I just came across a ceramic honing, uh, "steel", which makes a lot of sense. You want your … honer to be harder than your knives. I'm not sure that the Henckels steel I have is doing a damned thing to that super-hard Shun steel.

Which reminds me: I never pointed out that the reason that the Shun knives are so sharp is that they use a really strong steel for the edge that can hold a much more acute angle than most knives. It's 16° rather than the 220° you see on most European knives. Then they clad more normal steel around the edge piece to make up the bulk of the spine, which is what gives it that Damascus-y look.