So what's the big difference between our old faithful trusty German knives and these new on the scene Japanese knives we're seeing?
Well for starters - just about everything!
Sure you can take a quick glance at a German chefs knife and a Japanese gyuto (Japanese version of a western chefs knife) and think they're almost the same but look a little closer and you'll see some differences.
The first major difference is in the thickness of the cross section. A German knife (Henckels/Wusthof) would be a broad sword compared to what many people refer to as a Japanese light saber. Yeah - it's that big of a difference.
Then looking at the profile you'll notice the German chefs knife has a great amount of curve to the belly making it more of a rocking knife. The Japanese gyuto is based off of the French Sabatier pattern chef's knife that uses a flatter profile along it's length.
This is a German chef knife profile...
This is a Japanese gyuto profile...
You can see that the Japanese knife makes contact to the cutting board along it's length in a much greater size patch than the German knife does. This means more product is cut per slice. Also, the Japanese knife is shaped with a gentle roll coming off of the flat section going up to the tip as compared to the large roll of the German knife. The Japanese knife is lifted less (or not as high) as the German knife needs to be thus making a bigger knife seem smaller and certainly making any size knife more efficient.
From here we need to look at the make up of the knives from things that we can't see...
Hardness
German - 54-58 Rc
Japanese - 60-64Rc
Steel
German - Mystery Meat
Japanese - Fine grained steels made exclusively for the cutlery industry.
Then we have a couple of other things to note...
Blade Grind
German - Symmetric
Japanese - Asymmetric
Blade Styles
German - Maybe 20
Japanese - At least 200
Hopefully you've gained a little insight into the basic differences between German and Japanese knives.
Well for starters - just about everything!
Sure you can take a quick glance at a German chefs knife and a Japanese gyuto (Japanese version of a western chefs knife) and think they're almost the same but look a little closer and you'll see some differences.
The first major difference is in the thickness of the cross section. A German knife (Henckels/Wusthof) would be a broad sword compared to what many people refer to as a Japanese light saber. Yeah - it's that big of a difference.
Then looking at the profile you'll notice the German chefs knife has a great amount of curve to the belly making it more of a rocking knife. The Japanese gyuto is based off of the French Sabatier pattern chef's knife that uses a flatter profile along it's length.
This is a German chef knife profile...
This is a Japanese gyuto profile...
You can see that the Japanese knife makes contact to the cutting board along it's length in a much greater size patch than the German knife does. This means more product is cut per slice. Also, the Japanese knife is shaped with a gentle roll coming off of the flat section going up to the tip as compared to the large roll of the German knife. The Japanese knife is lifted less (or not as high) as the German knife needs to be thus making a bigger knife seem smaller and certainly making any size knife more efficient.
From here we need to look at the make up of the knives from things that we can't see...
Hardness
German - 54-58 Rc
Japanese - 60-64Rc
Steel
German - Mystery Meat
Japanese - Fine grained steels made exclusively for the cutlery industry.
Then we have a couple of other things to note...
Blade Grind
German - Symmetric
Japanese - Asymmetric
Blade Styles
German - Maybe 20
Japanese - At least 200
Hopefully you've gained a little insight into the basic differences between German and Japanese knives.