OKAWA

OKAWA is a young brand by Japanese standards, founded in July 2011 by Keisuke Okawa in Niiza City, Saitama, but it competes squarely at the top end on craft. The whole pitch is “completely handmade”: more than 40 individual steps per pair, every one finished by hand, no shortcuts hidden in the middle. For a brand barely a decade old to plant its flag there is a real choice, and it puts OKAWA in the elite tier, generally $800 and up.

The hollow is the point

If you want to understand why OKAWA charges what it does, look at the hand-ground hollow, the concave surface on the back of each blade that lets the two edges meet cleanly along their length. The brand says only a handful of artisans in Japan still grind this by hand rather than by machine, and it’s slow, exacting work. Add hand hammering of the blade and edge-angle adjustment to within a single degree, and you have a pair tuned the way a quiet, near-vanishing craft tunes things.

The steel backs it up: three material families across the range, powder high-speed metal, pure cobalt and Stellite, and a high cobalt alloy rated HRC 60 and above. Those are hard, edge-holding metals chosen for sharpness and corrosion resistance, and they reward proper convex sharpening.

Honest handles, simple pivot

The handles are deliberately plain, a design OKAWA says it refined over years working alongside stylists rather than decorating for show. Notably, it uses a compact screw rather than a bearing assembly, calling the simpler pivot the more reliable choice — a refreshingly unfussy position when so much of the market sells bearings as an upgrade.

The catalog covers cutting, thinning, and left-handed shears across a broad technique spread. OKAWA sells through its own site and the Refun store, with sales offices in Seoul and New Taipei City, and the same craftsmen who build the shears handle maintenance, which is the right way to service blades ground this finely. Other Japanese makers sit on the Japan hub.