Eighty-five-year-old Etsuro Ikegami wipes the wet blade across my fingers like I’m taking part in an initiation ceremony. His gaze never leaves my face. He wants to know if I feel the burr on the edge of the knife as the Japanese carbon steel is dragged along my skin to my fingertips. This is a skill largely done by touch, although I’m too busy counting my fingers to pay attention to the tool’s texture.

Ikegami wakes each morning and goes to his workshop in the city of Sakai, on Osaka Bay in western Japan, as he has done since the age of 15. Each day he sits behind a rotating sharpening stone to produce some of the country’s most sought-after knives. The knives made in Sakai are used by 90 percent of professional chefs in Japan.