Vinicius Yasu
Vini at the forge, Yasu Craftworks — Kanazawa, Ishikawa
In Yuwaku, a quiet hot-spring hamlet tucked in the hills above Kanazawa, a single forge burns bright — the workshop of Vinicius Yasu, known to friends and customers simply as Vini, a one-man blacksmith who hand-forges knives, farm tools, and anything else his neighbors bring through the door, using techniques rare even among Japan's dwindling ranks of traditional smiths.
Vini handles nearly every step of the process himself — heating the steel, forging it under the hammer, and finishing each edge by hand. His specialty is zenko — fully forged, all-steel blades. Where most Japanese kitchen knives (kasumi-style) laminate a soft iron body around a steel edge, an all-steel blade is cut from a single piece of high-carbon steel, worked and hardened end to end. It is the same construction used in honyaki, the most prized and unforgiving tier of Japanese blades — prestigious, ferociously sharp, and notoriously prone to chipping. Vini tunes his quenching temperatures to hold onto that hardness and edge retention while easing the brittleness, producing knives that are as usable as they are exceptional.
Read more in our Journal: What Is Zenko (All-Steel)? The Fully Forged Knives of Vini Yasu
His Path to the Forge
Vini was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to a family with Japanese roots on his grandfather's side, and moved to Japan around the age of five. His path to blacksmithing began, by his own telling, with a dull knife: while cutting chicken during a part-time job as a student, he blamed a knife for failing to cut through the skin — until his manager told him plainly that a knife simply needs to be sharpened. It was the first time he'd understood that an edge is something you maintain, not something you use up, and it set off a fascination he couldn't shake.
He went on to study steel professionally and spent time at a research lab deepening his understanding of surface treatment and metallurgy, handling countless knives along the way to learn what separated the good from the exceptional. The itch to make his own became impossible to ignore. He started forging knives and nata (billhooks) out of a corner of a campsite, restoring worn-out tools and selling them back into use. Watching old, forgotten tools come back to life — and the people who were happy to receive them — convinced him that blacksmithing offered something industrial manufacturing couldn't: a craft rooted in a place and the people who live there. He eventually opened his own workshop, Yasu Craftworks, in Ishikawa.
Vini at the anvil, Yasu Craftworks
“I tend to the heart of tools.”
Philosophy & Craft
Vini describes his work as an ongoing act of care for the tools he makes — a philosophy that runs through everything Yasu Craftworks touches, from custom knives to farm implements to metal repairs for the local community. He sees blacksmithing as a discipline at risk of becoming a lost technology, pointing to how Japan's own pre-war sword-forging methods were lost and, even today, have never been fully reconstructed. It's part of why he is so open about his process — inviting customers into the workshop, and in some cases letting them take part in forging their own custom order.
Talk to Vini for more than a few minutes and his range of interests becomes obvious. Along the way to becoming a blacksmith, he has worked in fields as far removed from the forge as the automotive industry, and he treats none of it as a detour. In his own words, everything he learns eventually finds its way back into his craft — every field he studies becomes one more tool for making a better all-steel, fully forged blade.
Oak Bay Knives & Vini
Meeting Vini, I felt that Yasu Craftworks was exactly the workshop I'd been looking for — small, uncompromising, and run by someone who treats every blade as a relationship rather than a transaction.
Spending time in his workshop, I was struck by how much of a builder he is beyond the anvil. He is endlessly curious, and quick to treat any new field he touches as fuel for his craft. What stayed with me most was his instinct to lean into an unfamiliar challenge rather than turn away from it. That creative, boundary-pushing spirit is exactly why I wanted to recommend Vini as Oak Bay Knives' Master Blacksmith. I believe it's people like him who push a craft forward.
If you're a chef drawn to the idea of a fully forged, all-steel blade — tuned by hand to your grip, your cuts, and your kitchen — I'd love to help bring that to life with Vini.
Vini's Collection
A closer look at Vini's zenko — fully forged, all-steel blades from Yasu Craftworks. Each piece shown here was a one-of-a-kind commission; every Oak Bay Knives order is forged individually to your own specifications.
A zenko yanagiba with a rosewood handle and fitted mekugi peg
A fully forged, all-steel gyuto with a cherry-wood handle
A zenko yanagiba, hand-finished edge to spine
A hand-forged mezzaluna with twin ebony handles