Nakiri bōchō and usuba bōchō (薄刃包丁, thin knife) are Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese-style vegetable

Vegetable

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....

 knives. They differ from the deba bōchō

Deba bocho

Deba bocho are Japanese style kitchen carvers used to cut fish, as well as chicken and meat. They come in different sizes, sometimes up to 30 cm in length. The deba bocho first appeared during the Edo period in Sakai. It is designed to behead and fillet fish...

in their shape, as they have a straight blade edge suitable for cutting all the way to the cutting board without the need for a horizontal pull or push. These knives are also much thinner. While the deba bōchō is a heavy blade for easy cutting through thin bones, the blade is not suitable for chopping vegetables, as the thicker blade can break the vegetable slice. The nakiri bōchō and the usuba bōchō have a much thinner blade. This does not help with cutting small bones in fish or meat, but is useful for cutting vegetables.

Nakiri bōchō are knives for home use, and usually have a black blade. The shape of the nakiri bōchō differs according to the region of origin, with knives in the Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 area being rectangular

Rectangle

In Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is any quadrilateral with four right angles. The term "oblong" is occasionally used to refer to a non-square rectangle...

 in shape, whereas the knives in the Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 area are called kamagata nakiri and have a rounded corner on the far blunt side. There are also kamagata usuba. The cutting edge is angled from both sides, called ryōba in Japanese. This makes it easier to cut straight slices.

Usuba bōchō

Usuba bocho

Usuba knives are the traditional vegetable knife for the professional Japanese chef. Like other Japanese professional knives, usuba are chisel ground, and have a bevel on the front side, and have a hollow ground urasuki on the back side. Usuba characteristically have a flat edge, with little or no...

are vegetable knives used by professionals. They differ from the Nakiri bōchō in the shape of the cutting edge. While the nakiri bōchō is sharpened from both sides, the usuba bōchō is sharpened only from one side, a style known as kataba in Japanese. The highest quality kataba blades have a slight depression on the flat side. This kataba style edge gives better cuts and allows for the cutting of thinner slices than the ryōba used for nakiri bōchō, but requires more skill to use. The sharpened side is usually the right side for a right hand use of the knife, but knives sharpened on the left side are available for left hand use. The usuba bōchō is heavier than a nakiri bocho, although still much lighter than a deba bōchō.