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I've got a wide variety of Japanese knives in different grinds, steels, and profiles, been using them daily for 10+ years, and never had any chipping problems, even from cutting through bird and fish bones. On a microscopic level the failure mode will, of course, be microchipping, and not edge rolling. All knives have to be maintained. But I am guessing you are referring to chips visible to the naked eye, which sounds like the kind of thing that would happen from something other than routine food prep.
Not to say you're going out of your way to hurt your knives but it can be hard to undo years of ingrained habits. It may be something you are doing without thinking about it.
Well, I'm not a chef and I may not be able to whip up an alfredo or make an apple turnover, but I am a avid knife and straight razor collector and I know how to properly care for knife depending specific material a blade is made from. I also understand how the the metallurgical properties and blade geometry effect the durability, toughness, edge retention and ease of sharpening or else I wouldn't have bothered posting my opinion in the first place. That being said, the only reason I got the knife is someone (undoubtedly one of my wife's friends I'm sure) gave us a gift certificate to "Bloodbath and Beyond my Budget" as a wedding gift. Since my wife made the mistake of forcing me to go with her, the only thing that sparked my interest in the entire store were the knives (go figure). I spotted a Shun with the same VG-MAX Damascus in a picture as it was not in stock they had to order it so I was unable to see it in person which is a big mistake in my mind now. You really need to be able to hold the knife to see how it feels in your hand and to access it's balance, also it's much better to see it in person as things usually don't look exactly as they do in pics, but we ordered it. This blatantly shows how early in the marriage and my blade addiction this took place as this would never fly nowa' days, it would be pillows and potpourri for sure. When the knife arrived I immediately noticed how the damascus pattern was nowhere near as prominent as in the pictures, to make this worse the pattern on this knife dulls with time. I was further disappointed after the first use as I was expecting a much sharper factory edge from such a of a costly blade. Even though the money didn't money did not come directly from my wallet, I gave nearly $300 for this "professional chef's knife" and I always treated it as such, even though I was less than thrilled with it. BTW I'm a huge old school Kershaw/KAI fan and own many, that's one reason I ordered it, I also really liked the the look of it in the pictures, but after a couple months of chipping and degrading of the damascus pattern I realized I may as well have let the wife get the couple towels and candle she wanted with the 3 bills instead. Needless to say had I spent my hard earned money on this knife (and I highly doubt I would) I imagine my sentiment would be much harsher. I guess the take away for others is to realize just because this is a very expensive knife it is still extremely fragile/brittle and not hardened and tempered anything like your VG-10 or VG-MAX pocket knives. Even on Shun's website they state you should not use this knife for cutting "Hard skin vegetables" and IMO his thing will chip if you get it within a city block of a bone or try cut on any moderately hard surface, but that's just my personal extremely "anecdotal" experience with a Shun VG-Max knife.