He's Not Yet Trusted to Sharpen His Own Razor

He's Not Yet Trusted to Sharpen His Own Razor

A Japanese razor can't simply be sharp — it must never cut skin, yet it absolutely must cut hair. Get that balance wrong, and the blade fails at the one job it has. It's a responsibility so precise that Yoshihiro Inagaki, despite years of training under master blacksmith Ryoichi Mizuochi, still isn't permitted to perform the final sharpening alone.

In Sanjo City, Niigata — a town built by blacksmiths since the Edo period — Mizuochi, now over 80, continues hammering steel using techniques borrowed from Japanese sword-making. His razors carry a three-year waiting list. Alongside him, a young craftsman is learning a blade so demanding, one lapse in focus can ruin it — and one that, in the hands of a barbershop three generations deep, survived even a flood.