No. of Recommendations: 4
I have a feeling that most people have tendency to "over sharpen" their Japanese knives. The steels that they tend to use are far harder than those typically used to make European and American blades. That means that a properly sharpened Japanese blade could last years before it require re-sharpening on a stone. The flip side is that, when it finally does need sharpening, it is requires significant time and technique to get it back to its original razor edge.
The story of my first Japanese knife (actually, every knife I have bought since then has been Japanese):
My wife and have always been amateur "chefs". In that guise, we had the obvious collection of German and French cooking knives curated during more than a decade. While on a trip to Japan in the early 1980's, we wandered into a knife ship in Nishiki Market in Kyoto, we visited a knife shop. They spoke o English and we spoke no Japanese. I asked the price of a good-looking mid-sized knife and was taken aback. I thought I had made a decimal place math error when it worked out to $400 (remember, this was in the early 1980's when a buck was still a buck). Sheesh, I was just looking for a souvenir! When I made it known that it was out of my budget, he brought over a "petite" knife with around a six inch blade made off high-carbon steel for about $60. While this was a lot more than I anticipated for a cheap knife (and more than I had paid for any of my "good" knives), I paid for it. Instead of throwing it into a bag (like I expected), he went to the back of the shop and spent about twenty minutes sharpening it, during which time his wife performed a tea ceremony for us. Afterwards, he explained how to sharpen it (including selling me a rather expensive fine-grit stone).
My wife, who hates heavy knives, grabbed it as her go-to and used it daily from then on for well over a decade before it lost it's incredible razor-sharp edge. While the blade rather quickly became discolored (not corroded, but no longer mirror-shiny), it is capable of keeping its edge better than my fancy-smhantsy modern steel knives. When it f9inally needed sharpening, despite my owning the appropriate stones, I chickened-out and had it professionally sharpened at a NYC Japanese restaurant/knife supply shop (Korin"
https://www.korin.com/japanese-knives?srsltid=AfmB... ).
Nowadays, she is more likely to use a light-weight Kyocera ceramic santuko knife I got her, which because of its size is more versatile, butt the high carbon knife's edge is still superior.
Jeff
