Ono City and Sakai: The Other Japanese Scissor Making Centers
Beyond Seki City, Ono and Sakai carry centuries of blade heritage. How these lesser-known regions produce professional shears with distinct traditions.
Seki is not the only name on the map
When people talk about Japanese scissor manufacturing, Seki City gets nearly all the attention. That makes sense. Seki produces roughly 99% of Japan’s hairdressing scissors by volume. But two other regions have their own blade heritage, their own production traditions, and their own reasons to be taken seriously.
Ono City in Hyogo Prefecture and Sakai in Osaka Prefecture both predate modern scissor manufacturing by centuries. Their stories are worth knowing because they offer a different window into how Japanese shears are made, and why not all “Made in Japan” scissors come from the same tradition.
Ono City: the city of scissors
Ono City (小野市, Ono-shi) sits in Hyogo Prefecture, south-central Japan. Its scissor heritage spans over 250 years, originally rooted in agricultural tool production. The city earned the nickname “hasami no machi” (はさみの町), which translates as “the city of scissors.”
Where Seki grew from swordmaking, Ono grew from practical metalwork. Farmers in the surrounding region needed shears for crops, pruning, and textile work. Local smiths developed techniques for producing scissors that were sharp, durable, and built for heavy daily use. Over generations, these skills refined into increasingly precise work, and some workshops eventually crossed into professional hairdressing scissors.
Integrated single-workshop production
The most important difference between Ono and Seki is how scissors get made.
Seki operates on the bungyosei (分業制) system, a division of labor where each manufacturing stage (forging, grinding, heat treatment, sharpening) is handled by a different specialist workshop. A single pair of scissors might pass through five or six independent businesses before it is finished.
Ono’s tradition is different. Scissors here are more likely to be produced in integrated single-workshop operations where one maker or one small team handles multiple stages of production under the same roof. A craftsman might forge, grind, and sharpen within the same shop.
This integrated approach has trade-offs. On one hand, it gives the maker direct control over every stage. There is no handoff between specialists where misommunication or inconsistency can creep in. The maker who forges the blank is the same person who sharpens the blade and feels any flaw introduced earlier in the process.
On the other hand, the bungyosei system lets each specialist spend years mastering one narrow skill. A Seki grinder who has done nothing but grind for 20 years will likely be more refined at that specific task than a generalist who also forges and sharpens.
Neither approach is objectively better. They produce different results with different strengths.
Mork Scissors
One of the most recognized companies based in Ono is Mork Scissors. Mork developed what they call the Propeller Blade (プロペラ刃, puropera ha), an original blade design that prevents hair from escaping during cutting. This concept is rarely discussed in Western scissor content but reflects Ono’s tradition of solving practical cutting problems through innovative blade geometry.
Sakai: where kitchen knife mastery crosses into shears
Sakai (堺市, Sakai-shi) sits in Osaka Prefecture and has been a major blade-producing city since the 16th century. If you know anything about Japanese kitchen knives, you have probably heard of Sakai. It is one of the most respected names in the culinary knife world.
Sakai’s scissor production is smaller than its knife output, but the crossover is real. Several artisan scissor makers in the greater Osaka area apply knife-making techniques to professional shears. The skills transfer naturally because kitchen knives and scissors share core requirements: precise heat treatment, controlled grinding, and hand finishing that produces a clean, durable edge.
Sakai’s knife heritage means its scissor makers tend to approach blade geometry with a kitchen knife mentality. They think about edge angles, steel grain direction, and cutting feel with the same rigor that goes into a hand-forged yanagiba (柳刃包丁, yanagiba bōchō, the classic sushi knife). This does not mean Sakai scissors feel like knives. It means the depth of metallurgical knowledge behind them is deep, drawn from a tradition that has refined blade steel for over 400 years.
The Banshu region
Ono City sits within the Banshu (播州) region, a broader area of Hyogo Prefecture with a long metalworking tradition. Banshu is known for producing a range of metal goods, from scissors and cutlery to hardware and tools. The regional expertise in metalwork creates a support ecosystem. Steel suppliers, heat treatment facilities, and finishing specialists all operate within the area.
This regional ecosystem functions differently from Seki’s formal bungyosei system. In Banshu, the network is less structured and more informal. A scissor maker in Ono might use a local heat treatment facility for some batches and handle it in-house for others. The flexibility means that production methods can vary even within a single manufacturer’s output, depending on the specific model and its requirements.
What this means when you evaluate scissors
“Made in Japan” tells you the country, not the tradition. Scissors from Seki, Ono, and Sakai carry the same national label but come from distinct manufacturing traditions. If a manufacturer tells you their shears are “handmade in Japan,” ask where. The answer tells you something about how they were made.
Integrated production has its own quality markers. An Ono workshop where one craftsman oversees every stage has a different quality profile than a Seki scissor that passed through six specialists. Look for consistency in the finished product rather than assuming one system is superior.
Kitchen knife heritage is relevant. If a Sakai maker tells you they apply knife-making techniques to their scissors, that is not marketing fluff. The metallurgical overlap between high-end kitchen knives and professional shears is significant.
Smaller production centers often mean smaller production runs. Scissors from Ono or Sakai may be harder to find internationally than Seki products. Fewer distributors carry them, and online availability is more limited. If you are interested in shears from these regions, you may need to work through Japanese dealers or specialty importers.