Goro Tanabe

Goro came to the forge at thirty-one, a farm-tool smith whose village smithy had closed, and never left. He apprenticed under the eighth-generation master — Naoki's father — and taught Naoki himself how to listen to the charcoal.

He forges the house's kurouchi work: blades that keep their black forge scale, unpolished and unapologetic. They are the least expensive knives the atelier makes and, by his measure, the most honest. His nakiri is the knife the smiths themselves cook with.