Toriyama Akira was probably Japan’s greatest manga master

He had lost it again. It must have slipped down somewhere, between his papers and the low table he liked to work at. He was so careless with his stuff—all his stuff. But this was urgent. With steadily rising anxiety, he rummaged through his office. No sign. And yet he couldn’t draw properly, therefore couldn’t function, without it.

It was his pen-holder he was looking for. His old wooden pen-holder, pinkish-cream and black. Nothing to look at. Over the years he had worn it down with sharpening, sandpapering and simply drawing manga, Japan’s dynamic version of the graphic novel. He had customised it, cutting the business end so that the nib went in deeper. Whenever it broke, he had fixed it. Of course he had tried others, but he couldn’t get on with them. Over thousands of pages, with that little scratching sound it made (he often used the worst paper), it had become his beloved and his friend.