The Tanto was designed for Pacific Cutlery Corp. (the company that is
currently Benchmade Knives and was originally Balisong Inc.) by Japanese
maker Kuzan Oda who worked with R.W. Loveless in the 1970's and now resides
in Alaska. The G. Sakai Company of Seki City Japan manufactured 2500 of
these for P.C.C. in the mid 80's along with a lower-priced version with a
die-cast versus molded rubber handle.
Overall the knife is 10 1/2'' long, the blade is 5 3/4'' from guard to tip
and 3/16'' thick, it has a mirror polished finish with simulated (bead
blast) "hamon" (the temper line found on traditional Japanese blades) it has
the smooth transitions of the Japanese style blade versus the sharper bevels
of the "American Tanto". As mentioned above, the handle is molded rubber,
the guard is Stainless Steel and is silver soldered to the blade.
There is also an ambidexterous (belt slits on both sides) leather sheath
included.

I must thank Dan Williams from Country Knives for this information.