Nowadays, it’s pretty normal to associate Tombow with making MPs that come with all sorts of really useful erasers, especially under the MONOgraph brand. When I came across the Flight to 100 microsite, I dug through the entries and discovered two key milestones of this form of integration: The Keshiman from 1982 and the Erasha from 1990.
The Keshiman is an all-metal design with lightly etched grooves on its grip section. The metal button seems to be a forerunner of today’s twist-extend eraser holder but it is affixed to the upper half and isn’t detachable.
Refilling for leads is done by pulling the halves apart to access a cap on the lead tube. I struggled for awhile to figure this out on my own, without the aid of an instruction sheet. As for the eraser… I am much too fond of its cool pastel blue color to actually use the vintage unit. For the sake of posterity, I will keep it as-is.
As for the Erasha, it hails from 1990, around the same time when Tombow started to play around with the MONO and OBJECT brands as lower cost extensions of their ‘design philosophy’. The Erasha is pretty girthy for a 2 component pen, but makes up for it with an interesting faceted design and rather sophisticated colors.
What’s cool is that the integrated knock eraser has a diameter of 2.5mm, which makes it a direct predecessor to the later 2.3mm of the MONO Zero eraser holder from 2007. In fact, I managed to use current MONO Zero refills to replace the hardened original units in my Erasha collection.
If there’s one other cautionary point, it’s that the twist select mechanism on the Erasha is prone to damage from over turning past the detent. I have a spare where the stowed and deployed positions do not properly align with the facets on the lower body. Still… a fun example from Tombow’s design boom era.
I love the TOMBOW Keshiman. Such a solid pencil. It’s a terrific one if you tend to erase a lot but also want a metal bodied writing instrument. The only drawback is that it’s on the heavy side.
I wouldn’t say they’re particularly rare, and they used to come up fairly often on Yahoo Auctions Japan for quite some time… until about the past year or two, where they don’t pop up much any longer. I’ve seen a few listed on eBay, and two just closed a short while ago (LINK).
I think the concept of “emergency” eraser has been grossly overlooked —none of them work (except in an emergency). Want to erase something, get a green Faber or a Mono
I don’t know, I’ve always considered the tiny eraser covered by the rear cap as something to be used only when you just don’t happen to have a proper eraser at hand. They DO work. I’ve used them successfully. But for any repetitious erasing, they quickly wear out. Not only that, but the design is such that as the eraser gets low, it’ll slip through the retainer–you have to remove it and apply by fingertip. So that’s why I call it the emergency eraser.
The design with metal crimp can be OK, depending upon the crimp. They’re not all created equal. Many are somewhat crappy. Some are refined and hold well.
Anyway, there are nice long eraser rods available that come in their own holder with different diameters, some even with nicely controlled retractable holders like the TOMBOW Mono line. I think it’s a great way to provide nicely controlled eraser functionality without taking up much space.
Actually, I don’t have the slightest idea of how you erase characters when you’re writing in Chinese or Japanese characters. Do you erase everything (like we do with words and sentences) in which case big erasers are needed — or do you just slightly erase tiny legs and bits of the characters? In this case, this kind of Tombow erasers and even the emergency ones that can go into tiny spots are certainly very useful.
I have been using the Hobonichi Techo (A6) since 2013, mostly with a 0.3 mm mechanical pencil. If I need to erase small areas, the thin erasers from Tombow are invaluable. Sometimes I also use a normal eraser, now and then with an erasing shield. So I’m not the typical user
Whilst learning Japanese I used to have to erase parts of the kanji(small lines in one character) therefore I did use one of the click erasers which were thin and had the magnetic dust collection feature.
When I started art school the professor in the Drawing 1 class announced to us on our first day: “Folks, pick up an HB pencil and please throw your rubbers away, because now everything counts and by the end of the year you won’t need it any more”. A really cute colleague next to me immediately threw hers away with a little cry that was also a statement of victory. I’m usually a bit slow on the perception of the virtuous side or the importance of these small acts of freedom so I was like, “hell no, I’m keeping mine”. Next thing, she picks up my newly-bought green Faber-Castell eraser that had I placed on the table and throws it over the wall to the next class (it was a huge place under a high-ceiling, divided by 4-meter plaster walls). I hear the eraser hitting something, something falls and then more things fall on the other side with a spreading silence. We look at each other and start laughing. Of course, I had a spare eraser on my backpack, but I’ve actually never used an eraser since
The MONO Zero eraser is also used by artists who may use negative space to depict fine details. Kinda like using old school clay embedded scratch boards.
