On a vegetable knife, blade thickness beats everything— and it is the one spec Mac publishes for the JU-65. Mac's own listing gives a 2.5 mm blade thickness, a 6.50 in blade, a 1.85 in blade height, an 11.38 in overall length and a weight of 5.6 oz. That is the whole published spec sheet. No steel grade, no Rockwell figure, no edge angle, no handle material, no country of manufacture.
This review is therefore two things at once: an argument that 2.5 mm is the number that decides a nakiri, and an honest accounting of everything Mac leaves blank — because on a site built around spec literacy, a maker that publishes five figures and stops deserves to have that said out loud.
Why 2.5 mm is the spec that decides this category
Everyone selling knives talks about edge angle. On a vegetable knife, edge angle is the less important half of the story.
An edge angle describes the last fraction of a millimeter of steel. What happens afterthat fraction — as the rest of the blade pushes into a carrot or a wedge of cabbage — is decided by how thick the blade is behind the edge. A thick blade wedges: it starts the cut cleanly and then has to shove the food apart, which is what cracks a potato ahead of the edge and makes dense root vegetables feel like hard work. Blade geometry is the full explanation, and what is a nakiri knife covers why the shape exists.
A nakiri's whole purpose is to go straight down through produce with no rocking motion, so wedging is the only real failure mode it has. At 2.5 mm, the JU-65 is thinner than every Western nakiri we rank, and that is the single reason it tops best nakiri knives. It is not the hardest steel, it is not the best looking, and it is not the cheapest. It is the thinnest, and in this category that wins.
The second number worth noting is 1.85 in of blade height. A nakiri is bought partly for knuckle clearance — you want to push the edge all the way through a long dice without your hand hitting the board, and you want enough face to scoop the results up in one go. At a shade under two inches, the JU-65 has enough for both without being so tall that it feels like a cleaver.
The third is 5.6 oz. That is light. A nakiri is a knife you use for twenty unbroken minutes of prep, and the difference between 5.6 oz and a forged German nakiri is felt in the forearm long before it is felt in the cut.
What Mac does not publish, and what we can and cannot say
Here is the honest inventory. Mac's product page for the JU-65 states no steel grade, no Rockwell hardness, no edge angle, no handle material and no country of manufacture. Our spec table shows those cells as dashes for that reason, rather than filling them with numbers from elsewhere.
What can be said with attribution rather than asserted as fact:
- Steel. Mac groups this knife in its Japanese Series, and retailer and review coverage of that series describes a molybdenum stainless. One Mac dealer lists the JU-65's steel as AUS8 at HRC 60. That is a dealer's figure, not Mac's, and we treat it as such.
- Hardness. Third-party coverage places Mac's molybdenum high-carbon steels broadly in the HRC 57–61 band, and the Professional series specifically around HRC 59. None of that is published by Mac for this knife.
- Edge angle. Mac is widely reported to grind at roughly 15° per side across its range. Mac does not state it on this listing.
- Origin. Mac manufactures in Seki City, Japan, and Amazon's listing for this knife reflects that. The product page itself does not say so.
- Spine thickness. A dealer lists the spine at 2.07 mm against Mac's 2.5 mm blade-thickness figure. Those are probably measurements at different points along the blade, but we cannot reconcile them from published sources, so we quote Mac's number and flag the discrepancy.
Why this matters to a buyer. If you compare knives on paper — and spec comparison is the whole method on this site — the JU-65 is frustrating. A Shuntells you VG-MAX at HRC 60–61 and 16°; Zwilling tells you FC61 at 61 HRC and 9.5–12°. Mac tells you 2.5 mm and leaves. If an auditable spec sheet is part of what you are buying, buy a knife whose maker provides one. If what you want is the thinnest nakiri at this price made in Japan, the one number Mac does publish is the one that answers it.
Nakiri, usuba, or vegetable cleaver? Mac's own name is confusing
Mac calls this a "Japanese Vegetable Cleaver" and then describes it in the body copy as an usuba. Everyone else, including this site, calls it a nakiri. All three names get used for it, and the distinction is worth thirty seconds because it changes what you should expect.
A traditional usuba is a single-bevelknife — ground on one face only, hollow on the back, handed, and genuinely difficult to sharpen. A nakiri is the double-bevel home-kitchen version of the same shape: ground on both sides, ambidextrous, and sharpened like any other knife. Single bevel vs double bevel covers why that difference is larger than it sounds.
Mac's own copy settles it: the listing describes a "thin, double-beveled edge." So despite the word "usuba" in the description and "cleaver" in the name, this is functionally a nakiri — a double-bevel vegetable knife you can sharpen on an ordinary stone from both sides. It is also emphatically not a cleaver in the Western sense: it is not for splitting bone, and chef knife vs cleaver sets out what an actual cleaver is for.
Mac is explicit about the limit, and we will repeat it because it is the way these knives get broken: it should not be used to chop hard foods such as bones or frozen items. A 2.5 mm blade is thin by design, and thin steel at any hardness does not survive being used as a hatchet.
What katsura-muki tells you about the grind
Mac mentions that Japanese chefs use this shape for katsura-muki— the technique of peeling a long, continuous, paper-thin sheet off a cylinder of daikon or cucumber. Most home cooks will never do it, but the fact that the knife is sold for it is a useful signal.
Katsura-muki is only possible with a very thin blade and a flat edge, worked with the thumb against the spine and the blade barely moving. A knife that wedges cannot do it at all: the sheet tears. So Mac advertising the technique is a claim about the geometry that is harder to fake than a Rockwell number — thin enough, and flat enough, to take a continuous sheet off a radish.
The practical translation for an ordinary kitchen: the JU-65 is at its best on things that are dense, round, or want to be cut very thin. Cabbage, daikon, carrot, onion, cucumber, potato. It is at its worst on anything that needs a point or a rocking motion — and it has neither. Santoku vs nakiri is the right comparison if you want one knife that does a bit of both, and is a nakiri worth it is the honest case for whether you need the shape at all.
JU-65 versus MJU-65: the Professional version
Mac sells a Professional version of this exact knife, the MJU-65, at a substantial premium. This is the comparison most buyers of the JU-65 will run into, so it is worth being precise about what the premium buys.
Mac publishes identical dimensions for both. Knife length 11.38 in, blade length 6.50 in, blade height 1.85 in, blade thickness 2.5 mm, weight 5.6 oz. The description is word-for-word the same, including the usuba framing and the hard-foods warning. The published difference between them is the price and the UPC.
The undocumented difference is the steel and the fittings. Mac's Professional series is described by retailers and reviewers as a sub-zero tempered molybdenum-vanadium steel — the same family used in the MTH-80 and the MSK-65 santoku— with a stainless bolster, where the Japanese Series is the plainer entry line. Mac does not publish that distinction for these two knives, so we are not going to pretend to quantify the edge-retention difference.
Which to buy. Given that the geometry is published as identical and the geometry is what makes a nakiri good, the JU-65 is the better value of the two by a clear margin. Pay up for the MJU-65 if you want Mac's Professional fit and finish and its better-documented steel family; take the JU-65 if what you want is the thin blade.
Against the nakiri we rank below it
Against the Shun Classic nakiri. The Shun publishes what Mac will not: a VG-MAX core at ~HRC 60–61, ground to ~16° per side, clad in 34 Damascus layers a side over a D-shaped Pakkawood handle. It holds an edge longer and it is by some distance the better-looking knife. It costs several times the Mac, the D-handle favors right-handers, and its hard thin edge is less tolerant of a careless moment. On cutting feel alone, the Mac is thinner.
Against the Mercer Genesis nakiri. The Mercer is genuinely forged with a full tang and a grippy Santoprene handle at a fraction of the price, and its softer German steel comes back to sharp in a couple of minutes on a stone. What it is not is thin — it is noticeably thicker behind the edge, and you feel that in dense vegetables. It is our value pick; the Mac is our performance pick.
Against a chef's knife you already own. This is the comparison that should decide the purchase. A nakiri is a second knife. It cannot pierce, cannot joint a chicken, and cannot do detail work. Chef knife vs nakiri is the honest version of that argument. If you do not already own a good chef's knife, buy one of those first.
Living with it
Nothing hard, ever. Mac says it, and it is the rule that matters: no bone, no frozen food, no hard squash rind, no twisting in a cut. 2.5 mm of stainless is thin, and thin blades chip or bend when they are used as levers.
Hand wash and dry. The handle is a riveted Pakkawood type, and dishwashers destroy glued wooden handles while the rack chips edges. Can you put knives in the dishwasher is the longer answer, which is still no.
Sharpening is easier than on a curved knife. This is an underrated advantage of the shape: a flat edge has no belly to follow, so you simply hold your angle and push, with no wrist rotation to get wrong. If you have been nervous about freehand sharpening, a nakiri is the easiest knife in the drawer to learn on — how to sharpen a nakiri knife is the walkthrough, and best sharpening stones for Japanese knives is the stone shortlist — and a low-maintenance diamond plate such as the DMT DuoSharpis the alternative if soaking and flattening a water stone is what has stopped you sharpening before now. Because Mac does not publish an edge angle, match whatever the factory bevel measures rather than assuming a number — knife sharpening angle covers how to find it.
Hone it rarely, and gently. If the dealer figure of around HRC 60 is right, a grooved steel rod is the wrong tool and a fine ceramic rod is the right one — ceramic vs steel honing rod explains the difference. Either way, keep it off a pull-through sharpener, which will reprofile a thin Japanese edge toward a German angle.
Store it where the edge touches nothing. A magnetic strip, a slotted block, or an edge guard in a drawer. Best knife storage ranks the options. A thin flat blade rattling against other steel in a drawer is the fastest way to ruin one.
Who should not buy it
Anyone who wants a complete spec sheet. Said once more because it is the honest objection to this knife. If you want to compare steel grade, hardness and edge angle before you spend, Mac does not give you the data for this model and no amount of enthusiasm changes that.
Anyone buying their only knife. No tip, no belly, no toughness for hard work. A nakiri is the second or third knife in a kitchen, never the first.
Anyone who wants heft or a bolster. 5.6 oz with a plain riveted handle and no bolster is the opposite of a forged German vegetable knife. If you like the reassurance of weight, buy the Mercer or a Wüsthof nakiri instead.
Anyone who wants the knife to look expensive. The Japanese Series is Mac's plain line. There is no Damascus, no polished bolster and no decoration of any kind. It looks like what it is: a working knife.
The verdict
The JU-65 is our top nakiri because of one published number. At 2.5 mm it is the thinnest vegetable blade we rank, and on a knife whose entire job is to fall straight down through produce without wedging, thinness is the performance spec. Add 1.85 in of blade height for knuckle clearance, 5.6 oz for a long prep session, a double-bevel edge you can sharpen from both sides, and Japanese manufacture, and nothing else in the category does the core job as well for the money.
Buy it if you already own a good chef's knife, you cut a lot of vegetables, and you want the thin Japanese feel that the shape exists for. Buy the Mercer Genesis nakiri instead if you want forged toughness and the lowest price. Buy the Shun Classic nakiri instead if you want a published spec sheet, harder steel and a knife that looks like an object. Buy the MJU-65 instead if Mac's Professional fittings matter to you more than the price difference.
Honest limitations: Mac publishes no steel grade, no hardness and no edge angle for this model; its own name for the knife ("cleaver"/"usuba") describes neither what it is nor what it does; a dealer's 2.07 mm spine figure does not reconcile cleanly with Mac's 2.5 mm; the finish is plain; and the thin blade rules out every kind of hard or twisting cut.
Where it sits on our lists: best nakiri knives, best knives for cutting vegetables and is a nakiri worth it.
