently passed down the chain until this very last sale.
For all we know this blade may/will show up for sale again as an Ashi honyaki, so please be mindful of all the malpractice that is going on in the knife world right now before dropping vast amounts of money on these blades.
The truth is that certain individuals in Japan have caught onto our thirst for certain blades. Don't get me wrong I am more than happy to put my hands up and join the massive queues for our most beloved makers - they have become hot property for a reason: they are amazing!
This has resulted in some individuals with access to sought after blades, milking the situations and in doing so - to put it lightly - be less than truthful (knowingly or unknowingly). We have known about fake Shigs for some time now, we see Katos pop up on auction left right and center. These are now being advertised as Blue1 and we know Kato-san does not use Blue1, only Blue2. Then there are the vast swathes of custom orders placed by a lot of us (myself included) for such and such maker and such and such sharpener and in the end after months/years of waiting, we end up with 'some' knife that has not been anywhere near those craftsmen; At least in these instances we are not paying through the nose - at some point I will write more about this with proof of why these blades are lies, but that is for another time.
Then there is this - an overt attempt to con an unsuspecting knife enthusiast into buying their very own 'Ashi' unicorn.
This sale is unfortunately done, someone has paid for it and that cannot be undone. The point of this post was to ask everyone to be mindful of the dirty practices that are going on.
In terms of an Ashi honyaki; If you cannot tell it's an Ashi honyaki from 400 miles away while juggling hippos giving birth to giant size venus fly traps on fire, stop! ask questions, ask the community, ask somebody and verify as much as you can that what you are getting is in fact what is advertised.
Again, these are my own views, I'm happy to (and actually hope to) be proven wrong and I sincerely hope that this knife and more like it do not get mis-sold for eyewatering prices as something they are not.
