I just returned from the 2025 SHOT Show. While there I met with the elite knife company Spyderco. We talked over what knives that I would test over the upcoming year. One thing led to another and I was taking home their Wakiita Bunka Bocho to test.
As I get older, I find myself liking to cook and eat exquisite wild game meals more and more. Along with that maturing process I also find myself getting partial to using better cutlery. Doing so just enhances the whole cooking process. If you do dive in and buy some good cutlery and take care of it, they can be passed down to your kids and grandkids.
Spyderco Wakiita Bunka Bocho Knife
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If you’re happy with grabbing your cooking cutlery at a garage sale or Goodwill, then you might want to skip over this Product Review. To get into the mode of a Japanese chef, here is a quote from Spyderco on the knife:
An all-purpose knife suitable for preparing meat, vegetables, and fish, the Bunka Bocho literally means “cultural knife” because of its role in making traditional Japanese cuisine in the home. Closely related to the Santoku (“three virtues”) knife, the Bunka Bocho has a more acute and utilitarian point.
Wakiita literally means “near the cutting board” and is a term used to refer to senior apprentices skilled enough to assist high-ranking chefs. Equivalent to sous chefs or journeyman chefs in Western kitchens, they are accomplished culinary professionals well on their way to becoming expert chefs. As the second tier of Spyderco’s Murray Carter Collection, the Wakiita Series captures the spirit of the journeyman chef by expressing Carter’s highly refined designs with solid stainless steel blades.
My wife wanted some blackened salmon, so I thought this would be a good meal to test the knife. To begin, I got lucky and found a slab of King salmon buried in the freezer from a trip a year ago to Waterfall Resort in Alaska.
I skinned the fillet and pulled what bones I could with a small pair of needle nose pliers. The fillet had a thin freezer-burned layer on parts of it, which the razor-sharp Wakiita Bunka Bocho easily removed.
I then sliced it into big chunks and the thicker portions I sliced in half. I then melted butter in a cast iron skillet and dipped in the fillets and flipped to coat each side with butter. I then removed them, coated heavily with Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Redfish seasoning and returned to a red-hot skillet.
When blackening fish or steak, you want a fast black crust, flip, repeat, and remove. You want to leave your steak or fish medium rare. Don’t overcook and dry it out.
This time, instead of eating blackened salmon by itself like normal, I put a slab of cream cheese on a Ritz cracker, sliced the salmon, and laid a piece on top. This turned out to be a good alternative recipe. I had been wanting a recipe that required cream cheese for the last couple of days, so I thought I’d try it on this dish. It was totally edible, and I will be taking some over to my daughter’s house tomorrow for lunch.
I love the Spyderco Wakiita Bunka Bocho and will use it regularly from now on. It is a razor-sharp, good-looking, functional culinary knife. It will work well when I smoke deer/elk Tri-tips and flanks and slice them paper thin as appetizers.
While preparing this meal I also used the Spyderco Wakiita Bunka Bocho to slice avocados to mix in with my homemade salsa and to slice a mango. So as advertised, it works great on vegetables and meat.
To protect/preserve the razor-sharp edge I’d store it in the factory box and slip it into the plastic blade protector or a good wood knife box. And for sure don’t throw into a dish washer and let it get banged around.
The MSRP on the Spyderco Wakiita Bunka Bocho is $268.00 and as is usual, we will close with the company specs.
- Overall Length: 12.63″ (321mm)
- Blade Length: 7.75″ (197mm)
- Steel: CTS BD1N
- Closed Length: N/A
- Edge Length: 7.27″ (185mm)
- Weight: 5.7oz (162g)
- Blade Thickness: 0.072″ (1.8mm)
- Handle: G-10
- Grind: Full-Flat
- Sheath: N/A
- Origin: Japan
About Tom Claycomb
Tom Claycomb has been an avid hunter/fisherman throughout his life as well as an outdoors writer with outdoor columns in the magazine Hunt Alaska, Bass Pro Shops, Bowhunter.net and freelances for numerous magazines and newspapers. “To properly skin your animal you will need a sharp knife. I have an e-article on Amazon Kindle titled Knife Sharpening for $.99 if you’re having trouble.”
If there’s one food I hate, it’s salmon steaks. I can find bones in a stick of butter. If there’s one food I love, it’s salmon fillet – usually broiled with a croute of mayonnaise with herbs and spices, to seal the fish and keep the moisture inside, and provide a little flavorful crust to counterpoint the rich fish. Damn – now I want salmon.
my first folding knife which i bought in late 90s was a Spyderco, after over 2.5 decades it still has an edge, have never sharpened it, don’t knew if the new stuff is just as good but they have my vote, pricy
From the intro photo it looked like sliced bricks and I was fixin’ to be really impressed with that knife. A closer look showed me it was salmon that always is easier to cut than terracotta. Still, it looks like a good addition to the kitchen.