My brother went to Japan recently, and I asked him to buy me a knife. As anyone who has entered the bowels of a restaurant knows, Japanese blades are highly sought after. I had to decide between an 18cm utility knife or a metre-long Maguro bōchō. The carbon steel of the latter can fillet a 500-pound tuna in a single cut. In Japan, it is wielded by two highly skilled fish butchers, and it usually comes with a wooden scabbard as protection for the blade – and anyone standing near it.
The Maguro bōchō was created purely in a culinary capacity, not as a weapon of war
Boringly, I opted for the utility knife. I reasoned that I could always buy a razor-sharp, 24-inch blade online at a later date. However, my hopes have been dashed. This week, the government announced new legislation that classified the tuna knife as a ‘ninja sword’. As a result, its sale and ownership are prohibited, meaning this piece of kitchen hardware will never arrive at my door. (Thankfully – and I’m not joking – a 31-inch Anglo-Saxon greatsword has escaped these new regulations, meaning my early-morning duelling practice is still protected.)
But perhaps this is a case of western cultural insensitivity. In Japan, tuna is a big deal. Bluefin is the largest and most highly prized species, and the Japanese will pay through the teeth to eat it raw, cooked, or tinned. Declining Bluefin statistics be damned – they gobble down 80 per cent of the world’s supply, making the purveyors very important people indeed.
The tuna-mongers in the massive Tsukiji market in Tokyo not only buy their metre-long beasts at auction but butcher the fish themselves. They need a plethora of specialised equipment to complete this task to their clients’ exacting standards: saws to remove the heads, hooks for transport, and, at every bloody table, a massive knife – the now-banned Maguro bōchō.
It is the only blade long enough to tackle a fish of such size, and it was created solely for this purpose. To my disappointment, history does not relate that a kindly samurai lent his sword to his mate. The Maguro bōchō was created purely in a culinary capacity, and its ability to strike fear into the hearts of any would-be tuna robbers is merely a helpful by-product. The Japanese tuna filleter has never used a weapon of war.
A ninja, on the other hand, was an agent in the Japanese mediaeval period who specialised in stealth, espionage, and assassination missions. Their martial art, ninjutsu, is the only remaining vestige of these methods of unconventional warfare. The lowly status of a ninja meant they could not afford the high-carbon, curved katanas that samurai used in battle, instead opting for the straight-edged ‘ninjatō’. The shorter, heavier blade was used for thrusting and stabbing, requiring a proximity that could only be achieved by the stealth of a trained wielder.
Scholars of Japan might find it surprising that these two aged trades – fishmongers and assassins – have been linked by UK government legislation. Yet you only have to read the details of certain British murders and the wounds sustained by knife crime victims to understand why the ban on ninja swords was mentioned in the King’s speech. And yet there’s something irksome about the fact that honest chefs like me have been hampered by anti-knife legislation. After all, we wouldn’t need the legislation about specific blades if police were more effective in monitoring knife sales. To be clear, this is second-hand irk; my calling is to dough not massive fish, but I feel the pain of those affected.
There is a macabre appeal to swords and knives; in the words of Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan: ‘Anything that can kill a man is interesting.’ Japanese blades in particular combine this intrigue with cult bro-status: from Kill Bill to Step Brothers, they exist in popular culture as instruments of tasteful violence.
But a little perspective can be useful. I work around loads of things that can kill people, and almost none of them are particularly exciting. A kitchen is crammed with things that could administer death, given a little imagination: deep-fat fryers, carving forks, rolling pins, and graters. And yet my fellow chef’s hand-forged knife collection from Tokyo would be the classiest way to begin a massacre.
There is a grim reality to working with deceased beings. You’ve got to cut them up and cook them. Doing this requires implements, and one man’s implement for cutting up meat is another man’s murder weapon. It’s just a shame the Japanese are so damn good at making them look fantastic. But when a new spate of hideous murders is committed with heavy-duty cleavers, are we going to deny butchers their ability to cut chops?
At the end of the day, you wouldn’t deny a lumberjack his axe, so why pry the tuna knife from the sushi master? All I can say is that if I pay for an incredibly expensive bluefin-butchering experience and the man in the headband and kimono pulls out a Stanley knife, I’m leaving.
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