# Japanese petty knives: Whence and why?



## Qapla' (Nov 13, 2018)

Why are Japanese petty knives sized and used the way they are? Why were they designed as such?

Oftentimes in Western kitchens, utility-knives seem to be considered among the least-used knives of all, sharing neither the versatility of a chef's knife nor the task-suitable size of a paring knife. How then did 150mm and 120mm petty knives become so popular among the Japanese?

In some cases the specific choices of sizes seems to be reminiscent of a holdover from Japan's shaku-sun-bu measuring system, with 300mm being the "metric shaku" (1 shaku = 11.93" = 303mm) and 30mm thereby the "metric sun" (not unlike the US's standardization of 750ml liquor bottles as the "metric fifth-gallon"). Perhaps 120mm was chosen merely for being one metric-sun less than 150mm? However, this seems not to be the rationale when it comes to paring knives, wherein 80mm seems to far outnumber 90mm (with 90mm being two metric-sun's less than 150mm); this is in contrast with Western paring knives ranging from 3.5"-4" (88.9mm-101.6mm), with the Japanese-style 120mm (4.72") being considered as well into "utility-knife territory".

So I am left wondering; where does the preference for these knives in these dimensions come from? Are there particular Japanese cooking techniques that make them particularly preferable in ways that they often aren't considered so in Western cuisine?


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## Stx00lax (Nov 13, 2018)

You are going to get a lot of different answers to this. Simply put, knives are tools meant for jobs. In this industry, there are thousands of different tasks performed by thousands of different people, hand size, shapes etc..Depending on what a cook is required to do, it is nice to have a large selection of tools to choose from. One size doesn't fit all. I love using petty knives for simple line-work, trimming fat from boneless meats and even breaking down chicken. It really comes down to the preference of the user.


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## HRC_64 (Nov 14, 2018)

Some people use them for silverskin
and for very specific prep tasks
in a pro environment.

In a home environment, IMHO
a 180 x 35mm+ is a better shape
(mini gyuto or suji).

Horses for courses, and all that.
Buy what you need.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 14, 2018)

Because Japanese men, like most men throughout the world, believe the long held myth that size does not matter.


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## osakajoe (Nov 14, 2018)

Where are you from? And Or what do you consider the west?

This will help with an answer.


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## lemeneid (Nov 14, 2018)

That’s because Japanese homes are usually compact and kitchens are tiny. Therefore the knives they use are smaller because the space they have to work with is also small.

You’ll be surprised, most Japanese homes usually don’t have many knives and they don’t go over 180mm most of the time.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 14, 2018)

osakajoe said:


> Where are you from? And Or what do you consider the west?
> 
> This will help with an answer.


I am from The Land Of Milk And Honey.

As in West I mean in general west of Russia, North of the Mediterranean Sea, Australia, and the Americas. 

Even though South America isn't normally a part of most conversations on this forum, it is still part of West.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 14, 2018)

lemeneid said:


> That’s because Japanese homes are usually compact and kitchens are tiny. Therefore the knives they use are smaller because the space they have to work with is also small.
> 
> You’ll be surprised, most Japanese homes usually don’t have many knives and they don’t go over 180mm most of the time.


I appreciate you agreeing with me.

In the West, when you are living in a closet as a home, you are making a statement.

I'm cheap.

I'm broke.

This is a transition until I find something better.

I'm too high/intoxicated to care.

I'm a minimalist.

In Japan on the other hand it's par for the course.

In the West we have a problem of bigger equals better. Big homes, big government projects, big statements, big buildings, big casinos, big planes with tiny seats (oh the sweet irony), big cars, big boats and big flashy events to showcase our empty headed big time celebrities.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 14, 2018)

One piece of advice I would give is that outside of peeling potatoez and removing cores of fruit, petties are great for dissecting chicken. Easy to move around joints. Cheaper than a honkatsu with similar level of sharpnesse due to the thinness.

Did I mention letter opening?


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## parbaked (Nov 14, 2018)

Qapla' said:


> Why are Japanese petty knives sized and used the way they are? Why were they designed as such?



The following excerpt from "Sharp", by Josh Donald of Bernal Cutlery, gives a simplified history of the Japanese petty knives:

_"The petty knife is a standard accompaniment to the chef knife. Its is the Japanese adaptation of the Western utility knife, which evolved from the French office knife, and it became a mainstay in the post Meiji-era knife kit of Janaese chefs. Japanese chef knives are the same size as the Western utility knife, 10cm to 15cm, but have a thinner blade. Their uses are similar too. Like the gyuto the first petty knives were mono steel with Western handles, and the seemingly more traditional wa-petty knives with mono steel or laminated blades date from the later half of the 20th century"_

In my experience the santoku is much more popular in Japanese homes than a petty knife, but you see a lot of yo-petty knives as line knives in Japanese restaurants or street food stalls...


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## Chef Doom (Nov 14, 2018)

The santoku aka the devils knife. Does everything ok but nothing exceptional. You will never enjoy cooking again.


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## osakajoe (Nov 14, 2018)

Post above me explains it...

The reason I asked is because most westerners only think of the English language. But there many more included in the west. Specifically in this case the French. 

After Japan was forced to start open trading with other countries you see a lot of western influence in Japan. Not to go into the important world events, you have the kitchen being influenced as well. 

Petty comes from the French word petite (little). Where in France you have the couteau d’office knife that was, and still is, being commonly used. So the Japanese basically copied and adapted this knife to their liking and now we have a Petty knife in Japan. 

This is also the time you have a Gyuto being coined. Japanese copying the chef knife because they needed a knife to use on beef. Beef wasn’t big on the menu up until then because it was prohibited until 1868. So when you are influenced by western chefs who cook a lot of meat you copy that knife as well. This time though you call it s Gyuto (牛刀), beef sword.


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## Paraffin (Nov 14, 2018)

Here's an interesting use of petty knife by a Japanese chef (or Western utility? I don't know what the actual knife is):


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## dafox (Nov 14, 2018)

I think it's a Kikuicchi warikomi suji.

https://www.knifemerchant.com/products.asp?productLine=521


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## Chef Doom (Nov 15, 2018)

Paraffin said:


> Here's an interesting use of petty knife by a Japanese chef (or Western utility? I don't know what the actual knife is):



A Usuba would have been better for some of the things he was doing, but clearly time is of the essense hahaha.


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## Qapla' (Nov 16, 2018)

osakajoe said:


> This is also the time you have a Gyuto being coined. Japanese copying the chef knife because they needed a knife to use on beef. Beef wasn’t big on the menu up until then because it was prohibited until 1868. So when you are influenced by western chefs who cook a lot of meat you copy that knife as well. This time though you call it s Gyuto (牛刀), beef sword.


This is actually something I was considering a separate post about (I was going to write a post to the extent of "What is a Gyuto?"). Certainly Japan had extant land-animal-butchery knives before that? ZKnives makes mention of a buta-kiri ("pig cutter") and I vaguely remember reading about some trad-j knives specialized for deer butchery somewhere. Why would they need a separate knife to use on beef?

I've noticed that the idea of a chef's knife as somehow being a specialized beef-butchery knife seems very much widely believed in Japan, q.v. Nozaki's book referring to a gyuto as a "beef slicer" when it certainly is not anything like a beef-slicer in the sense of, say what we'd think of a la Victorinox, or Rakuten translating 牛刀 as "butcher knives".

I wonder why they didn't use, say, 大廚刀 (which AFAIK it's known as in Cantonese, and seems to better reflect its general-use nature)?


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## HRC_64 (Nov 16, 2018)

Gyuto literally (translated) reads as "cow blade" or "cow sword"
so thats where that comes from.


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## KenHash (Nov 16, 2018)

HRC_64 said:


> Gyuto literally (translated) reads as "cow blade" or "cow sword"
> so thats where that comes from.



That is an incorrect translation that appears on a number of English language websites.
The kanji character 牛is read "USHI" to mean cow. But it is read "GYU" to mean BEEF.
The Japanese word for beef is 牛肉　the characters meaning "cow meat" but it is read GYUNIKU.
The word Gyuto 牛刀 is shortened from 牛肉刀　and would be best translated as "Beef Knife".
The character 刀　can be read "Katana" meaning sword. Or more specifically a Japanese sword.
But it can also be read "Tou" (pronounced "Toh") when it follows a leading character, and can mean basically any bladed tool from knives to chisels.

The character 刀 can also be read "Ha" or "Ba" when it follows a character.
Yanagiba is 柳刀　and Deba is 出刃。


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## HRC_64 (Nov 16, 2018)

No worries, that's helpful because everybody nitpicks it, 
and its good to have someone actually translate it correctlly.

but the major point is that it is specifically a 'meat' knife
and this job is not for a 'fish' knife or a 'vegetable' blade.

and there were, if I'm not mistaken, actuaal laws that went
into place about beef/ (loosely 'cows') that led to the rise
of meat consumption and the adoption of western shapes.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 16, 2018)

HRC_64 said:


> Gyuto literally (translated) reads as "cow blade" or "cow sword"
> so thats where that comes from.


When you slash the blade an ancient Steer God Of The Grass emerges to wipe away your enemies.


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## inferno (Nov 16, 2018)

Qapla' said:


> Why are Japanese petty knives sized and used the way they are? Why were they designed as such?
> 
> Oftentimes in Western kitchens, utility-knives seem to be considered among the least-used knives of all, sharing neither the versatility of a chef's knife nor the task-suitable size of a paring knife. How then did 150mm and 120mm petty knives become so popular among the Japanese?
> 
> ...



I think the 120mm is a kinda handy size. basically i can put my index finger straight out over the blade and its simply an extention of that finger. total control. its just a small handy size. sure i can do everything it does with any of my santokus (i'm the only one on the forum that actually likes santokus). but sometimes the big knife is not needed.


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## KenHash (Nov 17, 2018)

HRC_64 said:


> No worries, that's helpful because everybody nitpicks it,
> and its good to have someone actually translate it correctlly.
> 
> but the major point is that it is specifically a 'meat' knife
> ...



Thank you. I believe that at least a forum such as KKF which is filled with those in the culinary field as well as many Japanese cooking knife enthusiasts should be at the forefront of accuracy when it comes to something so basic as this.
As for the Japanese diet and the taboos, laws regarding the eating of meat, that's correct but it's not quite as simple as black and white. Starting with Buddhist doctrine in the 16th century there were periods of prohibition, but game such as deer and boar were eaten in the mountains, and whale in some of the fishing villages.
The best English language explanation I believe is this;
https://www.kikkoman.co.jp/kiifc/foodculture/pdf_09/e_002_008.pdf

In any case your major point is well taken. Professional Japanese chefs had no need for a dedicated meat cutting knife until the latter 1800s when Japan "westernized" and the diet expanded. And the average Japanese household kitchen really did not need one until after WWII ended.


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## holdmyphone (Nov 18, 2018)

By far the contrary, my most used knife is a 180mm petty. I find it to be incredibly versatile for small tasks, big enough to be used on the board, small enough to be used in the hand. Best knife for making orange supremes. I also work in a kitchen with very limited space.

It just depends on your task, technique, and situation. I think most people (at least in the US/Europe) have been brought up with idea that a 240mm chef knife is the tool to use, but would be surprised what can be done with different styles of blades.


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## Corradobrit1 (Nov 18, 2018)

I use my 120 petty more than I imagined.
Now most of the culinary jobs are split between the petty and a 210 gyuto. I sold the 180 gyuto because it didn't bring any additional functionality.


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## parbaked (Nov 18, 2018)

Corradobrit1 said:


> . I sold the 180 gyuto because it didn't bring any additional functionality.


But I think a good 180 could replace all the other knives if you had to have only one...


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## Corradobrit1 (Nov 18, 2018)

Possibly but the height at heel was 48mm and I think that restricted its all round use. The petty is just so nimble for delicate jobs on the board or in the hand. Love it.


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## HRC_64 (Nov 18, 2018)

I prefer 37-43mm or so for 180 to 195 actual edge lengths


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## Corradobrit1 (Nov 18, 2018)

HRC_64 said:


> I prefer 37-43mm or so for 180 to 195 actuals edge lengths



Those would better blade heights. An all rounder would have to have enough height to allow clearance for board work.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 18, 2018)

inferno said:


> (i'm the only one on the forum that actually likes santokus)



Your not the only member that likes santokus. Your the only one that likes 180mm gyutos.


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## daveb (Nov 19, 2018)

Not so Doomsday. 180 is THE correct size for a petty and it's a good size for a gyuto with a little more height.


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## Chef Doom (Nov 19, 2018)

Maybe if you live in a shack off of the beach, or you have tiny hands


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