Misono was established in 1935, and the company has been kept a small, exclusively family-owned business for decades. The company began as a kitchen tool blade maker for vegetable peelers. Misono did not begin producing their own knives until the late 1960s. Today Misono is Japan’s oldest Western-style knife maker, with only fifty workers producing 150,000 knives a year. While many larger companies send knives to other manufacturers to have specialists make different parts of a knife, Misono produces 100% of their knives in house with extreme attention to detail for quality assurance.