5B or 6B

The animator and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, talking to Ligaya Mishan of The New York Times:

“I believe that the tool of an animator is the pencil,” he tells me. (We speak through an interpreter, Yuriko Banno.) Japanese pencils are particularly good, he notes: The graphite is delicate and responsive — in the 2013 documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, directed by Mami Sunada, he mocks himself for having to rely on a soft 5B or even softer 6B as he gets older — and encased in sugi (Japanese cedar), although, he muses, “I don’t see that many quality wood trees left in Japan anymore.”

Thanks to Chris at Dreamers Rise.

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