The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils, 1952-1967

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, to make the best pencil Japan had ever seen. An early Tombow HOMO drawing pencil with transparent lacquer. Note the "H.O.P. Product" branding—in the early 1950s, Tombow still printed this abbreviation for "Harunosuke Ogawa Pencil" on each product. The Tombow name and dragonfly logo are foil-stamped on the opposite side. ( St. Louis Art Supply archives) It was called "HOMO," because in comparison with other Japanese pencils of its day, Tombow's new model had a much more homogenous core. Pencil cores are a mixture of graphite and clay (thanks to Nicolas-Jacques Conté's invention of the modern pencil in the late eighteenth century), and the components in early cores were not always e ... Read full article.