I get asked about these two more than you'd think, usually by someone who's just watched a sushi documentary and now wants a long knife. Fair enough. But the yanagiba and the sujihiki aren't interchangeable, and the one that looks more authentic is the one most people will regret.

If you want the answer without the reasoning: get a sujihiki. Get a yanagiba only if you're slicing raw fish every week and you're willing to learn single-bevel sharpening. That second condition is the one that trips people up.

The yanagiba

柳刃, willow blade. This is the sashimi knife you've seen behind every sushi counter, long and narrow, anywhere from 240mm up to a 330 that looks faintly ridiculous on a home board. What makes it a yanagiba isn't the length though. It's the grind. One side has a wide flat bevel running the whole length. The other side is basically flat, with a shallow hollow ground into it. All of the edge is on one side.

Why bother with that? Because when you pull it through a block of tuna in one long stroke, the cut face comes out nearly polished. No drag marks, nothing torn, none of the slightly crushed look you get from a double-bevel knife no matter how sharp you've got it. If you care about how sashimi looks on the plate (and in Japan, people really do), this is the knife that does it.

Everything else about it is a tradeoff. It's right-handed unless you pay extra for a lefty. It wanders sideways on anything thick. Bones, forget it. And you sharpen it differently from every other knife you own: big bevel flat on the stone, back side barely touched, and if you grind the back like a normal knife you've wrecked it. Most of them are carbon steel too, shirogami or aogami, which means they'll rust in an afternoon if you leave one wet. There are stainless ones (Ginsan mostly) and honestly for home use I'd go that route.

The sujihiki

筋引, which translates roughly as "sinew puller." Think of the sujihiki as what a Japanese maker does when asked for a carving knife. Same sort of length, 240 to 300 normally. But it's double bevel, ground thin like a gyuto that's been stretched, and it cuts straight, works in either hand, and sharpens on the same stones with the same motion as the rest of your knives.

This is the knife Japanese cooks grab for a roast, for portioning a side of salmon, for trimming the silverskin off a tenderloin, for brisket. Almost all of them are stainless. VG-10, AUS-10, SG2, whatever the maker uses on their gyuto line.

And yes, you can slice sashimi with it. Not quite as clean as a yanagiba, but a lot cleaner than a chef's knife, and I'd be surprised if your dinner guests could tell. I've used a 270 sujihiki for fish at home for years and haven't once wished it was single bevel. I've wished it was longer, once or twice.

Where they actually differ

The grind, obviously. Single versus double bevel, which drives nearly everything else: the yanagiba is handed, the sujihiki isn't. The yanagiba needs its own sharpening technique, the sujihiki doesn't. The yanagiba is usually carbon, the sujihiki is usually stainless.

Price is closer than you'd expect. A decent stainless 240 yanagiba starts around $150 and the good Sakai ones go into the many hundreds. A good sujihiki starts around $120. Neither is cheap, neither needs to be expensive.

The single vs double bevel page goes deeper on why the grind matters so much if you want it.

So which one

Yanagiba if: you make sashimi or nigiri at home regularly, you buy whole fish or big loins, and you're already comfortable on whetstones. 270mm is the right first one. 300 if your board can take it.

Sujihiki if: you want one long knife that does roasts, the holiday bird, fish, and sashimi night when it happens. 240 fits a normal board. 270 is nicer if you've got the space. Either will outslice any chef's knife in your kitchen by a mile.

What I'd steer you away from is buying a yanagiba because it's the "real" one. It is real. It's also a specialist tool, and most of the ones I come across in home kitchens are dull, because the owner never worked up the nerve to sharpen a single bevel. A dull yanagiba loses to a sharp sujihiki at everything, sashimi included.

One last thought. If you don't slice long things often, a 240 gyuto will cover you. Both of these are second or third knives. Nobody needs either before they've got a good gyuto.

Andrew Kuzmin · Editor-in-Chief, Okami Blades