Great stuff! The Americanization of Kai kitchen knives into Shun was partly process and partly design, and was much more gradual and complex than I thought or realized when I first got interested seven years ago. The first Shun that got attention, and is still around, is the Shun Classic Chinese Cleaver. The two who really Americanized Kai products, as Shun evolved, were Bob Kramer, who came aboard with an already established collection, and Ken Onion, who had primarily worked with folding knives.
The signature high end Chef knife, first explicitly marketed as a fusion knife was the award winning Shun Fuji Chef knife--which I finally found a non nosebleed way to purchase several years ago. It's everything that I hoped for in a cultural fusion knife--and is the Chef knife in my home batterie. The most Americanized early Shun series was the Kaji--designed by Ken Onion, and fetching high prices as collector's knives these days. My Shun Kaji santoku hollow ground is a toned down Kaji currently still being marketed. These two knives in my batterie, the Fuji and Kaji, represent the American-Japanese cultural fusion I identify with.
