A Japanese knife is definitely a luxury and not at all a necessity. Any decent knife that is sharp and keeps an edge is great. I justify it because its a tool that I use every single day, sometimes multiple times and definitely more than anything else in the house. It will also last forever if I treat it right. These are what I tell myself anyway lol.

In regards to the clever - do you have a specific knife in mind that you have used and found works really well for your purposes? Also is it a western style clever or Chinese/Eastern style one?

I only ask because in my opinion the western style clever's are a knife that most people will never actually use for cooking. They are basically a glorified hatchet, like an unprecise swing chop. The Chinese style are different. I'm not as familiar with them but they seem more useful. We did a cooking class recently and someone brought a Western style Henkel Zwilling clever (so a decent quality knife) to our chicken deboning class and even after spending a good chunk of time sharpening it, it ended up being very useless. The person tried deboning the chicken with it and gave up after a minute or two and switched to a basic chefs knife. The regular knife was way more effective. When we deboned the chicken we never actually cut any bone, we cut on an angle between the bone at the joint and it was about the same as cutting a carrot. I've never actually had to cut through bone when cooking.

I hope this isn't coming across as condescending or like I'm mansplaining. My only point is if you have used a clever and it worked for you then perfect. if not though, I would say try it first before spending money on it because they can be expensive for something that is very rarely used. Or third option teach me your method because I would love to learn something new. I've never seen a clever in action yet.