# Kanji ID help



## Chrone (Mar 5, 2022)

Hi all, I bought this little santoku on Etsy for a song from a guy who sells vintage knives, it's apparently in VG-1, was just wondering if anyone had any idea of its provenance, thanks!


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## Atso_J (Mar 29, 2022)

The left side of the box above D.P. Stainless steel says "honwarikomi", which basically means the blade is a 3-layered composition of soft stainless steel with a hard core steel (probably some type of carbon steel, or VG).

It's a quite common marking and you may have known that already, so apologies if this was nothing new.

In the first picture, the bottom left pretty certainly looks like 金 (gold) so it's very probable that the core is VG of some sort. The bottom right looks like 東 (east, azuma), but not sure. The top row could all be one big character or the box could be four characters in each corner read from top to bottom.

I think I was able to get somewhat of a grip on the other side regarding the maker. Some elaborate doodling eventually yielded the kanji 山岩 for Yamaiwa. I'm running out of ideas to crack the meaning of the two arrows pointing up though.

Hope this helps to get you started at least!


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