TomD
"The reason that this is not considered necessary with laminated blades is that the layer of hard steel is thin already, and the soft backing layer abrades relatively easily. The point is, here too one is only honing a small section of the bevel. "

There is some truth to that, though the main examples, the Japanese blades are so hard that they take extra time to sharpen anyway, assuming one had to remove the same amount of material, which is hard to say. In any case it is more efficient to sharpen these tools with jigs or micro bevels also, once one is on the stone. But it has certain drawbacks which are the real reason not to use them.