Photo/Illutration A KISEKI: cemented carbide kitchen knife is seen in Seki, Gifu Prefecture, on Nov. 29, 2024. (Shigetaka Kodama)

SEKI, Gifu Prefecture--A local company here that has long produced industrial parts and blades perfected a cutting-edge innovation to produce kitchen knives made of cemented carbide, which is second only to diamonds in hardness.

For the achievement, Fukuda Hamono Kogyo Co. has been awarded the grand prize by the Chubu Science and Technology Center (CSTC).

The company's KISEKI: knife series has been flying off the shelves, which is rare for household knives in recent years.

Fukuda Hamono Kogyo was highly commended for its technology, which is the first of its kind in the world and not imitable by other companies, according to the selection committee. It received a certificate of merit and a cash prize.

Fukuda Hamono Kogyo is a long-established company founded in 1896 in Seki, which is known as a center of cutlery production.

Currently led by Katsunori Fukuta, the company mainly produces industrial blades, machine tools and parts for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

"It was our first kitchen knife, but I feel that our techniques, which have developed over the past 129 years while we have been tested in the Chubu region, a manufacturing hub, were recognized," said Keisuke Fukuta, an executive and the project leader, adding, "We are so happy."

The awards ceremony was held Dec. 4 in Nagoya.

According to the CSTC, the award's selection committee, whose nine members include a college president, praised the company.

Fukuda Hamono Kogyo was recognized for its effort to develop the KISEKI: and establish Japan's first mass production system to produce kitchen knives not made of typical steel or stainless steel but of cemented carbide.

One award selection member said the company has established technology to mass-produce cemented carbide kitchen knives when no one else could put it into practical use.

Another said it went to great lengths to improve the sharpness, develop a sharpening machine and an exclusive grinding stone and devise many other methods.

It wasn't easy to mass produce the blade.

But Fukuda Hamono Kogyo overcame the difficulties through trial and error in developing the technological know-how.

It tinkered with raw materials and their ratios to create a tungsten carbide alloy exclusively for kitchen knives, in addition to cutting it into the shape of a blade using wire electrical discharge machining.

It took two years for the company to commercialize the KISEKI: knives. The knife series caused a buzz online and on TV after it was released in March 2023.

The company received orders worth about 500 million yen ($3.22 million) over the next one and a half years. The company's multi-purpose kitchen knife sells for 34,650 yen, including tax.

The KISEKI: knives have become so popular that customers must wait 11 months for delivery of their orders.

The CSTC, a public interest foundation in Nagoya, has been running the award program to recognize outstanding efforts since fiscal 2002, aimed at encouraging corporate researchers and engineers engaged in creative research and development and expanding industries in the Chubu region.

Other awards presented each year include promotion and encouragement prizes

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