It's too early in my morning to provide a source for him, but I can at least concur. My wife studied East Asian culture extensively and I'm a WWII buff and so we could each tell the other, for example, about the change in policy under MacArthur on destroying swords during the US occupation (in particular, destroying the cheap stamped swords issued post-1930 vs 'preserving' i.e. letting US soldiers loot and take home the historial ones).
As far as either of us know, it's common knowledge among anyone other than the 'katanas can cut steel beams' crowd that Japan was very very iron-poor, was alloying-elements-poor, that their folding technique was not unique by any means, and that noone including Japan sharpened swords to a single molecule's thickness on the cutting edge for good reasons relating to durability. (You could, if you wanted to, fairly trivially sharpen your kitchen knives at least near that degree. You wouldn't want to, for the same durability reason.)
My wife is now professionally a neuroscientist, and they do use scalpels that precisely sharp, or even sharpened tungsten wire 'grown' chemically into that configuration for precision work like cutting into a single cell of your choice under high power microscopy. But all of those are nearly single-use-only instruments. To the extent they can be reused, it's because they only touched very soft cellular material and never contacted something anywhere as hard as a cutting board, much less a bone -- as both kitchen knives and combat swords would do routinely in use. You really don't want the tip of your blade folding over upon itself, which happens almost immediately with a blade that thin. If curious on this topic, investigate the advantages of a beveled (multi-angle) grind, common on a chef's knife, vs a hollow ground edge like you might find on a santoku kitchen knife -- particularly pay attention to the difference in maintenance required of each.
I expect googling for 'japan iron-poor' and 'sword folding technique' would immediately shed light on either of those areas, if you're still in search of a citation.
I did quite a bit of research before buying a handmade gyuto (a Japanese reinterpretation of the French chef's knife). One thing I found is that it's recommended not to cut anything with bones in it using such a knife. Because the steel is hardened more than is typical of a French or German chef's knife, it's likely to chip rather than roll over. It's also ground and sharpened at a narrower angle, which tends to be impossible with a softer steel because it will roll over during sharpening, producing a foil burr instead of a sharp edge.
I haven't heard of anybody who knows much about the subject intentionally limiting how small they make the edge radius of a knife to preserve the durability of the edge. It's nearly always desirable to get the edge radius of a knife blade as small as possible, because it will take more wear or deformation before it's too thick to cut effectively. There is some subtlety though: a wider bevel angle is more stable and obviously adds resistance when cutting, though it can actually result in a smaller edge radius. A convex grind improves both stability and edge radius, but is more difficult to produce. My gyuto has a convex primary grind, but the edge bevel was straight, as a flat stone would produce.
A santoku doesn't typically have a hollow grind, though some specialty knives like the yanagiba are typically concave on one side and flat or convex or the other.
You can search woodworking saws and come to the same conclusions: Japanese developed pull saws because they couldn't create (for lack of raw materials) the high quality steel required to make a western style push saw.
I was skeptical before I tried one, but now I prefer pull saws for most fine woodworking tasks. Pulling tensions the blade, which allows it to be much thinner. If a push saw was that thin, it would take more skill not to bend it in use.
There are advantages to the pull saw, that is why people use them. However there are advantages to the push saw as well. For fine woodworking pull has the advantages you state, for course woodworking push uses more powerful muscles. Today we mostly use power tools for most cases where it powerful muscles matter.
