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”,