In addition to Tombow and Mitsubishi, there are other quality Japanese pencil manufacturers. One of these is Pentel. Their top of the line pencil in the Black Polymer series is the 999 alpha. I’ve heard they are great, but have been unable to acquire any. (If you have some for sale, please let me know!) But, I did come across some of their still very fine 2nd rank pencil, the 999.