A santoku is an Asian-inspired knife that many cooks today have added to their kitchen favorites. A knife of many talents, a santoku easily handles all the basic kitchen cutting tasks. In fact, some people even prefer it to a chef s knife. Slightly shorter than the standard chef's knife, the Shun Sora Santoku is light, agile, and very easy to maneuver. There's just enough belly curve to enable rocking cuts, which just adds to the Sora Santoku's versatility. The blade is extra-special because of the hollow-ground indentations on the side of the blade. They create small air pockets that reduce friction when cutting, making it easier to glide through the cut. If you ve had problems with sticking, try a hollow-ground blade. The Shun Sora Hollow-Ground Santoku is part of the exciting Shun Sora line that provides exceptional handcrafted Shun quality at an amazing price. Sora uses Shun's proprietary Composite Blade technology to bring together a VG10 san mai cutting edge with a Japanese 420J stainless steel upper. This technology puts high-performance material exactly where it's needed on the edge. The two blade sections are laser cut, then fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Braze welding permanently joins them. The attractive wavy pattern at the joint is based on traditional Japanese sword hamon lines. While Sora's blade shapes and handle design are traditional Japanese, the textured PP/TPE polymer blend handle material provides a contemporary look, secure grip and balance, and is easy to maintain.