Sharpening to the ideal angle. Very sharp knives sharpen at about 10 dps (degrees per side) (which implies that the knife's edge has an included angle of 20-degrees). Generally speaking, razors, paring knives, and fillet knives should be the sharpest knives at an angle of 12° – 18°. Most kitchen knives, like utility/slicing knives, chef’s knives, boning knives, carving knives, should be sharpened to 15° – 25°. The exceptions are Japanese style knives that are usually sharpened to 14° – 16° depending on the knife maker. Japanese style knives utilize a much harder steel, and are therefore more brittle than their
Kitchen knife in Tokyo the "tako hiki" has a rectangular end. The "tako hiki" is usually used to prepare octopus. A "fugu hiki" is similar to the "yanagi ba", except that the blade is thinner. As the name indicates, the "fugu hiki" is traditionally used to slice very thin fugu sashimi. The length of the knife is suitable to fillet medium-sized fish. For very large fish such as tuna, longer specialized knives exist, for example the almost two-meter long oroshi hocho, or the slightly shorter hancho hocho. Nakiri bocho and usuba bocho are Japanese-style vegetable knives. They differ from the "deba bocho"