The OHTO Story:
OHTO is one of those rare brands that doesn’t chase trends—it invents them.
Quietly Revolutionary Since 1919
The OHTO story begins in Tokyo in 1919, when Nakata Touzaburo, then an employee of Japan’s Ministry of Finance, developed a new type of ink he believed would be ideal for printing banknotes. When the idea was dismissed, he did something quietly bold: he founded his own company. That decision laid the groundwork for more than a century of writing innovation.
After World War II, ballpoint pens arrived in Japan with the U.S. Army and instantly captured attention. They wrote longer, cleaner, and required far less refilling than fountain pens. OHTO took note—and in 1949 introduced Japan’s first domestically made ballpoint pen. It was also the world’s first pencil-shaped ballpoint, signaling what would become the brand’s hallmark: practical innovation with elegant restraint.
From there, OHTO moved quickly—and decisively—into uncharted territory. In the early 1960s alone, the company reshaped modern writing as we know it: the first retractable ballpoint pen, the first tungsten carbide ball for smoother, longer-lasting writing, the first transparent plastic ink refill, and—most transformative of all—the world’s first rollerball pen using water-based ink. This single invention bridged the gap between the smoothness of fountain pens and the convenience of ballpoints, influencing nearly every rollerball that followed.
OHTO’s momentum never slowed. They introduced the first ballpoint with a rubber grip, the first ceramic rollerball pen, and later, precision needle-point rollerballs that defined clean, expressive lines. In 2013, the brand once again pushed boundaries with the FUDE BALL 1.5—widely recognized as the boldest free-flowing rollerball in the world and a favorite among artists, letter writers, and anyone who loves expressive strokes on paper.
Today, OHTO remains proudly Japanese, deeply design-driven, and quietly radical in its approach. Every pen reflects a belief that writing tools should feel intuitive, inventive, and genuinely satisfying to use. For those who care about how words meet paper, OHTO isn’t just a pen brand—it’s a history of ideas, written one breakthrough at a time.
