Both knives are long and narrow, and both are sold as slicers, so the question usually comes down to one thing: which one should you use for sashimi and sushi at home? The yanagiba is the sashimi knife. The sujihiki is a meat knife. But a Japanese knife shop in Sakai says the meat knife is also used for sashimi, both in homes and increasingly by professional cooks, and it gives a reason.
What each knife is for in Japan
Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide, a knife shop in Sakai, describes the sujihiki as the knife used to cut along the sinew when breaking down a block of meat. In its own words, in my translation, the sujihiki is mainly used for meat, it has a narrow blade, and it is the knife for cutting a large block of meat along the sinew. The same page calls it the main knife in a butcher shop, and says that while a gyuto can cut meat, the gyuto is an all-purpose knife and the knife for meat is the sujihiki. The name says the same thing: suji is sinew, and hiki means pulling.
Fujiwara Teruyasu, a knife maker in Tokyo, describes the yanagiba. It has a very long blade and is made for cutting sashimi from fillets of fish or meat, so that a slice comes away cleanly in one pull. Honmamon, a knife and tool shop, says the yanagiba is made for sashimi and for taking the skin off fish, and that the shape is sometimes called shobu, iris, after the long leaf.
So in Japan one is a meat knife from the Western side of the kitchen, a narrow cousin of the gyuto, and the other is a sashimi knife from the Japanese side.
The edge is the real difference
The yanagiba is normally single-edged, ground on one side only. The sujihiki is double-edged. Honmamon notes that double-edged yanagiba exist and are more versatile for chopping and slicing, though less suited to sashimi.
A single edge is what gives a yanagiba its clean cut in one long pull, and it is also what makes it a knife for one hand. If you are left-handed you need a left-handed yanagiba, and I went through why in single bevel vs double bevel.
Ichimonji adds a detail I had not seen in English. Compared with a double-edged gyuto or petty knife, the sujihiki is built closer to a single-edged knife, so slices come away from the blade more easily, even when cutting meat. That is the reason a sujihiki can do a job people think needs a yanagiba.
What the shop says about sashimi
This is the part that answers the question. Ichimonji says, in my translation, that many people use the sujihiki as a slicer, and recently more cooks have started using it as a sashimi knife. It also says that teppanyaki and yakiniku restaurants like the 270mm size, and that many people use it in place of a sashimi knife.
The same shop sells a shorter version, 180 to 210mm, as a slicer, made for customers who found a gyuto too big and a petty knife too small. It lists the uses: slicing a block of meat like a sujihiki, peeling fruit like a petty knife, and at home, using it as a sashimi knife in place of a yanagiba.
So a Sakai knife shop, one that also sells yanagiba, tells home cooks that the sujihiki family can stand in for the yanagiba. It does not say the two cut the same. A yanagiba is still the knife made for sashimi, and a professional sushi cook will use one. What the shop says is that at home, for most people, the substitute works.
The same series, side by side
To compare like with like I looked at one series that makes both, the Sakai Takayuki INOX, on Hocho-Knife on 30 September 2026. Both are AUS-8A stainless.
The sujihiki 240mm is double-edged and listed as available for both left and right-handed use. It weighs 180g and costs $134.99.
The yanagiba 240mm is single-edged for right-handed persons, with a magnolia handle and a buffalo horn bolster. It weighs 140g and costs $144.99. The left-handed version of the same yanagiba costs $255.99, which is 111 dollars more.
At 270mm the gap is about the same: the sujihiki is $151.99, the right-handed yanagiba $180.99 and the left-handed yanagiba $319.99.
For a right-handed cook the two are within ten dollars of each other at 240mm, so price is not the deciding point. For a left-handed cook it is. One more detail from the same shop: Sabun, another professional brand, sells its stainless sujihiki 240mm at $100.99, and also a version marked mainly for left-handed persons at $121.99, though both are described as double-edged. The listing does not say why. My guess is that it has to do with what Ichimonji said about the sujihiki being ground closer to a single edge than a gyuto is, but that is my reading, not the shop.
Which one to buy
If you cut sashimi a few times a month, you also cook roasts or large pieces of meat, or you are left-handed, buy a sujihiki. It is the knife a Japanese shop itself suggests for this, it works for either hand, and it is useful the rest of the week.
If you are right-handed, you want to get good at sashimi and sushi specifically, and you are willing to learn to sharpen a single-edged knife, buy a yanagiba. It is the proper tool, and a 240mm stainless one costs about the same as the sujihiki. Honmamon gives 240 to 270mm as the usual range, and says to think about the size of your cutting board and kitchen at home before choosing.
If you are left-handed and still want the yanagiba, it exists, but expect to pay more and have fewer choices.
If you have not bought a Japanese knife yet, start with an all-purpose one, and come back to this later. The sequence I would buy in is in how to choose a Japanese knife. The yanagiba also appears in my comparison of kiritsuke and gyuto, because the kiritsuke yanagiba is one of its shapes.
The three knives
For most readers: the Sakai Takayuki INOX sujihiki 240mm at $134.99. Stainless, double-edged, for either hand, in stock on 30 September 2026.
For right-handed readers who want the sashimi knife: the Sakai Takayuki INOX yanagiba 240mm at $144.99. Stainless, so the rust routine is lighter than with carbon steel. In stock on the same date.
For left-handed readers who want a yanagiba all the same: the left-handed Sakai Takayuki INOX yanagiba 240mm at $255.99. Also in stock on 30 September 2026.
Disclosure
I have four approved affiliate partnerships: two with knife retailers, Hocho-Knife and SharpEdge, and two with Japanese language-learning companies unrelated to knives. This page carries three tracked links, all to Hocho-Knife. At about 10 percent, that is roughly 13 dollars for the sujihiki, 14 dollars for the right-handed yanagiba and 26 dollars for the left-handed one. The knife I recommend to most readers is the sujihiki, which pays me the least of the three. My full affiliate disclosure is here.
Sources, checked on 30 September 2026: the Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide Japanese page on the sujihiki, the Fujiwara Teruyasu page on knife types, the Honmamon article on the yanagiba, and the Hocho-Knife product pages for the Sakai Takayuki INOX and Sabun knives above.