Short answer: yes, but probably not the one hanging in your knife block. A grooved steel rod is the wrong tool for most Japanese knives. A ceramic rod is fine. A fine whetstone is better than either.

I get this question more than almost any other, usually from someone who just bought their first Japanese gyuto and has a Wüsthof steel from 2009 sitting in the drawer. So let me go through why the answer is "it depends on the rod," and what to do instead.

What a honing rod actually does

A honing rod doesn't sharpen. It doesn't remove steel in any meaningful amount. What it does do is push a rolled edge back into line. On a soft German knife, the very apex of the edge (we are talking a few microns) bends over to one side with use. It still has metal there, it's just pointing the wrong way. A few passes on a steel rod bends it back. That's the whole trick.

This works because German knives run around 56 to 58 HRC on the Rockwell scale. That's soft enough to bend without cracking.

Why the grooved steel is a problem

A Japanese knife is usually harder. VG-10 sits around 60 to 61. Aogami Super can go to 64 or 65. At that hardness the edge doesn't roll much. It chips. Tiny micro-chips you can't see, but you can feel them as the knife going "dull" faster than you expected.

Now take that hard, thin edge and drag it along a grooved rod made of hardened steel at roughly the same hardness. The ridges on the rod aren't polishing anything. They are hitting the edge like a row of tiny hammers. On a soft knife this bends the apex back. On a hard knife it breaks off little pieces of it. You'll end up with a toothier, more ragged edge that feels sharper for about one onion and then falls apart.

I've done this. Everyone's done this once, usually on a knife they'd just paid too much for. The knife isn't ruined, but you've just booked yourself an extra half hour on the stones.

The exception: softer Japanese steels

Not every Japanese knife is a 64 HRC glass cannon. A lot of the workhorse stainless steels are closer to German hardness. AUS-8 runs 58 to 60. Molybdenum-vanadium steels from Misono, MAC and the Tojiro Basic line are in the 57 to 59 range. Our own Classic 8" is AUS-8 at 58 to 60.

On those knives a plain steel rod is survivable. Light pressure, a few passes, and the edge comes back. I still wouldn't use a coarse grooved one. But a smooth or fine-ribbed steel isn't going to wreck anything.

If you own a harder knife, a VG-10 Damascus, a Takamura R2, anything with a carbon steel core from Sakai, skip the steel rod entirely.

What to use instead

A ceramic rod. Ceramic is far harder than any knife steel, so it doesn't deform. And a decent ceramic rod has a grit (usually somewhere between 1200 and 2000) which means it polishes the apex a little as it realigns it. This is the honing tool I actually recommend for Japanese knives. Idahone, MAC's black ceramic, the Shun one that comes in their sets, all fine. Keep pressure very light. Think "wiping the edge," not "scraping it."

A fine whetstone. Three or four light trailing strokes per side on a 3000 or 6000 grit stone does everything a rod does, with more control and zero risk of chipping. If you already own a stone, you don't need a rod. The whetstone guide covers the motion.

A leather strop. Bare leather or leather with a fine compound. This is what I use between stone sessions on my sharpest knives. Twenty seconds, done.

How to hone a Japanese knife if you must use a rod

Rod tip down on a towel on the counter. Not in the air like a TV chef. Hold the knife at the same angle the edge was sharpened at, which for most Japanese knives is 12 to 15 degrees per side. Draw the knife down and across, heel to tip, edge leading. Three or four passes per side, alternating. Pressure: the weight of the knife and nothing more.

If you hear a scraping sound, you're pressing too hard. If you hear a tick-tick-tick, you're hitting the rod with the edge at too steep an angle and knocking chips out. Stop.

How often

Less than you'd think, honestly. With a hard Japanese steel the edge stays aligned a long time. Honing once a week for a home cook who uses the knife daily is plenty. The moment honing stops bringing the edge back, that's the signal to sharpen, not to hone harder.

And if you're honing a Japanese knife every day because it keeps going dull, the problem is almost never the rod. It's usually the cutting board (glass and bamboo both eat edges) or the technique (twisting, scraping the board with the edge, hitting bones). Fix those and the rod gets a lot less use.

One last thing. If your knife came with a 50-degree inclusive edge from a factory somewhere and you've been honing it on a steel for years with no problems, that's a different knife than what this article is about. Soft steel, obtuse edge, steel rod: fine. Hard steel, thin edge, steel rod: no.

Andrew Kuzmin · Editor-in-Chief, Okami Blades