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The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils (2022)
It was the summer of 1952, and the executives of Tombow Pencil were about to revolutionize the Japanese pencil industry—or, possibly, fall flat on their faces. Hachiro Ogawa, the son of founder Harunosuke Ogawa, was Tombow's managing director, and he had just finished a years-long project, at enormous cost,
Tokyo Kaikan was the esteemed meeting place of foreign dignitaries, corporate titans, even heads of state—and now it was absolutely bustling with stationery wholesalers, curious people from other companies, and the press. Louis Art Supply archives) Yoji Suhara, director of engineering at Mitsubishi (and next in line for the chairmanship), wanted to know what the West thought of his company's pencils, so in 1953, he went on a fact-finding mission to Europe and the United States. Photo credit: spaceaero2, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsIn an unconventional move, Mitsubishi gave Akioka extensive creative control over the project from the beginning; the esteemed industrial designer even suggested the price—50 yen ($2.50 today), the same price the European manufacturers were charging at the time.
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