The bright-white sticks drop one by one into the whir and clatter of a weatherworn piece of machinery, where they are stamped with the most celebrated name in chalk: Hagoromo.

The early stages of the process look a lot like food production. The ingredients in what the company’s owner calls a “recipe” are dumped into a mixer originally designed for bread dough, and what comes out is fed into a kneader originally intended to make udon noodles.