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The first point, the answer to perhaps one of the most common questions people ask about Iwasaki Razors, is that there will never be another Iwasaki folding straight razor made. There are a couple of reasons for this, but let's look at the history.
Iwasaki-san said that when his father founded Sanjou Seisakujou, the decided to make western style razors because of their popularity, and because he felt they could improve on western makers' products. However, the Iwasaki family were blacksmiths, and in addition to proper steelworking, straight razors require an entirely new skillset: polishing and finishing. So in order to make straight razors that met his strict quality requirements, the elder Iwasaki-san approached on of Japan's three "Straight Razor Masters", Fukutarou Tanifuji-sensei, to train them in razor finishing and scaling. However, after the training, Iwasaki-san realized that not only would they have to build an entirely new workshop with new equipment, the additional time involved in proper polishing and scaling the razors would reduce production output immensely.
So instead of doing this finishing themselves, all Iwasaki Razors were finished by Tanifuji-sensei and his students. This means that the blades were forged, ground and stamped by Iwasaki, then polished and scaled by Tanifuji-sensei. Tanifuji-sensei retired at the age of 79 in the mid 1980's, and since that time, there have been no new Iwaski Razors. Seeing as how the problems of equipment and time have not changed, and indeed Mizuochi-san has a 4 month waiting list for Kamisori now, it doesn't look like there is any chance of adding new products to his workload.
In addition, we talked about the design of the razors. Sanjou Seisakujou produced a wide variety of razor designs. There is a larger, 7/8 or so "rounded square-point" full hollow Tamahagane; the smaller french-tip half-hollow Tamahagane; a 6/8 square-point full hollow Swedish steel "#90" razor, a shorter bladed 5/8 Swedish steel "#33" razor etc. All of these design differences filled specific needs and requests raised by barbers who collaborated with the Iwasaki workshop when they were developing their razors. For example, the "rounded square point" of the Tamahagane was made for barbers who felt that a real square point led to an increased danger of nicks at the tip. However, for those who felt that a pronounced square tip helped shave up around the nostrils (something I agree with) they kept producing the full square point on some razors. They produced half-hollow razors for most users, but many people found that for barbers who tended toward shaving against the grain (called Nehori、根堀 in Japanese), a thicker, half-hollow razor led to more comfortable, less nicky shaves.
Another development was in the actual making of the razors themselves. On some Iwasaki razors, next to the trademark "Marusan" mark you might see an "M". This indicates a razor of medium hardness. Iwasaki razors, especially the Tamahagane razors, were hardened to roughly 800-820 on the Vickers scale, above 64 Rockwell. This makes them extremely durable, but harder to hone. According to Iwasaki-san, soon after they started making razors a fundamental social change in Japan led to a large increase in the number of women in barbering, and these women had a lot of trouble honing the larger, harder razors, that in fact women have trouble honing in general (his words, not mine...), so they started making softer razors. Razors marked "M" were only hardened to 775-795 Vickers, roughly 63 Rockwell. In addition, these razors tended to have shorter blades than the harder razors, making them even easier to hone.
So I think that's enough for this installment...stay tuned, there's still more!
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