Creating Culture: Volume Seven
Welcome to our Creating Culture series—a column from Ryo Tanaka, Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide's third generation president. As a family business with seventy years of history, the family and team here has much information and knowledge to share!
These have been localised in-house 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, everyone.
My name is Ryo Tanaka, and I am the third generation president of Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide.
In this column, I will focus on talking about knives directly, their makers, and continue to discuss the keyword “creating culture.”
Please read our previous columns too, if you are curious.
Hello! It’s gotten very cold all of a sudden, hasn't it?
Did you to catch a cold this season?
Please stay warm where and when you can.
As the end of the year quickly approaches, I'd like to look back on 2024 in this edition of Creating Culture.
This year was a year of many different challenges and endeavors, but none were bigger or more meaningful than the opening of ICHITOI, which we did in October.
We have received plenty of positive feedback in the three months since we opened. Yet, creating a space that is so different from what we had done before required bountiful amounts of resolve. It still requires it now.
"Can we even sell knives from this space?"
"No one will come up to the second floor [where ICHITOI is]."
From planning through to execution, whenever we hit a roadblock, I saw the faces of our predecessors in my mind.
In fact, our previous store manager kindly came to visit us recently. He retired from our store this year and has since turned 90. I will always be thankful for his great efforts.
That said, I was quite nervous when he arrived.
The store was originally designed by him and his predecessors, who paid extreme attention to every detail.
There was no doubt that they also put much thought and work into how the second floor was previously developed.
Yet, so soon after his retirement, it was transformed into a completely new and different space.
I wasn’t sure what he would think about it.
When he came up to ICHITOI, he said the following with a beaming smile.
"It truly has become a wonderful place, hasn't it?"
To hear these words from someone who was a key component of us for so many years was a special moment. It felt like a yell of encouragement from those who came before me.
I was really happy, yet at the same time I felt like I had been passed a massive baton.
This baton was not just heavy, though. It gave me a renewed sense of responsibility.
Perhaps it is "the baton of responsibility."
In a sense, the real challenge is only just beginning.
With ICHITOI at its core, we aim to foster Japanese culinary and tool culture by delivering the spirit and techniques of our knife artisans to the world.
We hope to hear from you in 2025, and please do visit us and ICHITOI in Osaka!
Thank you for supporting us, whether you have done so for years or are only learning about us now.
Let's continue to create culture!
Ryo Tanaka - 3rd Generation President
Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide
End of Volume Seven
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. You can also see this post on our global Instagram!
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,