Creating Culture: Volume Six
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, 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.
It is getting chilly in the morning and evenings. We can really feel winter approaching now.
Last time, we discussed ICHITOI, and how we completed that project.
This time, we will go back to discussing cultural consumption and address the third point of it.
"Local Identity"
Japanese foodways culture is highly regarded around the world, but what does this mean when it comes to local identity?
A kitchen utensil store operator in New York offered us the following tale about a famous kitchenware district in the area.
"There used to be many cookware stores on Bowery Street, but they have all ceased trading.
It was difficult to open the shutters every morning, listen to what customers wanted, and calculate expenses.
Wouldn't it be easier to just rent out the space?"
These days, Bowery Street is known as a financial district, and its characteristic of being New York's kitchenware street has mostly disappeared.
This is happening locally too. Did you know the number of tool stores in Doguyasuji is decreasing year-over-year, much like it did in Bowery Street?
Of course, renting off land and a building is not easy; it takes very careful consideration to engage in the rental space.
Yet, there are only a few "cooking tool specialty shopping streets" in the world, like Kappabashi in Tokyo or here at Doguyasuji in Osaka.
We hope to work with these new Doguyasuji tenants, who range from souvenir shops to restaurants.
We want to work with them to support Doguyasuji's local identity, so that we can continue to make this shopping street a unique and wonderful place that supports Japan's foodways cultures.
Ryo Tanaka - 3rd Generation President
Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide
End of Volume [NUMBER]
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,