“To take a trivial example near at hand: I wrote a magazine article recently comparing the writing brush with the fountain pen, and in the course of it I remarked that if the device had been invented by the ancient Chinese or Japanese it would surely have had a tufted end like our writing brush. The ink would not have been this bluish color but rather black, something like India ink, and it would have been made to seep down from the handle into the brush… An insignificant little piece of writing equipment, when one thinks of it, has had a vast, almost boundless, influence on our culture.”
– Junichiro Tanizaki,
In Praise of Shadows, 1933