【Reading】ほうちょう

【English Name】Kitchen Knife

"Hocho" is the Japanese word that collectively refers to all blades used in cooking.

The origin of the word lies in the Chinese "pao ding" (庖丁). The character 庖 means kitchen and the character 丁 indicates an adult male laborer; originally these two characters meant the cook himself. In an anecdote conveyed in the "Yangshengzhu" chapter of the Zhuangzi, a cook deftly breaks down an entire ox while King Hui of Wei looks on, astonishing the king. The word "pao ding" transferred to the knife this master held, and it became widely established as a word for kitchen blades.

Looking back at its history in Japan, from the Nara period to the early Heian period the only word for kitchen blades was "katana." By the late Heian period, professionals who made cooking their trade began to be called "hochoja" and "hochonin," and the knives they held could be referred to simply by the single word "hocho," shortened from "hocho-gatana." This word first appears in literature in the Konjaku Monogatarishu.

In the sushi setting, several Japanese-style knives are lined up and switched out according to the ingredient and the step. Representative ones include the deba bocho for filleting fish, the yanagiba bocho for slicing sashimi (called tako-hiki in the Kanto region), the sushikiri bocho for trimming the cross-sections of rolled and pressed sushi, and the maguro bocho, whose blade can reach about 45–150 cm in length. Japanese-style knives are mainly made with a single-bevel construction of steel forge-welded to soft iron; when sharpened on a whetstone, the soft-iron side wears away first, and the sharp edge naturally appears.