Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware

Fun historical fact: one of the Japanese daily newspapers, during the Occupation, was prevented from publishing an editorial (accurately) describing the Constitution as being written by the occupying powers. They instead described the new Constitution as &quot;smelling of butter&quot;, which the censors missed due to lack of familiarity with the idiom.<p>(I once had call to describe a client&#x27;s request to micromanage which engineers were working on their account as &quot;The client believes my work product might smell of butter&quot; because my coworkers were dancing around the obvious issue so delicately that a Japanese colleague didn&#x27;t understand what they weren&#x27;t saying. That got some stares. &quot;What can I say; I learned nuance from the best.&quot;)

My first day in Japan, I switched on the TV and was immediately thrust into a program where different designs of nail cutters were being analyzed. The angle of the cutting blades, etc; The cutting of the nail was inspected in slow motion video capture, and an Excel sheet of how far the nail flies, how neat the cut was, etc; was filled and a Winner was arrived at. I&#x27;ve never seen anything like it and I watched all 30 minutes of that program! It was a fascinating demonstration of what I believe is called &quot;kaizen&quot;. I really like the attention given to everyday objects in Japanese design.

As a French guy, I like the &quot;grater&quot; knife, I may even buy one, but the &quot;right angle&quot; one feels weird.<p>But I may have an alternative explanation. The article talks about order and Japanese sensibilities, but to me, a right angle cut in a butter slab doesn&#x27;t look particularly pleasing.<p>Instead, what I think it is to make precise cuts easier when the butter is hard, for example if it came out of the fridge. In this case, it can require a significant amount of force to cut through the slab, and making a straight cut can be difficult. With the tool, you push straight down, so you can use more force. And the right angle shape stabilizes the blade during the cut.

This article makes me wonder about the shapes butter is sold in worldwide.<p>Everyone who ever looked up a recipe online knows Americans use those 113g &#x27;sticks&#x27; of butter (this seems to be the exotic option), but it looks like most regions use bricks&#x2F;slabs.<p>The Japanese ones look to be standardized on 200g.<p>A lot, if not most, of Europe seems to do 250g bricks, which often have a printed measure on the inside of the wrapper to help you cut off 50g pieces for baking.<p>Canadian butter seems to come in huge unwieldy blocks of 454g (four US &#x27;sticks&#x27;).<p>Any other form factors in common use?

If you live in the US, you can actually purchase these products from amazon.co.jp (Amazon Japan). They support switching the website language to Chinese and English. When you switch to English, everything including the comments are translated.<p>You do need a separate account on this website and you cannot delete the account (unlike Amazon US).<p>Shipping from Amazon Japan is faster than from Amazon US if you are not an Amazon Prime user.

The &#x27;noodler&#x27; tool is brilliant. Butter lasts longer when refrigerated but spreading cold butter on bread is a recipe for destroying the bread or toast.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;s3files.core77.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;images&#x2F;1105453_81_102355_0lIrCESl4.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;s3files.core77.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;images&#x2F;1105453_81_102355_0lI...</a>

FWIW, I’m a Japanese native living in Japan and have never seen any of these unusual butter knives. I wonder where they’re sold.

I like the french butter dish:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;French_butter_dish" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;French_butter_dish</a><p>Takes advantage of butter being hydrophobic, and stores it upside down!

I&#x27;ve been living in Japan since I was born, but I&#x27;ve never knew these products. Thanks for sharing this!<p>I think I am gonna buy this one. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.jp&#x2F;-&#x2F;en&#x2F;Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Butter-BTG2DX&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B008MR3OYM&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.jp&#x2F;-&#x2F;en&#x2F;Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Butter-...</a><p>It seems Butter Cutter(lattice shaped one) can only be used for &quot;soft&quot; butter, but it must be helpful anyway.

as an english person, these tools all seem to be for working on butter that’s fresh out of the fridge; they’d be impossible to use on normal, room-temperature soft butter.<p>There’s something funny about inventing a tool to solve a problem that only exists for such a simple cultural reason (assuming butter goes bad quickly if not refrigerated)<p>Also, really odd how this article thinks of normal, unsliced butter— normal to everywhere else in the world but the US as some kind of pre-technological tradition.<p>edit: a friend pointed out to me that in lots of other places in the world, butter probably just melts to the point of becoming useless, so it has to be kept refrigerated, which is something I never considered before, feel pretty dumb about that

Really enjoyed reading this.<p>I have a problem with articles that usually either try to bash or over-romanticize Japan. Could definitely use more articles like this one.

Why is every butter dish in the world not equipped with those pegs? I can&#x27;t count the times the stick has slid out of mine while I was just trying to enjoy some toast.

Refrigeration is for the butter that’s on deck. The butter pat at bat is always kept at room temperature.<p>Culture, here, is part of the local culture: one of the three butters I regularly stock is always a little rancid. It is also unpasteurized <i>a la mode Normande</i>.<p>(Apologies to actual French people.)

I am <i>so jealous</i>. Canada seems to do it the worst. Unless you pay for the premium stuff, it comes in 1-lb blocks. Well, 454g blocks, but they aren&#x27;t fooling anybody. The block is a huge square extrusion about the size of 4 American sticks of butter. It&#x27;s utterly unweildly and in the decade I&#x27;ve lived here, I haven&#x27;t seen a butter dish made for these bricks. I&#x27;d love to hear from other Canadians how they manage these things.

Currently living south of Tokyo, and in my years I&#x27;ve never seen these kinds of knives. Using normal knives is, well, the norm.

&gt; <i>Both Westerners and overtly Western things were referred to as bata-kusai, &quot;kusai&quot; being Japanese for &quot;stink.&quot;</i><p>Although that is a literal meaning, -kusai functions as a suffix which creates an adjective from a noun indicating that something has the quality of that noun, and that the quality is undesirable. In this role, it doesn&#x27;t indicate a smell.<p>It basically means &quot;-like&quot; or &quot;-ish&quot;, with a negative slant.<p>For instance &quot;ao&quot; refers to the blue&#x2F;green color and also to an unripe state of plants or immature state. &quot;aokusai&quot; refers to a raw vegetable taste or smell, like cut grass, or something unripe for consumption; also to an inexperienced person, greenhorn.<p>&quot;inakakusai&quot;: unsophisticated hick, country bumpkin.<p>&quot;mendoukusai&quot;: troublesome, bothersome.<p>&quot;usokusai&quot;: seemingly false, contrived, questionable. (&quot;uso&quot; -&gt; lie).<p>&quot;oshiroikusai&quot;: (it. smelling of face powder) coquettish.

The format of the butter in Japan is similar to the European one in shape, but not in size. The typical size is Japan is 250g which is much smaller than what you find in Western Europe, and way more expensive per gram as well. Also, butter is regularly out of stock because of the JA mafia.

This is <i>not</i> Japanese Only. I&#x27;m Belgian, and my mother (a boomer) has all of these. However, they are not &#x27;tableware&#x27;: they are never put on the table for a guest to be used; they are reserved for the cook&#x27;s use only. The cutters also have notes on them like (25g,50g,...).<p>Might it be that this is just lost knowledge?

I&#x27;ve lived in Japan for 15yrs. I never considered this strange. I&#x27;ve seen similar butter dishes in the USA. I mean googling &quot;butter dish&quot; one of the first hits is this<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Creuset-Heritage-Stoneware-Butter-White&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B004E5K5QG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Creuset-Heritage-Stoneware-Butter-Whi...</a><p>Here&#x27;s another<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Sweese-318-101-Butter-Keeper-Handle&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07VBXVK15&#x2F;r" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Sweese-318-101-Butter-Keeper-Handle&#x2F;d...</a>

Unrelated to article. But in many countries in Europe, even if you live in cities, its fairly easy to find fresh milk from farmers. From there on butter is easy to make by yourself.

Do people who are lactose intolerant - like most Japanese people - have any issues eating butter? Or is the butter sold in Japan adapted to remove lactose?

Interesting. I thought many people prefer &quot;cream butter&quot; so it can be cut easier.

Totally OT: I wanted to read the article but the constant moving items on the right column and the whack-a-mole game to add them to adlbock got me off the site. Oh, wait there&#x27;s a reader mode I forgot to try. &#x2F;rant

LPT: In the Netherlands we have cheese slicers. They also work really well on hard, cold butter.

Wow,the Japanese even have superior butter technology.