The English guides to this question agree with each other, and on the basics they are right. A single bevel knife is ground on one side and left flat, sometimes slightly hollow, on the other. It pulls to one side as it cuts. It is made for the right hand unless you ask otherwise, and the left-handed version is rarer and costs more. Beginners should start with a double bevel. You can read all of that at Kasumi Japan, and much the same at Made In. Both of them sell knives.
What none of the guides I read explains is why the left-handed version costs more. Tojiro, the knife maker in Tsubame-Sanjo, answers that in its own reading library, and the answer changes how the whole choice should be made:
片刃の包丁の場合、打ち刃物であればハガネの付け方を逆にすることで対応が可能ですが、抜き刃物の場合、研削の時点で専用の型が必要になり、大量生産向きの抜き刃物では生産することが難しく、なんとか受注生産で対応したとしても、自動研削機では対応できず、手作業での製造になり非常に高く、かつ納期もかかる包丁になってしまいます
For a single bevel knife, a forged blade can be made left-handed by attaching the steel the other way round. A blade stamped out of sheet steel needs a dedicated die at the grinding stage, which is hard to justify for a product built for mass production. Even when one is made on request, the automatic grinders cannot handle it, so it is made by hand, it is very expensive, and it takes a long time to arrive.
A single bevel is not a way of sharpening a knife. It is a way of building one. The hand it belongs to is decided at the forge, when the steel is attached, long before anyone puts the blade on a stone. You cannot grind a right-handed yanagiba into a left-handed one, because the steel was attached for the other hand.
This is the ninth piece in a series about the distance between what Japanese knives are called abroad and what they are in Japan. The earlier pieces covered steel grades, the three blade shapes most people choose between, what hand forged means and rust. This one leans on all four.
What the difference costs, measured today
On 16 September 2026 I checked one knife in both hands at Hocho-Knife, a retailer in Japan that I have a partnership with. It is the Sakai Takayuki Kasumitogi yanagiba in white steel, a sashimi knife. Same maker, same steel, same handle, same length.
- 240mm, right-handed: $142.99, in stock.
- 240mm, left-handed: $230.99, out of stock, with a note to contact the shop.
- 270mm, right-handed: $146.99.
- 270mm, left-handed: $294.99.
Tojiro says a forged single bevel can be made left-handed on request, and a stamped one barely at all. This yanagiba is forged, which is the easy case. The left-handed knife still costs 62 percent more at 240mm and twice as much at 270mm, and it was not on the shelf. Both 240mm listings are tracked links, which I explain at the bottom.
Are traditional Japanese knives single bevel? Mostly, and not in Japanese homes
The guides say single bevels are common in traditional Japanese knives. Tojiro says something close to that:
もともと日本で使われていた包丁は片刃の包丁が多く、海外ではほとんどが両刃の包丁です
Many of the knives originally used in Japan were single bevel. Abroad, almost all knives are double bevel.
Tojiro also publishes a page of traditional Japanese knife shapes. I counted them. Of the 23 shapes on that page, 17 are single bevel only, 5 are double bevel only, and one comes either way. Now look for the knife the page describes as the one used at home:
家庭で使用される野菜用の包丁です…刃は非常に薄く両刃仕上げになっています。かつてはほとんどの家庭で見かけることができたが、最近は三徳包丁に取って代わられています
A vegetable knife used in the home… the blade is very thin and finished double bevel. It could once be found in almost every household, but lately the santoku has taken its place.
That is the nakiri. The Japanese kitchen drawer held a double bevel knife before the santoku arrived, and it holds a double bevel knife now. The santoku, Tojiro adds, is 両刃で洋包丁と同じ構造, double bevel and built the same way as a Western knife. The single bevels are the professional set. Tojiro says so plainly: 職人の使用する包丁は片刃のものが多く, most knives used by professionals are single bevel.
So the line about traditional Japanese knives counts the shapes in a professional knife roll. It does not describe what a Japanese household cooks with, and it is not a reason for a home cook to own one. Tojiro, which sells both kinds, gives the home cook a plain answer:
一般的な家庭の調理での使用であれば、最初の１本は両刃包丁が万能で使用できます
For ordinary home cooking, a double bevel knife works as an all-purpose first knife.
The pull is the purpose
Every English guide I read treats the sideways pull as the price of a single bevel, something you learn to control. Kasumi Japan says it steers during cuts and that technique takes time to master. Tojiro describes the same movement as the reason professionals choose one:
切り下ろした際、右刃の場合刃先がやや左に切り込み、切り離れがよく刻みものが手早くできることや、魚の身を下ろす際に骨に近い部分から下ろせること、また切った断面の美しさが優れていることから、職人の使用する包丁は片刃のものが多くなっています
When you cut down, a right-handed blade bites slightly to the left. Food falls away cleanly so chopping goes quickly, fish can be taken off close to the bone, and the cut face is more beautiful. For those reasons most knives used by professionals are single bevel.
It adds peeling. For taking the skin off fruit and vegetables thinly, 片刃包丁のほうが、刃のコントロールをしやすい, a single bevel is easier to control.
So the useful question is not whether you can learn to fight the pull. It is whether you do the jobs the pull is for. Taking fillets off a whole fish. Slicing raw fish in one long draw. Peeling a daikon into a thin sheet. If your week is onions, chicken thighs and a loaf of bread, a single bevel works against you on every cut, and the guides are right to send you to a double bevel. If your week involves whole fish, the pull is working for you.
Sharper is the wrong reason to choose one
The claim you will see most often is that a single bevel is sharper because the angle is lower. Kasumi Japan calls it extremely sharp due to the acute angle and flat back, and gives 10 to 15 degrees on the front.
Tojiro page on blade structure is worth reading before you believe a degree figure. It says a good edge is not one angle. It describes three: the body of the blade at about 15 to 20 degrees, the edge at about 25, and at the very tip a strip 0.02 to 0.2mm wide at 30 to 35 degrees, called 小刃止め, a small secondary bevel. Tojiro says Japanese single bevel knives carry it too. Then:
先端をすべて15度に研いだ刃物とこの小刃止めの付いた刃物の切れ味は全く変わりなく、切れ味試験機によっても差が生じません。小刃止めにより、刃全体を15度に研いだ刃物よりも10倍程度の耐久性を得ることができるのです
A blade sharpened entirely to 15 degrees and a blade with this secondary bevel cut exactly the same, and a sharpness testing machine shows no difference. The secondary bevel gives about ten times the durability of a blade ground to 15 degrees all the way.
I want to be careful with this. Tojiro is describing edges in general, and it does not prove that a single bevel cuts no better in real use. What it does show is that the degree figure in a product description is not the angle that meets the food, and a lower number is not, by itself, evidence of a sharper knife. Tojiro explains the clean slice of a yanagiba through the way it is used instead: drawing the blade through the fish makes the effective edge angle smaller than pushing straight down.
The hollow on the back is not optional
The guides describe the back of a single bevel as flat, or at most slightly concave, as if the hollow were a detail. Tojiro calls the hollow 裏スキ, urasuki, and explains what it is for:
裏面を研ぐ際に裏全面を研がずに済み、かつ平面が出しやすいこと、そして裏の研ぎが切れ味に影響しないようにする特殊な構造です。ステンレス材を抜いた「抜き刃物」では見られない場合もあります
A special structure so that when you sharpen the back you do not have to grind the whole surface, it is easier to keep flat, and sharpening the back does not affect the cutting edge. It may be absent on blades stamped out of stainless steel.
Without the hollow, keeping the back flat on a stone means grinding the entire face. Tojiro also says this is why ordinary deba and yanagiba are mostly carbon steel: a deep hollow is hard to put into a stamped blade.
There is a second kind of single bevel hiding under the same English name. Tojiro describes the single bevel found on some Western knives, mainly for taking meat off the bone. Its back is straight with no hollow at all, and its edge sits closer to the centre of the blade. So the English term covers two constructions that Japanese makers keep apart. If you are buying a Japanese single bevel to sharpen on stones, turn it over and look for the hollow.
Clad steel and single bevel do not mix
Many Japanese knives sold abroad are clad: a hard steel core with softer layers on both sides. I wrote about how that material is made in the piece on hand forging. Tojiro says what that construction means for a single bevel, speaking of its own knives:
藤次郎株式会社の主体になる複合材の包丁では、刃の中心にハガネがある構造のため、物理的に完全な片刃の構造に出来ず、片刃にするには単層の材料を使用する必要があります
The composite knives that make up most of our range have the steel in the centre of the blade, so they physically cannot be made into a true single bevel. To make a single bevel you have to use single-layer material.
The yanagiba I priced above is built the other way. The Hocho-Knife description says soft iron is put onto white steel number 3: two layers, iron on one side and steel on the other, not a sandwich. That is the traditional single bevel construction, and it is why a left-handed version means attaching the steel to the other side.
If a knife is sold as single bevel and described as three-layer or clad, ask the shop how. There may be a good answer. Tojiro says it could not give one for its own knives.
Double bevel does not always mean either hand
The usual advice to left-handed cooks is to buy a double bevel and stop worrying. Mostly that works. Kasumi Japan notes that 70/30 and 60/40 grinds are common and gives the reason as food release and steering control. Tojiro gives a different reason for an uneven edge, and draws the consequence the guides leave out:
表と裏の研ぎ方の比率によっては完全な両刃にならずに右利き・左利きの概念が生じる場合もあります。弊社では、以前では研ぎやすさを考慮して表６・裏４の若干右利き気味の刃付けにしていた場合もあり、メーカーによってこの比率がノウハウになる場合もあります。現在藤次郎株式会社では完全な５：５にて出荷しております
Depending on the ratio between front and back, a knife may not be a full double bevel, and then it has a right or a left hand. We used to put a 6 to 4 edge on some knives, slightly right-handed, because it was easier to sharpen. For some makers the ratio is proprietary know-how. Tojiro now ships at an exact 5 to 5.
Two things in that. The maker gave ease of sharpening as its reason for the uneven edge, not food release. And a 60/40 double bevel is, in the maker words, slightly right-handed. The blade structure page says the same of Western knives in general: they are usually ground unevenly with later resharpening in mind.
If you are left-handed and buying a double bevel, ask for the ratio. If the shop cannot tell you, that is an answer too.
The handle has a hand as well
Tojiro points out on its page about blade direction and handedness that the hand does not stop at the blade. The oval handle on a nakiri is symmetrical. A deba or a yanagiba usually has a handle with a ridge on one side, shaped for one hand. Because a Japanese handle is pushed onto the tang rather than riveted, it can be fitted the other way round, which leads Tojiro to suggest that the old Japanese knife trade was kind to left-handers. The handle is the easy part to turn around. The blade is not. When you buy a left-handed single bevel, check that the handle is shaped for your hand too.
Why left-handed sushi chefs cut with the right hand
One more thing from the same Tojiro page, because it explains something people notice. Left-handed itamae in Japan have often held the sashimi knife in the right hand. Some were corrected by their teachers, and there was also a rule of service: slices were cut with the right hand and laid on the plate from the left, so the guest could pick them up easily. That is etiquette, not a limit of the knife. At home nobody is plating for a counter, and a left-handed cook should buy a left-handed knife.
Before you buy a single bevel, check five things
- Do you do the jobs it is built for? Whole fish, sashimi, thin peeling. If not, buy a double bevel and stop here.
- Which hand, and is it in stock? The hand is fixed at the forge. A left-handed one costs more and may have to be made, so ask about lead time before you count on it.
- Is there a hollow on the back? Turn it over. Tojiro says stamped stainless blades may not have one.
- Two layers or one, not a sandwich? If the description says clad or three-layer, ask how it is single bevel.
- Which way does the handle face? A ridged handle belongs to one hand.
And if you end up at a double bevel and you are left-handed, ask for the grind ratio.
What I would buy
Top pick for most readers: no single bevel at all. A double bevel santoku or gyuto does everything a home kitchen asks, and Tojiro, which makes both kinds, says so. Sizes and shapes are in my guide to gyuto, santoku and bunka. Nothing in this paragraph earns me anything.
If you take fillets off whole fish or slice sashimi at home: a 240mm yanagiba in white steel. Tojiro gives 180 to 240mm as the household range for a yanagiba, and 240 is the top of it. The Sakai Takayuki Kasumitogi 240mm, right-handed, at $142.99 is forged, two-layer and carbon steel, and it was in stock when I checked. The left-handed version at $230.99 was not, so contact the shop before counting on it.
Weigh one conflict with an earlier article. In the piece on rust I said that a knife kept for an occasional job should be clad in stainless, because deba and sashimi knives are the ones that rust in the drawer. By Tojiro account, a true single bevel cannot be a clad sandwich. So the choice is carbon steel that you dry and oil every single time, or a single-layer stainless blade and a careful look at the back for the hollow. I would take the carbon and the thirty seconds.
Marked down: buying a single bevel as a sharper upgrade for everyday cutting. The degree figure is not the evidence, and the pull will fight you on every onion.
Marked down: a knife sold as single bevel and described as three-layer clad, until the shop explains it.
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 two tracked links, both to Hocho-Knife, pointing at the right-handed and left-handed versions of the same yanagiba. At about 10 percent, that is roughly 14 dollars for the right-handed knife and 23 dollars for the left-handed one. The left-handed version pays me more. I put the right-handed one first anyway, and I told left-handed readers to check stock before buying, which works against my interest if it sends them somewhere else.
Hocho-Knife excludes seven brands from its programme, and Tojiro is one of them. Tojiro is also the main source for this article: the explanation of left-handed knives, the structure of the edge, the hollow, the limit on clad steel and the grind ratio all come from its public reading library. SharpEdge stocks Tojiro and pays me 15 percent, so a Tojiro knife bought through SharpEdge could pay me something. There is no SharpEdge link on this page, and the top pick above earns me nothing. My full affiliate disclosure is here.
Sources used here, all public: the Tojiro reading library pages on blade direction and handedness, on blade structure and on Japanese knife shapes; the Hocho-Knife listings for the Sakai Takayuki Kasumitogi yanagiba in both hands, checked on 16 September 2026; and the English guides by Kasumi Japan and Made In for the claims I tested.