Seki Kanetsugu

Seki Kanetsugu Cutlery Co., Ltd. (Sekikanetsugu Hamono) is a blade manufacturer at 345-13 Hidase, Seki City, Gifu Prefecture — Japan's other historic blade town, whose smithing tradition traces to the swordsmith Motoshige's 13th-century arrival there. Japan's own external trade organization, JETRO, lists the company in its Gifu prefecture directory: founded December 30, 1949 (as an outgrowth of Kawamura Matsujiro & Co., which had made kitchen knives since 1918), with roughly 20 employees, capital of 10 million yen, and CEO Mitsuyasu Kawamura as representative director. JETRO records the firm exporting cutlery to 24 countries across Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East, and importing metal-processed components from China, South Korea, and Spain — evidence of a currently trading manufacturer, not a dormant brand name.

The Kawamura family traces its lineage to the historical swordsmith Kanetsugu, and the workshop's kitchen-knife line applies the convex 'hamaguri' (clam-shell) edge geometry carried over from Japanese sword cross-sections. The company combines this traditional grind with contemporary heat-treatment methods, including what retailers describe as a sub-zero tempering process, across professional and home kitchen-knife lines.

Seki Kanetsugu knives are currently stocked by numerous independent Japanese-knife specialists (Knifewear, Japanese Chef's Knife, Seisuke Knife), and the brand marked its centennial-adjacent anniversary in 2018 with a new Damascus-steel 'Zuiun' series, per retailer histories corroborating the JETRO founding record.