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Nobuyoshi Nagahara
By John Martinson

 

Nobuyoshi Nagahara

by John Martinson


 

 

At first, there was a flash, obscuring the clouds in the calm blue sky.  Then a second one, much larger than the first, trailed by a crushing, most deafening noise, and fire. A blinding hot fire, emitting molten heat on top of unearthly brightness.  This was the hell envisioned by Buddah, dropped from 30,060 ft.

 

The local junior high school students in Hiroshima, standing in line outside at 8:15 AM were burned beyond recognition.  Some, completely vaporized by the blast, left imprints. Charred shadows remained where they once sat or stood.  Others were scorched on the exposed areas of the bodies, their arms turned grey by ash and melting skin.  The soles of the feet adhered to the ground and the hair on their scalps and eyebrows vanished by fire. 

 

It was all too sudden and too late to scream.  The buildings collapsed all around them and the walls flew asunder within the fury. Steel glowed red, bowed and bent as if within a blacksmith's furnace. Gardens and flowers and trees all transformed into embers of carbon. The maelstrom did not destroy all the structures since many were reinforced as a preventative against earthquakes.  Yet, this prosperous industrial city became a wasteland of sorrow, pain and destruction, with its effects to reverberate for decades to come.

 

The devastation of Hiroshima deeply affected those who survived the occurrence.  They were called "hibakusha" or  exploded-affected people, and young Nobuyoshi Nagahara was one of them.  At 13, Nobuyoshi saw friends and classmates instantly orphaned, scarred or both, as a result of the bomb.  If hibakusha would never escape the darkness of the past, there was only one alternative; work hard to enrich the world with tolerance and peace.  

 

Through persuasion of his uncle, Nobuyoshi Nagahara joined the Sailor Pen Company in 1946. Surrounded by the remains of his city, he joined others from his junior high class to clean up, reconstruct and rebuild. The company had to replace those lost from the atomic explosion in Hiroshima and the war, so Nobuyoshi became the apprentice for the nib department at Sailor.

 

He never spoke publicly about his ordeal when the bomb dropped.  The devastation of the city and the twelve years of growth afterward faded many bad memories away, from nib grind to nib grind. At one time, Nagahara cried as he told his mother he couldn’t create nibs any more.  It was too difficult.  His mother explained to him about cranes. They fly higher and faster with patience, practice and perseverance.  Each nib on the pen is a heart beating with life and the pen is an extension of a soul.  With so many friends lost, where can their spirits go to live on? 

 

Nobuyoshi Nagahara stayed, making a name for himself and transforming writing instruments forever.

 

Sailor pens became increasingly popular under him.  Both in Japan and abroad, Nagahara-san would take different aspects of traditional Japanese culture into creations of gold and steel.

 

The Naginata, a traditional long sword on a staff used by samurai including onno-bugeisha, women warriors of the higher classes, had a curved blade specifically designed for dexterity.  Sailor pens would pass this benefit to their Naginata-togi, a slightly curved and smooth nib, designed by Nagahara with papers found in the archives.

 

He would also create the Fude upturned nib, for bold strokes.  The Crosspoint, likened to brush writing with a cross cut across the writing surface. The Concord, for fine strokes and broad strokes upside down.  The Saibi-Togi, a nib with the narrowest line available. The Zoom nib, a double broad nib wider than most European nibs, and the iconic Music nib, with its single slit and soft strokes for composition.  But the most impressive nibs were the two and three tiered welded nibs from the Naginata Series and the Emperor overfeed, for more ink flow, such as the King Eagle and King Cobra nibs.  Altogether, Nobuyoshi Nagahara invented 24 nibs for Sailor Pen.

 

But through all his years at Sailor, the best times for Nagahara-san were with his interaction with people. An artist visited him at a clinic and showed drawings.  Unimpressed, Nagahara-san took the drawings home to study how every line flowed from his pen.  Later, when the artist returned, Nagahara-san presented him the pen, hand ground into a V shape for easier line drawing.  Dazzled and inspired, the artist felt changed; motivated to draw.

 

Many repairs to Sailor arrived with letters.  One was from a mother of a junior high school girl, who was very unhappy at the time, because her writing was poor.  When Nagahara-san made her a new nib, the flow was beautiful, as a steady line was drawn into a symphony of Kanji.   

After the pen was mailed, the mother sent him a letter a few weeks later. She informed him that her daughter won a calligraphy award and the pen brightened her days ahead. Maybe that’s why he stayed for 65 years.

 

For each nib created, Nobuyoshi Nagahara created a heart with a soul in a pen, and within each soul, millions of ideas flowed, bringing life, joy and harmony from Hiroshima.

 

“The thing that makes me most happy doing this work is being able to help people with their worries and unhappiness”,

 

Nobuyoshi Nagahara



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N. Nagahara's workbench, now empty...

***

 

John Martinson

August 16, 2015



 


(C) 2015 John Martinson


 

 

 

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