While both are true, I wonder if the reasons are more practical like: easy to source, not imported, cheap and easy to burn the tang in.
I suspect these are the primary reasons for Japanese knives. Low cost if locally sourced, and very easy to work with due to how soft it is. Why spend more if this works fine?
Along a similar line, these are also several of the reasons I really enjoy working with maple. Various species domestic to US, durable, good working properties, not poisonous to work with, and available with nice figure in the form of both curls and burls. White maple is good enough for baseball bats and gunstocks, so there's no worry when using it for kitchen knives.
I've also mentioned before about grip, but the finishing of a handle plays a big part in how it feels. Taking just white maple again as an example, if I rough sand it and don't raise grain and remove the fuzz, it will get similar "grippy when wet" that people like from ho wood. If I take it up a little finer and finish with a penetrating oil, it will retain most of the wood feel, still get some of the wet grip, but reduce the amount of water it absorbs. Then if I sand it to the highest grit and finish with a polymer coating like Tru oil, then you replace the wood grain feel completely.
And then regarding stabilized woods, if you have wood that's stabilized by the pros, like K&G or wood dynamics (not just the average Joe with a vacuum pump in their basement), the primary difference is dimensional stability and density. Much like unstabilized wood, texture depends highly on the finish applied. If it feels "like plastic" then it was probably finished in a way to maximize the appearance at the expense of texture.