Over-view of SHIZU
As a family member of the founder of SHIZU, writing the history of SHIZU makes me feel time-travelling to see him and his successors.
Naming of SHIZU
A number of people have misunderstood that our family name is SHIZU. It is not true. SHIZU comes from Saburo SIZU who was a master craftsman back in EDO era.
The founder of SHIZU grew in SEKI city, the city of blacksmith, and naturally became a craftsman. Swords of SEKI were known as Dose NOT Snap, Dose NOT Bend and Do Cut well, so the founder showed his respect by naming his company after an ancient blacksmith.
Work shop for better knives
Using lattest teqnology to study knives
In 1950s
In 1959, Masami HORIBE as a craftsman in SEKI started to produce knives which were designed to export.
In 1960s
The business was going nicely because oversea customers appraised Masami HORIBE as a fine craftsman and his wife sold knives with her outgoing character. They moved to the new office.
In 1970s
Masami's oldest son took over the company in 1976.
In 1980s
In 1980, the company become limited company and 1980’s were the period of time SHIZU produced own bland knife first time.
Series of TAKUMI and NUDE were released. The second president designed TAKUMI with his little boorish character and regarded as very practical knife.
Since there was not enough money to develop other series, he came up idea that removing handle from TAKUMI and named NUDE.
The age before the internet became popular, sale was not as good as expectation and they remained quietly for next 20 years.
Takumi series
Very first NUDE Knife
At same time, merchandised companies began to sell ceramic knives and there was no one producing them in SEKI city.
The president at that time hard producers of ceramic knives insulted SEKI craftsman because SEKI craftsman were not producing ceramic knives.
He decided to produce them and he did.
In 1990s
In 1995, current president took over the company from his older brother who became in charge of newly established company SIZUTECH.
SIZUTECH
And new 'Shizu Hamono'office was build at the same time.
Shizu Hamono
In 2000s
SHIZU started to develop own bland kitchen knives again.
In 2010s
NUDE series were re-modeled and MORINOKI were newly released.
We did produced merchandised bread cutting knives and we knew they were not good enough.
We started to work with new knife.
First outcome of this project was the bread cutting knife which has unique blade and cut soft bread super smoothly.
However it was not good at cutting harder bled such as French bled. It smash the surface of bread and cutting surface was not beautiful enough.
We found ideal design of blade to cut harder bread and mixed two different blades in perfect position to cut both types of bread perfectly. This knife still amazes professional chef several years after its release.
