Japanese garden tools explained

From the whetstone · October 2026

Japanese garden tools look simple and work differently. Thin, hard blades, short handles and pulling strokes come from small, intensively worked plots. Here are the traditional Japanese tools you will meet, and what each one does in a Western garden.

The hori hori: digging knife

A concave, double-edged digging knife with depth markings. Plants bulbs, divides perennials, cuts roots. The Nisaku NJP650 is the best-known example.

The nejiri gama: hand hoe

Nejiri means twisted: the thin blade is set at an angle to the shaft, so you draw it toward you just under the soil and slice weeds at the root. It is the classic Japanese weeder for beds and gravel. Wider versions such as the kusakaki clear more ground; curved versions such as the kogama also harvest; the triangle hoe opens furrows.

The kama: hand sickle

Japanese sickles cut grass, weeds and grain. Smooth blades like the mikazuki, the crescent moon, slice with a short swing and can be honed sharp. Saw-tooth blades, nokogama, grip tough grass on the pull and rarely need sharpening. Long-handle reapers let you cut banks and ditches standing.

The kumade and nekaki: claws

Kumade means bear claw: a small multi-tine rake for loosening soil and pulling debris from under shrubs. The nekaki claws, with one, two or three tines, cultivate around seedlings and break crusted soil after rain.

Crack weeders

Zassou means weeds. Japanese crack weeders use thin, corrugated stainless blades that fit sidewalk and paver joints and cut weeds at the root. Some, like the zassou tawashi, are held like a scrubbing brush; others have long handles for patios and driveways.

The nata: hatchet

A nata is a heavy, single-bevel hatchet for bamboo, canes and kindling, usually carried in a wooden or leather sheath.

What about shears, pruners and saws?

Japanese gardens also rely on pruners, hedge shears, folding saws and bonsai scissors from specialist makers. Nisaku focuses on the ground-level tools: digging, weeding, cutting grass, and scraping. Together with a good pair of pruners, a hori hori, a nejiri gama and a sickle cover almost every job in a small garden.