i agree with teknocholer; it isn’t cheap steel, but the hardness of the teeth and the multi faceted grind. the crosscut teeth typically have three separate angels per tooth, making hand sharpening them a discipline unto itself. one reason the blade might feel cheap could be due to how thin it is. because japanese saws cut on the pull stroke, the blade is in tension during the cut. this allows it to remove a much narrower swath of material (kerf), thereby requiring less effort. a western saw cuts under compression, on the push, so the blade has to be thicker and stiffer to resist folding in the cut.
