Mitsubishi 9852EW Wooden Pencil Review

The Mitsu-Bishi 9852EW is a rare beast: a Japanese pencil with an eraser. It’s reasonably priced and is for Master Writing, whatever that is.

Price: $1.30 (USA)
Lead grade options: HB
Barrel colours: Natural
Barrel shape: Hexagonal
Eraser?: Yes

This pencil looks gorgeous. It’s a natural finish with crisp green writing on three sides. One side has the usual ugly looking barcode but apart from that it’s lovely. The ferrule is a foxy looking purple and the eraser is black.

Japanese pencils don’t generally come with erasers and although this one looks great it doesn’t work so well. It’s crumbly and doesn’t erase particularly efficiently, being quite smeary.

The pencil keeps its point well. It’s a little gritty now and then when writing but not too bad for this price.

It hadn’t sharpened too cleanly when I took the pictures but that was as much due to the sharpener I was using (a KUM Long Point) than the pencil itself.

The 9852EW is a fantastic looking pencil that holds it’s own when it comes to writing but is let down a little by the eraser, which fails to combine good looks with good work. Beauty and efficiency, such rare bedfellows.

Pros

Beautiful natural finish
Great looking ferrule and eraser

Cons

Eraser isn’t great