Knives & shopping · Tsukiji outer market · verified 2 August 2026

Buying a knife at Tsukiji — and actually getting it home

The tuna auction left in 2018; the blades did not. Seven knife shops still trade in the outer-market lanes, and the hard parts are everything the shop cannot do for you: which house opens which day, the noon sharpening cut-offs, the tax-free system that changes completely on 1 November 2026, and an airport sequence that must happen in exactly one order. This page is the current mechanics, shop by shop, read from each shop's own site.

Verified 2 Aug 2026  ·  hours and prices read from each shop's own pages · we earn a commission on tour bookings — how we pick them

7
Knife shops
¥6,600
Entry santoku
1918
Aritsugu est.
12:00
Noon cut-offs
1 Nov
Tax-free switch
¥5,000
Minimum stays

TL;DR

  • The knife shops never moved. All seven are in the Tsukiji outer market, within ten minutes' walk of each other. Three of the old houses also run a second branch inside Toyosu Market — they stayed and added, which is not the same as moving.
  • Noon is the real deadline. Same-day sharpening at Aritsugu needs you there before 12:00 (max two knives, ~1 hour). Sugimoto takes drop-offs 07:00–14:00. Four of the seven shops are closing by 15:00.
  • Buy before 1 November 2026 if you can. After that date Japan stops deducting tax at the till: you pay full price and reclaim it at your departure airport. The ¥5,000 minimum stays; the trigger is the day you buy, not the day you fly.
  • At the airport, customs comes before check-in. The knife must fly checked, but a tax-free knife has to be shown to customs before the bag goes to the airline. Wrong order, no refund — sequence in chapter 06.

The shops board

Two myths do most of the damage on this topic, so they go first:

“Aritsugu — established in 1560, supplying the Imperial Household for more than four and a half centuries”

Wrong shop. That is Kyoto's Aritsugu, in Nishiki Market — a separate company. Tsukiji Aritsugu's own company page says: founded 1918 in Nihonbashi, moved to Tsukiji 1923, incorporated 1952. Its banner claim of “four hundred years of tradition” is a lineage claim to the swordsmith Fujiwara Aritsugu, not a founding date. English guides keep pasting the Kyoto history under the Tokyo heading.

“The Tsukiji knife shops moved to Toyosu in 2018”

They stayed. Only the wholesale inner market moved. Aritsugu, Masamoto and Masahisa kept their Tsukiji shops and added (or relocated an in-market branch to) Toyosu, on earlier hours — Masahisa's Toyosu counter shuts at noon. The correct sentence is “they stayed, and they also opened at Toyosu”.

Craftsman sharpening a Japanese kitchen knife at a Tsukiji market knife shop
A Tsukiji knife shop's sharpening bench — the trade the auction's departure never touched. Credit: photo credits.

The board below is read from each shop's own site (the market council's directory disagrees with three of them — footnotes). All seven cluster in three pockets of the 4-chome lanes; walking the lot is under ten minutes.

Shop2018Hours (own site)ClosedThe one-line truth
Azuma Minamotono Masahisa stayed5:30–15:00†Calendar-driven, no fixed dayWhere the tuna knife was invented — blades over 135 cm; earliest opener; also at Toyosu (to 12:00)
Tsukiji Aritsugu stayed6:00–15:00†Sun, holidays, some Wed1918, not 1560; free hand engraving; same-day sharpening before noon; Toyosu branch too
Tsukiji Masamoto stayed6:00–15:00Sun, holidays, market daysTsukiji since 1931; stayed AND its in-market branch moved to Toyosu; free engraving + free final edge
Sugimoto Hamono stayed7:00–16:00†Sun, holidays + market daysThe house with a full English site, FAQ and repair terms — and a published UK shipping ban
Nenohi stayed8:15–15:30None (exc. New Year)The Sunday answer — no fixed closing day; top of the price ladder, ¥44,000–¥181,500
Tojiro Knife Gallery new8:00–15:00Wed and Sun, ObonOpened 15 December 2025 — a Niigata maker's new shop, ~16.5 m², 200+ knives, built for first-timers
Tsukiji Hitachiya stayed8:00–13:00†Opens Sun/hol from 10:00Kitchenware without the edge — steamers, tubs, hand-hammered woks; the other Sunday option

† The official pages disagree with each other, which is why we quote the shops. The council's Japanese page for Aritsugu says 6:00–15:00 closed on market days only; its English page says 5:30–15:00 closed Sundays — each half-right against the shop's own site. Sugimoto's own two sites split too: the Japanese page defers closing days to the market calendar, the English page hard-codes Wednesdays. Hitachiya's close is 13:00 on the council's Japanese page and 15:00 on its English one. Masahisa's own site says 15:00 against the council's 15:30, and it is the only one publishing a live monthly closing calendar — trust that. For any specific date, check the shop's own monthly notice: Sugimoto's August 2026 notice adds a 14–16 August Obon closure that appears on no market calendar.

One footnote for completists: there is a second Aritsugu — Aritsugu Hocho-ten, a small corner shop at 4-9-16 selling Sakai-made knives, listed on the council's shopping site but absent from its main directory, with no website of its own. Its current trading status is unverified; phone before making a trip of it. And if you find every shop shuttered (a Sunday, a holiday Wednesday), the fallbacks are Nenohi, Hitachiya — or Kappabashi in Asakusa, which keeps ordinary retail hours. Several market walks include the knife lanes →

Service clocks: sharpening, engraving, the one class

Buying takes twenty minutes. The services around buying run on hard cut-offs, and they are the schedule-sensitive part of the whole errand:

  1. 07:00Sugimoto starts taking sharpening and repair drop-offs (window 07:00–14:00). A standard knife takes about an hour; Chinese cleavers and blades over 24 cm take two and must be in before noon. Contact the shop first if same-day pickup matters — and its own page warns December runs slower.
  2. 09:00The buying window opens properly — professional-priority hours end, every shop is trading by 08:15, and staff have time for the fitting conversation a good knife needs (15–30 minutes per knife).
  3. 12:00Aritsugu's same-day cut-off. Arrive before noon with a maximum of two knives and they come back re-edged in about an hour — roughly ¥1,000 household, ¥1,500 Western, ¥2,000 Japanese, other makers accepted.
  4. 12:00Aritsugu's knife-sharpening class starts — at the Toyosu store, not Tsukiji. ¥2,200 including tax paid on the day, one group of up to two people, one-to-one instruction, booked via the calendar on aritsugu.jp seven-plus days ahead (by phone inside a week). Cancellations need three days' notice; no video filming; English tuition is not stated anywhere on the page.
  5. 14:00Sugimoto's last drop-off. From here the lanes start closing: Masahisa, Aritsugu, Masamoto and Tojiro all go at 15:00, Sugimoto at 16:00. Only Nenohi (to 15:30) is comfortably still trading among the old houses.

Engraving is the service worth planning around: free at Masamoto, Aritsugu and Sugimoto, struck by hand — Sugimoto takes up to 5 characters in kanji or kana by chisel, or 10 in capital letters by stamp; Masamoto will even do it free if you come back later. The one paid case is laser engraving on a Western blade body at Aritsugu, from ¥500. Masamoto also puts the honbazuke final hand edge on free at purchase — its FAQ notes mail-order knives often ship without one. No shop publishes an engraving wait time, so allow for it being done while you shop. And be certain first: all three refuse returns or cancellation once a knife is engraved.

The realistic half-morning: shops at 09:00, drop a knife for sharpening by 11:00, eat in the food lanes, collect at 13:00, done. Sundays invert everything — only Nenohi and Hitachiya open, so the whole day's knife trade lands on two counters.

Choosing honestly: steel, budget, and who each shop is for

Carbon vs stainless, from a Tsukiji maker rather than a forum. Sugimoto's own English column (September 2024) dismantles the usual line: “It is often said that carbon steel makes knives sharper, while stainless steel does not… this is not entirely true… High-quality stainless steel knives are just as good as carbon steel knives. In fact, a stainless steel knife might even have a better edge… Stainless steel knives also have a significant advantage: they resist rust and are easier to maintain.” Carbon rusts if it stays wet for minutes — Masamoto's care note says hand-wash and dry immediately, no dishwasher, no frozen food, no bones. If you will not wipe a blade dry within a minute of use, stainless is the honest buy, and the shops themselves say so.

Display of Japanese kitchen knives with engraved blades in a Tokyo knife shop
Engraved blades on open display — edge-out and unsheathed. The rule is ask, and staff hand you the knife. Credit: photo credits.

The price ladder, with one detail no guide prints: the shops do not display prices on the same tax basis. All figures read from the shops' own sites, 2 August 2026:

ShopRange (typical)Shelf price shownBest for
Tojiro Gallery¥6,600 (BASIC santoku) – ¥22,000 (Damascus); sets ¥11,000–¥24,000Tax includedFirst good knife; stainless-heavy; free laser engraving for buyers
Tsukiji Masamoto¥16,500 (deba) – ¥28,600; santoku ¥23,100Tax includedThe fitted hand-forged knife; left-handed range listed separately
Sugimotofrom ~¥15,000 in hand (gyuto); Chinese cleavers ¥39,091–¥79,000 before taxTax excluded — add 10%Chinese cleavers; buyers who want everything explained in English
Tsukiji Aritsugu¥22,000–¥25,000 (A-series rust-resistant)Tax excludedThe compromise steel — carbon sharpness, rust resistance; nukigata vegetable stamps as the flat-packing gift
Nenohi¥44,000 (Sho petty) – ¥181,500 (honyaki yanagiba)Tax includedThe top end — and open seven days

Specialities worth crossing the lanes for: Masahisa is, by the council's own description, the shop where the maguro-bocho tuna knife was invented — it developed the blade over 135 cm long, and full-size examples hang in the shop. Aritsugu's wall of nukigata — stamped vegetable cutters in zodiac and blossom shapes — costs a fraction of a knife and packs flat.

Two manners that matter here more than anywhere: don't haggle — the market's official code says plainly that goods are at wholesale prices and price negotiation is not a Tsukiji custom; on a ¥55,000 hand-forged blade it reads as an insult. And don't touch — blades sit on open display, edge-out; ask, and staff will hand you the knife. What you can ask for — free engraving, the final edge, sharpening advice — is worth more than the discount you won't get. Payment: the council publishes card acceptance for Sugimoto, Nenohi, Masahisa and Hitachiya; Aritsugu, Masamoto and Tojiro publish nothing, so carry cash for those three and confirm before the engraving starts.

Tax-free: the 1 November 2026 switch

A knife is “general goods” under Japan's tax-free system — no sealed bag, no consumables cap, and you may use it in Japan. That much is stable. Everything else about the system splits into two regimes, and a 2026 trip can straddle them.

From 1 November 2026, Japan stops taking the tax off at the till. The National Tax Agency's own leaflet: shops will sell “at a price that includes consumption tax”, you obtain customs confirmation at departure within 90 days of the purchase date, and the shop or its agent refunds the tax afterwards — bank transfer, card refund, app, or cash at the airport, at the shop's choice; the law deliberately doesn't prescribe it. There is no transition period, and the trigger is the sale date, not your departure date: buy on 31 October and the old instant exemption still applies even if you fly in December. Abolished with the switch: the sealed-bag rule, the ¥500,000 consumables cap, the general-goods/consumables split. If you are in Tokyo in late October 2026, buying before 1 November is measurably simpler.

“The ¥5,000 tax-free minimum is abolished in November 2026”

It stays. The Japan Tourism Agency's own comparison table marks the ¥5,000-plus threshold “no change”. You still need ¥5,000 tax-excluded in one shop in one day, under both regimes.

“Buy it tax-free and mail it home separately”

Dead since March 2025. Japan Customs abolished the separate-dispatch route on 31 March 2025 — tax-free goods now leave in your own baggage. A shop shipping a knife directly overseas is a different thing and still exists (Aritsugu, Masamoto and Sugimoto all do it) — but a shipped knife is simply a normal taxed purchase.

Which knife shops are tax-free (until the switch, at the till): the council flags Sugimoto, Nenohi, Masahisa and Hitachiya; Tojiro's opening announcement states tax-free handling. Aritsugu works through the market's shared Smart Refund counter at Plat Tsukiji (4-16-2): buy at the member shop, then take passport, receipts and the goods to the counter the same day, between 10:00 and 15:00 — the refund comes in cash, less a handling fee. Buy at 07:00 and you must come back after 10:00. Masamoto publishes no tax-free status at all — ask before you buy; at these shops' price levels the tax is a ¥2,000–¥5,000 difference. Under the current rules the minimum is ¥5,000 tax-excluded per shop per day, passport in hand, purchase record filed electronically — nothing is stapled into your passport, and hasn't been since 2020.

Tax rules verified 2 August 2026 against NTA and Japan Customs leaflets — re-check near your travel date.

The airport gotcha: customs before check-in, always

Two rules collide at the airport, and the collision is the single most important logistical fact on this page.

  1. The knife must fly checked. Japan's transport ministry lists knives as prohibited in cabin baggage, permitted in the hold; JAL's English page adds that carrying one aboard breaches the Aviation Law, with fines up to ¥1,000,000. No official source demands a rigid case — the shop's wrapping and box are the standard.
  2. A tax-free knife must be shown to customs before departure — and, in the joint NTA/Customs leaflet's own English words, you must “obtain customs confirmation before checking in your baggage with the airline company”. Confirmation cannot be completed once the bag is with the airline. Under the post-November system the wording is blunter still: “No Customs procedure, No Refund.”

So the sequence, spelled out: arrive early → go to the customs counter or tax-free kiosk first, with the knife still in your hand luggage or accessible in your case → get the confirmation → then queue for the airline counter and check the bag → then security. Ask at the airport information desk where the tax-free customs point is the moment you arrive; at Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Chubu, Fukuoka, New Chitose and Naha part of the procedure can be pre-done in Visit Japan Web. Japan Customs' own planning documents expect queues once every refund claimant must pass through customs — budget the time.

Before the airport, the hotel leg: Japanese law bans carrying a blade over 6 cm in public without justifiable reason (up to 2 years or ¥300,000), and the Tokyo police name your exact case as the worked example of a justifiable reason — buying a blade at a shop and taking it home. Keep it boxed as the shop packed it, keep the receipt, go straight back. The police examples say “home”, not “hotel”, and no English guidance exists — so don't stretch it with detours.

If you'd rather not carry it at all: the shops ship. Masamoto sends overseas by EMS in about a week; Sugimoto ships worldwide from ¥2,600–¥5,200 by zone — with two published destination warnings: it cannot ship to the United Kingdom at all (UK bladed-item import rules; orders placed anyway are cancelled), and its customs notice warns US buyers that shipments “may be subject to significantly higher customs duties than in the past”, payable by you. A UK visitor's only route home is the checked bag.

Dried goods & food to fly: what actually clears your border

The other half of a Tsukiji shopping bag is the kanbutsu trade — katsuobushi, kombu, nori, tea, pickles. It is a morning trade (several houses shut by noon), it is wholesale-minded, and it is where the worst travel-facts circulate. One thing first: the Japanese tax-free seal has no biosecurity meaning anywhere. Border officers open sealed bags routinely; admissibility turns on what the product is, not what wrapped it.

Shelves of katsuobushi dried bonito products at a Tokyo katsuobushi shop
Shelved katsuobushi and dashi goods at a Tokyo bonito specialist — the sealed 70 g bag, not the whole block, is the souvenir that gets used. Credit: photo credits.
“Katsuobushi is banned in the EU because of benzopyrene”

False in the present tense — and it never applied to your luggage. On 10 July 2015 the EU wrote katsuobushi into its regulation by name with its own higher smoke-compound limits, and today's rules still list “Katsuobushi (dried bonito)” with dedicated thresholds. Those limits bind food placed on the market — commercial sellers. There is no PAH test at any EU border for passengers, and there never was. Bring the flakes.

“Rice is the item that gets confiscated”

Pickles are the real Australia trap. Raw rice into Australia is a clean prohibition and people obey it. Tsukemono is conditionally allowed in a way the classic format fails: it must be shelf-stable for six months in an approved sealed container — metal can, twist-off jar, retort pouch. The chilled vacuum pouch marked fails; a shelf-stable glass jar of umeboshi generally passes. Also read dashi-pack labels: pork or beef extract trips the absolute EU, GB and Australian meat bans.

Buying katsuobushi without embarrassment: the 6-chome bonito wholesalers are professionals' shops, and it shows. Fushitaka — 95 per cent trade customers, a shop of about 23 m² — states on its own site that it will not weigh out less than 500 g, and that a hurried professional gets served before you, mid-transaction. Asking for 100 g there isn't rude, but be ready for the no. The tourist-sized counter is Obayashi Shoten (6-26-8, 4:00–14:00), which sells everything by weight from 50 g — the smallest documented minimum in the category. The honest souvenir remains the sealed 70 g bag of hana-kezuri flakes at around ¥900: it fits in luggage, doesn't oxidise while sealed, and actually gets used, unlike the beautiful whole block that needs a shaving box and, by the seller's own admission, about a month of practice.

Fushitaka also runs the category's best experience: a free katsuobushi-shaving class, one group of up to two people at 13:00 on trading days — booked by telephone only (03-3541-0918, call 6:30–14:00; email is expressly not accepted). Its suspension notices — 1 December–5 January and 1 August–10 September — live in the page's hidden code and don't reliably show on screen, so the website cannot tell you whether the class is running. Phone. The class page and line are Japanese-only. Timing for the whole dried-goods errand mirrors the knives: weekday 09:00–11:00, because by 13:00 a third of these shops are shuttered — details on the calendar page.

FAQ

No — every one is in the outer market, which never moved. Aritsugu, Masamoto and Masahisa also run second branches inside Toyosu Market on earlier hours, and Tojiro's gallery opened new in Tsukiji in December 2025 — the knife trade here is growing, not winding down.

That's Kyoto's Aritsugu — a separate company in Nishiki Market. Tsukiji Aritsugu's own pages give 1918 (Nihonbashi), 1923 (Tsukiji), 1952 (incorporation). The 1560 line under a Tsukiji heading is the most-syndicated error on this topic.

Nenohi — no fixed closing day, 8:15–15:30 — and Hitachiya from 10:00. The other four knife houses close Sundays, and most Wednesdays too; check the calendars before you set out.

¥6,600 buys a genuinely good stainless santoku at Tojiro; ¥13,000–¥29,000 covers the professional and old-house middle; Nenohi runs ¥44,000–¥181,500. Watch the tax basis: Sugimoto and Aritsugu shelf prices exclude the 10%, Tojiro, Masamoto and Nenohi include it.

Sharpening: Aritsugu before 12:00 (max two knives, ~1 hour), Sugimoto drop-offs 07:00–14:00. Engraving: free at Masamoto, Aritsugu and Sugimoto — and irreversible; no returns once a knife carries your name.

Tax-free stops being instant. You pay full price, get customs confirmation at departure within 90 days of purchase, and are refunded afterwards. No transition; sale date decides which regime you're under; the ¥5,000 minimum stays. Buying on or before 31 October keeps the old at-the-till exemption.

Checking the bag first. The knife must fly checked, but customs must see your tax-free goods before the airline has the bag. Customs point → confirmation → check-in → security, in that order — full sequence in chapter 06.

Yes in practice: the Tokyo police cite “bought a blade at a shop, taking it home” as the model justifiable reason under the 6 cm carry law. Keep it boxed, keep the receipt, go straight back — no detours, no unwrapping.

Katsuobushi travels well and the EU “ban” is a dead myth — the regulation names katsuobushi with its own limits and binds sellers, not suitcases. Pickles are the trap: Australia demands six-month shelf-stability in approved sealed containers, which the chilled vacuum pouch fails. A shelf-stable jar of umeboshi generally passes.

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