{"product_id":"yasugi-steel-ikenobo-ikebana-scissors","title":"Yasugi Steel Ikenobo Ikebana Scissors","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe city of Sanjo sits in Niigata Prefecture, in the region the Japanese call \u003cem\u003eyukiguni\u003c\/em\u003e - snow country - where winters arrive hard and long. Metalworking came to Sanjo in the seventeenth century, brought by craftsmen who came to repair farming tools and stayed. They stayed because the winters gave them time to work, and because time, in that tradition, is not wasted: it is the condition under which skill accumulates. Three generations of a single family now make these scissors in Sanjo, in the way they have always been made.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe steel is Yasugi - a specialty alloy produced only in Japan, at a single Hitachi Metals plant in Shimane Prefecture. Iron and steel are combined, impurities stripped out - phosphorus, sulfur, anything that softens an edge - and the resulting metal is forged and rolled, again and again, under heat. What comes out is notably stronger and more wear-resistant than commercial steel, and sharper for longer. Yasugi tools are not made to be replaced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe form is Ikenobo: the oldest of the ikebana schools, founded at Rokkakudo temple in Kyoto, where a pond still reflects the same building it has reflected for centuries. The school's scissors have a characteristic silhouette - handles curved in the shape of \u003cem\u003ewarabi\u003c\/em\u003e, the young fern frond before it opens - and this curve is functional as well as beautiful. The blunt curved section crushes stem ends, drawing water further into the tissue, extending the life of the cut flower. It is the kind of detail that emerges only when a tool has been refined across many generations of use.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe cut itself is clean and decisive. The weight - 169g - is more than you might expect from scissors of this size, and that weight is part of why they work. A heavy tool moves deliberately. It does not slip.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eHandmade in Sanjo, Niigata. YCS3 Yasugi alloy steel. Length 165mm, blade 43mm. Presented in original black box.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wazakura","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49317002379491,"sku":null,"price":90.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0752\/5230\/2051\/files\/02_1024x1024_2x_296bc5fb-51f6-4257-9665-a39688ebb506.webp?v=1782441616","url":"https:\/\/theleopard.com.au\/products\/yasugi-steel-ikenobo-ikebana-scissors","provider":"The Leopard","version":"1.0","type":"link"}