Noriaki Narushima (68) from Tokyo has mastered the traditional art of blacksmithing.
He makes valuable Japanese knives.
Dorfen
– Noriaki Narushima was born in Japan and has been making Japanese knives in his workshop in Unterhausmehring for over 35 years.
The 68-year-old knife maker from Tokyo learned the art of blacksmithing from a Japanese master.
Together with Munich TV, the local newspaper visited the knife maker in his workshop.
It takes Nori, as he calls himself, about 40 hours to make a Japanese knife.
He welds five layers of steel together and heats them to 1100 degrees.
"It depends on the right temperature," he explains his craftsmanship.
He built what he needs for this himself, the forge as well as the press, which used to be a log splitter.
The material for the cutting edge is also recycled: Narushima makes its sharp knives from old files.
The sparks fly in the small workshop.
"I make my knives with the Japanese method, it makes them harder and the edge retention is longer."
A knife from the Japanese costs 1000 euros or more, depending on size and function, because he makes pocket knives as well as kitchen knives.
"You look great and cut like a razor."
At a crafts fair in Munich, Narushima met a Japanese blacksmith.
"His knives were totally sharp," enthuses the resident of Dorfen.
On this trip more than 35 years ago, the trained mechanical engineer fell in love.
He met his wife Petra through a mutual friend at the beer festival in Munich.
"Then it went on," says Nori and laughs.
He stayed in Bavaria and got married.
The couple moved to their in-laws' farm in Unterhausmehring.
The father of two adult children feels very comfortable here.
And this is where he also perfected his knife art.
In addition to courses, Nori also offers to sharpen knives.
Of course, grinding is also done the Japanese way: "Never with a machine - only with water and a fine-grain grinding stone."
At the end, the Japanese revealed his secret to the TV Munich camera team: "My name is Nori, if you read my name backwards, it comes out Iron, the English word for iron."
Chief cameraman Rudi Lachner and presenter Sophia Dreyer interviewed and filmed eight villagers for the "Heimatgschichtn".
Among them lighting designer Thomas Bachmaier and shoemaker Simon Flaschen.
The Bräu z'Loh brewery or the lavender in Adlstraß - many stories about Dorfen will be broadcast on Munich TV from this week at 7.45 p.m.: "There is nothing more exciting than stories from home, and home is above all the people, the places like making villages lovable and worth living in,” says Dreyer.
