Ah.

and For the audience at home: https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=hoarded+Japanese+chalk&ia=we...

And for the audience here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9723202 ("Mathematicians Are Hoarding a Type of Japanese Chalk", 109 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19718287 ("Mathematicians are hoarding a type of Japanese chalk (2015)", 123 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 ("The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuf", 118 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770017 ("Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business", 110 comments)

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 ("The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuf", 118 comments)

All the comments here attributing Japan's ability to have a chalk factory to basically Orientalist culture reasons are disappointing.

(In most of the reasons Japan and America are different here, America is the weird place, not Japan.)