Anryu Hamono: The 1873 Takefu Forge

A Meiji-era forge in a 700-year-old craft region

The Anryu workshop belongs to Echizen Uchihamono (越前打刃物), the forged-blade tradition of Fukui Prefecture whose lineage runs back roughly 700 years. Takefu Knife Village's records date the founding of the Anryu forge to around 1873, early in the Meiji era, under first-generation smith Hanzaburo Anryu (安立半三郎). Note the honest hedge in the Japanese source itself: the founding is given as "circa" Meiji 6, which is how records tend to survive in family workshops.

For most of its first century the forge made what Echizen made: sickles, hatchets, and agricultural edge tools for working farmers. That trade sustained generations of Echizen smiths and then, in the postwar decades, collapsed under mechanized farming and factory-made tools. The workshops that survived were the ones that found new products and new customers. Anryu Hamono became one of the region's defining examples of that pivot, turning its forging skill toward kitchen knives and, eventually, toward buyers on the other side of the world.

The modern turning point came in 1991, when a group of Echizen smiths formalized the Takefu Knife Village cooperative and, from 1993, moved into a shared workshop building in Echizen City. Katsushige Anryu, the fourth-generation head, was among its founding masters. The cooperative gave small family forges like Anryu shared equipment, a shared showroom, a training pipeline, and collective visibility that no single sickle-maker could have afforded alone. The full story of the cooperative is on our Takefu Knife Village page.

The five generations

The Village's member records lay out the succession plainly, which makes this one of the better-documented small-forge lineages in Echizen:

• First generation: Hanzaburo Anryu (安立半三郎). Founded the forge around 1873.
• Second generation: Shimanosuke Anryu (安立志磨之助). Headed the forge from around 1930.
• Third generation: Katsutoshi Anryu (安立勝利). Headed the forge from 1947 to 1981, through the hardest decades of the hand-tool trade's decline. Retailer-published profiles record that his son joined him at the forge straight out of high school in the late 1950s.
• Fourth generation: Katsushige Anryu (安立勝重). Head from 1981 to 2020. The smith who took the family name global; more on him below.
• Fifth generation: Takumi Ikeda (池田拓視). Representative since 2021, when the business was also renamed 安立打刃物.

Two things stand out. First, the forge has never skipped a generation or passed outside the family circle; the current head is the fourth generation's nephew. Second, the dates are unusually concrete for a workshop this size, because the cooperative publishes them. Where sources conflict on small points, we defer to the Village's own records.

Katsushige Anryu, the smith who took the name global

Katsushige Anryu, born in 1940 according to retailer-published profiles, spent over two decades forging beside his father before taking over in 1981. His tenure coincided with the industry's near-death and its reinvention, and he was central to both responses: a founding master of Takefu Knife Village, and one of the smiths who proved that Echizen's forge-first aesthetic could win an international audience.

His signature became the combination that still defines the house: carbon-steel cores in Aogami Super and Blue #2, stainless cladding for practicality, black kurouchi finish, and above all tsuchime, the field of hand-hammered dimples across the blade face. The look was rustic where the era's luxury brands were polished, and it aged into one of the most recognized styles in Japanese kitchen knives. His work also reached the market through the curated Masakage brand, which retail documentation reports commissioned lines from his forge alongside other Village masters.

He is also remembered as a teacher. His most consequential apprentice was his own nephew, the current head, but published interviews from the Village era describe a smith generous with the cooperative's younger generation, in a workshop culture where apprentices routinely learned from several masters at once. He was certified as a Dento Kogeishi (伝統工芸士), the national traditional craftsman designation, and remained a daily presence at the Village even after stepping back.

The succession to Takumi Ikeda

The fifth-generation story is a modern Echizen story. Takumi Ikeda (池田拓視) did not grow up at the forge: he was raised in Yokohama and moved to Echizen in 2007 to apprentice under his uncle. Published interviews with the workshop describe a long, traditional apprenticeship in which Ikeda gradually took over production; by the late 2010s he was reportedly forging most Anryu blades, with Katsushige stepping back from the hammer around 2019 while continuing to oversee the work.

The formal handover came in January 2021: Ikeda became the fifth-generation representative and the business was renamed 安立打刃物. In 2020 he earned the Dento Kogeishi certification, the same national craft designation his uncle held. The Village listing also names a junior craftsman, Koshiro Noguchi (野口航志朗), who joined in 2022, which tells you the succession pipeline is already thinking about the sixth chapter.

Sources differ slightly on the edges of this story: one European retail source describes Katsushige as having stopped forging from 2019 and retired in early 2021, while one retailer narrative dates the "official passing of the torch" to 2022. The cooperative's own record, tenure ending 2020 and the fifth generation beginning 2021, is the version we treat as authoritative. What no source disputes: the same forge, the same style, and a successor who had already been making the knives for years before his name went on the business.

Forge-first, finish-honest

Anryu Hamono's philosophy is legible in the blades themselves. This is a workshop that treats forging, not finishing, as the center of the craft. Blades are hammer-forged, and the evidence of that process is deliberately retained: the kurouchi scale from the forge stays on the upper blade, and the tsuchime hammer marks stay on the face. What gets refined is what matters to cutting: the grind, the edge, and the heat treatment.

Tsuchime as function

The hammered texture is not applied decoration. The dimpled surface reduces contact area between blade face and food, which helps sticky slices release, and it advertises exactly how the blade was made. On a polished production knife you infer the process; on an Anryu you can see it.

Kurouchi as economy and character

Leaving the forge scale in place is the traditional working-knife finish of rural Japan: it skips polishing labor, adds a measure of protection to the cladding, and wears into a personal patina with use. Our kurouchi guide covers the tradition in depth. The practical consequence for buyers: blade-to-blade cosmetic variation is intended, and the finish evolves with the knife.

Family scale as a feature

Production is measured in batches, not container loads. That constrains availability and keeps the work personal; the number of hands that have forged production Anryu blades across 150 years is countable on your fingers.

Hitachi carbon cores, stainless practicality

The house materials are the classic Echizen carbon-steel kit, executed by a forge with generations of heat-treatment experience.

• Aogami Super, the flagship core: Hitachi's most heavily alloyed blue paper steel, run to roughly 63 to 64 HRC in this workshop's knives per retail documentation. Outstanding edge retention for a non-powder carbon steel. Full metallurgy in our Aogami Super guide.
• Aogami #2 (Blue #2): the classic blue paper steel, slightly tougher and easier on the stones than Super, and the core of much of the fourth generation's celebrated work.
• Shirogami #2 (White #2): appears in occasional smaller runs, prized for effortless sharpening and extreme keenness.
• Stainless cladding: most kitchen lines are san mai, a reactive core forge-welded between stainless outer layers, so only the exposed edge steel demands carbon-steel care. Iron-clad and damascus-clad runs exist and are fully reactive.

The forging process follows the Echizen pattern documented across the Village workshops: forge-welding core and cladding, hammer-shaping (with the signature hammer texture retained), heat treatment, grinding, and hand-finishing of the edge. For a step-by-step walk through the general craft, see our article on how a Japanese knife is made.

Inside Takefu Knife Village

Anryu Hamono is not just a member of Takefu Knife Village; it is one of the houses that built it. Katsushige Anryu appears on the cooperative's own founders list alongside Katsuyasu Kamo, Hiroshi Kato, Takeshi Saji, and the other masters who pooled their workshops in 1991. The forge operates from the Village's shared facility in Yokawa-cho, Echizen City, and its knives are sold through the Village's showroom and official online store as well as through export retail.

The cooperative context matters for understanding the brand. The Village model is what made the Anryu succession possible: a shared facility where an apprentice from Yokohama could learn from a master (and alongside a generation of peers like Yu Kurosaki and Yoshimi Kato, who trained in the neighboring Kato workshop), inherit a 150-year-old name, and keep it commercially viable. The Anryu forge's story is, in miniature, the argument for the entire cooperative.

The workshop maintains no standalone website that we could verify; its official public presence runs through the Village's member pages and store. That is normal for forges of this scale and worth knowing before you go looking for a brand site that does not exist.

Living with a carbon-core blade

Anryu's stainless-clad construction makes its carbon steel about as low-maintenance as reactive steel gets, but the exposed core still sets the rules.

• Wipe dry promptly. The exposed Aogami edge will patina with use (normal, and mildly protective) and can rust if left wet. A rinse and a towel after use is the whole routine. Our patina guide explains what to expect.
• No dishwasher, ever. Detergent and heat attack both the steel and the handle.
• Wooden or plastic boards only. Carbon steel at 63+ HRC holds a wonderful edge and chips on glass, stone, or bone. No twisting, no frozen food.
• Sharpening. Aogami steels are a pleasure on whetstones: they cut quickly for their hardness and take a very fine edge. A 1000-grit stone plus a finishing stone covers normal maintenance. The kurouchi and tsuchime areas are above the grind and unaffected by sharpening.
• Handle care. Traditional wa handles want the same treatment as the blade: dry, and not soaked.

Buying from, and visiting, the source

Anryu knives reach buyers through three channels: the Takefu Knife Village showroom and official online store in Japan, authorized retailers and specialty kitchen shops in export markets across North America, Europe, and Australia, and the curated brands the forge works with. Stock is small-batch everywhere; specialty shops carry rotating selections rather than a full catalog, and popular profiles sell through and reappear on the forge's schedule, not the market's.

If you travel: Takefu Knife Village operates a public showroom in Echizen City where visitors can watch the member smiths work, including the Anryu forge, and buy directly. Standard listed hours for the workshop are 9:00 to 17:00; confirm directly before making the trip, and see our Echizen guide for the regional context.

For the full brand treatment, the lines, pricing, reputation, and buying checklist, read the companion page: Anryu: The Hammered Blades of Takefu.

Go deeper

• Anryu: the brand guide, the lines, steels, pricing, and reputation of this maker's knives
• Takefu Knife Village, the cooperative this forge helped found
• The Japanese knife forging process, tradition, craftsmanship, and techniques
• How a Japanese knife is made, from raw steel to finished blade
• Carbon steel patina guide, living with a reactive edge