NEW YORK – When Ms Saori Kawano arrived in New York City from Yokohama in 1978, most Americans’ ideas of Japanese food ended at instant ramen and onion volcanoes.

Since then, if you have enjoyed hand-cut soba noodles or an omakase dinner, or admired the graceful curves of a rice bowl or the flash of a Japanese knife blade, you can probably thank her.

Ms Kawano is the founder and owner of Korin, an importer of knives, kitchen tools and tableware from Japan that has become a place of pilgrimage for restaurateurs since opening in 1982.

It is the main American supplier for big-name chefs such as Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Masaharu Morimoto and Eric Ripert; restaurants like Buddakan, Sugarfish and Eleven Madison Park; and hotel chains like the Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental.

Her Tribeca showroom – packed with wares ranging from US$20 (S$26) kitchen shears to US$2,000 sushi knives – hums with customers arriving with knives to be sharpened and the spin of the custom-made Japanese whetstone that powers the business.

The space is narrow, but it contains a vast network of connections and knowledge that has fuelled the extraordinary rise of Japanese food in the United States.

“So much of the popularity and familiarity that we have now is due to her,” says Michael Romano, the chef of Union Square Cafe from 1988 to 2013 and an early convert from European to Japanese chef’s knives.

In her shop on a busy winter morning, Ms Kawano, 71, beams as her resident sharpener, Mr Vincent Kazuhito Lau, describes restoring dozens of knives in the kitchen of the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

She credits her success to loyal chefs and employees such as Mr Lau, but her combination of elegance, toughness and charm doubtless plays a part.

“I always knew I was not going to live in Japan for my whole life and be a housewife,” ...