Day 58: Today's Pick — Niwaki Okatsune Garden Snips

The first time I held a pair of Okatsune snips, on a bright cold morning in a garden in Wiltshire, I made a noise out loud that I will not transcribe here.

The snips are made by Okatsune, a small company in Sanjo, Japan, that has been forging garden tools for about a hundred years. They are imported into the rest of the world by Niwaki, a UK-based outfit that has, almost single-handedly, made beautiful Japanese gardening implements available to the kind of people who do not live within driving distance of a craft hardware store. There are several models. The one I am here to talk about — the one I now own three pairs of, in different lengths, and refuse to apologize for — is the No. 103, sometimes sold as the "Niwaki Okatsune Snips."

They are, mechanically, the simplest thing in the world. Two blades. A pivot. Two long, slightly curved red rubber handles. The blades are made from a sandwich of high-carbon steel forged onto a softer iron back, the way a Japanese kitchen knife is. The cutting edges meet with a little overlap so that when you squeeze the handles, the blades draw past each other like a pair of small swords. There is no spring. There is no safety lock. There is no plastic, anywhere, except the rubber on the handle.

What this means, in use, is that cutting a stem feels like nothing. You squeeze; the snips close; you have cut. There is no resistance. There is no torn end on the stem. There is just a clean, almost surgical cut and a small, satisfying snick of metal on metal. Compared to the gummy, dull, rust-spotted scissors I had been using for fifteen years, these snips were like trading a butter knife for a scalpel.

I use mine for everything. The most obvious use is in the garden — deadheading roses, trimming bonsai, harvesting herbs. They handle anything up to about ½-inch wood. (For larger branches you want loppers — Niwaki sells those too, and they're great, but that's another review.) But the longer I have owned mine, the more I find them creeping into other parts of the house. They are now my preferred tool for opening clamshell plastic packaging. They snip the stems on cut flowers from the grocery store. They cut twine, kitchen ribbon, butcher's string. They have, on at least one occasion, cut a piece of fabric tape because they were closer than the scissors.

A note on care, because carbon steel demands a small amount of respect in exchange for its sharpness. After use, wipe the blades with a dry cloth. If they've been wet, wipe them with a slightly oily one. Don't store them in a damp shed. Once a year, or whenever they start to feel less crisp, run a flat sharpening stone along the cutting edge — it takes about a minute, and the snips return to factory-new. Do not put them in a dishwasher, do not leave them out in the rain, and do not lend them to anyone who will not return them, because the chance of return is approximately zero.

Pricing: $40–$60 depending on the length and the importer. This is, possibly, the best $50 I have spent on a tool I use weekly. They will, with the small care above, easily outlast me.

The only thing I will warn you about is that owning a pair of these will make you mildly insufferable. You will start showing them to people. You will hand them to your friends and watch their faces when they make their first cut. You will, possibly, write a review of them on a website. I have made my peace with this.

Buy a pair. Cut a stem. You'll see.