About Us

Our Story

Shokunin Store began with a pair of thirty-dollar secateurs.

While restoring my ancestors’ 170-year-old folk house in Hiroshima, my husband Lindsay—an Australian landscaper—bought a pair of Japanese secateurs from a local DIY store. He cut a branch from an azalea, then stopped in disbelief. They cost only one-third of the Swiss secateurs he used back in Sydney, yet cut considerably better.

That discovery raised a question:

If an everyday Japanese tool could perform this well, what would the finest tools be capable of?

Our search first led us to Sanjo in Niigata, a region known for centuries of metalworking. There, we met a manufacturer with more than 160 years of experience. As we admired the beautifully sharpened cutting edges, the company’s then-president laughed and said, “You are looking at the wrong side.”

We later learnt that many of the secrets of Japanese blades lie in the back.

That visit began years of learning from blacksmiths, sharpeners and manufacturers across Japan’s historic blade-making regions, including Ono and Miki in Hyogo, Seki in Gifu, Tosa in Kochi and Echizen in Fukui.

Apples and Oranges

Japanese scissors and blade tools may resemble products made elsewhere, but their construction is fundamentally different —from blade geometry to forging, heat treatment and adjustment, with the final sharpening requiring micron-level precision.

Rooted in methods developed during the age of the samurai, traditional Japanese blades often use a composite construction, forge-welding hard cutting steel, known as hagane, with a softer iron or steel body. The two materials compensate for one another’s weaknesses: the “hagane” creates an exceptionally sharp and durable cutting edge, while the softer body provides resilience and makes the blade practical to sharpen, repair and use for many years.

Japanese scissor-making also involves specialised techniques such as ura-suki, the precise shaping and sharpening of the inner blade surfaces. The blades are not designed to grind flat against each other. Instead, the inner surfaces are subtly hollowed and the blades are given a minute degree of twist, allowing them to meet at a single moving point as they close.

This creates an exceptionally smooth, clean cutting action. Mastering this work can take eight to ten years.

This distinctive system of scissor- and blade-making is uniquely Japanese. A tool made elsewhere may have the same shape, but the two can be as different as apples and oranges.

Skills and Knowledge at Risk of Disappearing

The craftsmanship was extraordinary. What shocked us was that it was disappearing.

Half a century ago, Niigata had around 300 garden-scissor businesses. Today, only six remain. In Ono, Hyogo, 120 scissor makers have fallen to seven. Of the four craftspeople still forging traditional fabric scissors, two are now over 80. An industry that once included more than 100 sickle companies has declined to three. This is sadly what is happening across all historic blade-making regions of Japan.

These are not simply businesses closing. When a craftsperson retires without a successor, skills and knowledge developed over generations can disappear with them. They cannot be recreated from a manual. These family-owned manufacturers also rely on specialist machinery, sharpening wheels, rivets and other essential components, along with supporting businesses—many of which have already vanished.

A Women-Led Business with a Mission

Feeling the urgency in 2020, I decided to take the lead and accelerate the promotion of these tools and their makers. Today, Shokunin Store is a women-led business supported by a small team, mainly mothers, who share the belief that quality is not a luxury, but a necessity for sustainability, and that craftsmanship should be celebrated. Lindsay remains the original co-founder and a trusted adviser on garden tools. His experience as a landscape designer continues to inform our product selection and development, together with feedback from our horticultural team at Greenfriends Gardens.

We work closely with makers to explain how their products are made, share feedback from international users, and make sharpening, repair and maintenance services available to overseas customers through Shokunin Store—support that was previously limited to Japan.

Is This Japan’s Loss Alone?

For years, I wondered whether anyone would listen. But I kept explaining anyway: why these tools cut so well, why they last, why the back of a blade matters, why an apparently expensive product may be remarkably economical over its working life, why the maker’s name deserves to be known, and why the sustainability of tools should be discussed alongside the sustainability of gardens. Through TV, newspapers, radio, workshops and events.

To my surprise, people began to respond.

Professional gardeners told us the tools had revolutionised their work. Customers who once hesitated began purchasing with confidence after understanding how the products were made and why they cost more. Makers previously known overseas only through another company’s label began receiving recognition under their own names, and their exports began to grow.

Requests for sharpening, repair and maintenance also grew from virtually zero.

That change matters to us. It means people are no longer automatically discarding a tool when it becomes worn, damaged or blunt. They are learning to maintain it and value it. When craftsmanship found nowhere else is approaching extinction—before most people, including many in Japan, even know it is happening—is that merely a Japanese domestic problem? We have sent our products to more than 50 countries. People around the world depend on these tools. They describe them as “game-changers” and “revolutionary”, say they cannot imagine returning to what they used before.

I believe the future of these artisans should be part of a wider conversation. Like environmental loss, the disappearance of specialised skills and knowledge can feel remote until we understand what is being lost. Once gone, it may be impossible to restore. And we have already lost so much. Are we prepared for a future in which these products no longer exist?

Quality Changes Behaviour

I believe a more sustainable future depends on changing our habits and attitudes—and we no longer have the luxury of delaying that change. Tools and blades like these should not be disposable. But products must be made well enough to be sharpened, repaired and relied upon for years. A well-made hand tool performs better and serves us longer. When it becomes important to us, we want to care for it, keep it and repair it rather than replace it again and again.

Over time, it will become your “one and only” item that you cherish, and hope to pass to the next generation. I still use my grandmother’s fabric scissors and she passed away 30 years ago. At the end of a blade’s useful life, it can still be recycled. It is an uphill battle now, but I am hopeful because I have already seen these tools change the attitudes of many of our customers. Quality changes our behaviour. Knowing the story changed how you treated your tools.

Every purchase helps create demand, but the greater goal is a change in understanding: fewer things, chosen carefully; quality over quantity; maintenance instead of replacement; and proper recognition for the people whose skills and knowledge create tools that can change the way we work and live for the better.

This is my answer to disposable culture: not guilt, but products so good that people want to keep them. Understanding how much skill and knowledge is embedded in their making gives us even more reason to value and care for them.

I once thought my voice was too small to make a difference.

I no longer believe that.

Yuko Nakao
Founder and Director, Shokunin Store

***** Our Japan Operations

To better support our international customers—including those in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, and other regions around the world—we have established dedicated operations in Japan. Shipping directly from Japan allows us to offer faster delivery, improved reliability, and less carbon footprint for customers outside Australia.