At the corner of a room in their house in Iriya, Tokyo, Isamu Sase and his wife Hatsue work day and night making glass pens. They have had a surge of orders from shops all over Tokyo such as Tokyu Hands, Matsuya department store and Itoya in Ginza, which will keep them busy straight until June.
Sase, the only glass pen artisan left in Japan, has been creating glass pens since 1955. He left his home in Chiba at the age of 18 to apprentice in Tokyo right after graduating from high school.
Although nowadays glass pens can be seen everywhere in the world, they used to be less common. According to Sase, they were first invented in Japan in 1902 by the owner of a furin (wind bell) factory. They were widely used in post offices, banks and registry offices and were exported to Southeast Asia until 1973 when sales dropped and to Germany until about five years ago.