I just got some of these in to look over. They are pretty interesting with a stainless damascus "skin" forge welded to a cobalt/carbon steel interior. The scales, sadly, are pakkawood which seems like a strange handle material for "non traditional" Japanese kitchen knives. I would have thought they would have used composition scales. I haven't used them since I'll probably add them to the site in the near future and want to put these into inventory rather than into the kitchen.
But I can tell you that Japanese knives are pretty different from western knives and these are similar to other Japanese kitchen tools in that respect. The bevel is acute and the blades are sharpened almost to razor sharpness-quite unlike western kitchen knives which are more obtuse and sharpened fairly roughly to make saw like cuts. What that means is that the edges are more delicate than those on western knives and require more maintenance but they cut very well as you can imagine when they are sharp. I have a small parer/utility from Japan that does an exceptional job with delicate cuts but I can do about as well with a recently sharpened Wusthof bird's beak parer.
If you can live with the constant maintenance, you will be impressed with the way these knives perform. If you let the maintenance slide, you won't like them. Few American cooks are willing to put in the maintenance required to keep them performing like they can perform and that's the major reason they aren't more popular in this country. Of course, another option is to regrind them to a typical western bevel, say 15 degrees or so with a 20 degree secondary bevel, and have some cool looking knives that work just like the Western knives we all know. Take care.
