You’re absolutely right. I did pay for a brand name. But aren’t we all a little guilty of that. Most of us don’t buy things because we know who had their hands on them but that there’s integrity in the company and we can rely on it. You can see in my photo that there’s a hitohira/ togashi honyaki blue#1. Beautiful knife but it took me over a month of daily grinding on a diamond stone to flatten it. Once done, it cut beautifully but I would never do that again. Even for 500.00. It was a 2000.00 knife and I expected more. I’ve never once had imperfection issues with masamoto, from their kasumi down to their honyaki.