Creating Culture: Volume Nine
Welcome to our Creating Culture series, which is a column from Ryo Tanaka, our third generation president. He has run Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide for many years and as this is a family business with seventy years of history, the family and team here has much information and knowledge to share!
These have been translated from Japanese, so please keep this in mind that words and meanings may not be 100% accurate or correct. A text version of each image is provided for accessibility.
To see the Japanese version, please look at our Japanese social media accounts, such as our Instagram.
Hello!
So far, I have been mostly talking about the concept of "cultural consumption."
Then, as a countermeasure to that, we need to bring back the "cycle of improvement."
In other words, I've talked about the need to recreate a process in which the diverse players involved in food culture and tool culture give each other feedback, which fosters further skills and more ideas.
This time, I want to talk about the colleagues that support this process.
When you hear about the world of kitchen knives, you might imagine strict master-disciple relationships and seniority-based systems.
However, our organisation is completely different.
In a sense, we are a workplace where "uniqueness and individuality is connected to value."
See some examples below of what our team has done:
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Taking a merchandising display course
Acquiring qualifications and purchasing necessary educational materials to improve skills
Bringing a university student from their home country to Japan as an interpreter/translator
Mothers who work here working reduced hours
Fathers who work here taking six months parental leave
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All of these were made possible at the employee's request, with our company covering the costs and adjusting hours and tasks with the rest of our team.
Expanding your potential and taking action for the future.
This is not just a company policy, but is also strongly reflected in the way we work and our outlook on it, and how we interact with our teams internally and externally.
I'm a president that comes from the web industry, with a positive and open view of digital technology.
With close ties to Sakai, a city famous for its knives, we all work hard to cultivate something special.
A store in the special location of Doguyasuji or "Kitchenware Street" and a place for creating a new culture called "ICHITOI."
Of course, we welcome new colleagues as employees anytime (we are recruiting now, see our Japanese employment site for details.)
If you are interested in doing something fun, innovative, inspiring or even interesting, please contact us.
Let's create a culture that we can be proud of for the future together with like-minded colleagues.
Ryo Tanaka
Third Generation President
Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide
End of Volume Nine
If you ever have questions for our president, or want to write further comments, feel free to reach out to us via our contact page, or message us via our social media accounts. While we can't answer everything, we will always do the best we can to showcase and educate about traditional kitchen knife culture.
Of course, our president is always happy to say hello in person too - come by our store anytime, say hello and mention you read his column! While he may be off doing business operations, if he is around he's happy to thank you for coming to visit us and discuss what he's composed.
You can also learn more about knife culture in our other blogs by clicking or tapping here,