Inflation

Itoya, the Japanese stationer with headquarters in Ginza, Tokyo, has just released yet another Lamy Safari—the “Lamy Safari x itoya Copper 02 Fountain Pen”. Quite a mouthful to simply describe a limited edition made exclusively for this shop.

This new Safari follows the trend initiated with the previous Itoya-exclusive Safari, the Copper 01 from last year (although announced December 2022). Matte finish, black nib, and a distinctive brass clip. And again with the possibility  of implementing the kanji nib.

So, is this all? Yes, but at a cost. It is hard not to notice the inflation associated to these pens.

As far as I know, Lamy has produced three Safari with metallic clip—the above-mentioned Copper 01 and 02 made for Itoya, and the Green Field model marketed earlier this year. They are shown on the following pics:

From back to front, Copper 01, Green Field, and Copper 02.

All three with kanji nibs.

And then we can compare the prices:

The brass clips. From top to bottom, Copper 01, Green Field, and Copper 02. The prices are inclusive of taxes (10%), and correspond to the versions with kanji (KJ on the reference) nibs. The Copper 02 with regular (EF, F, M) nib costs JPY 6000, plus taxes.

The relative high price is in part associated to the kanji nib those particular pens sport, but what is indeed striking is the constant increase over the three pens in about a year and a half. Each of those pens is JPY 500 more expensive than the previous. And at the final price is 14% higher than the initial.

Is there a reason behind this inflation? Is this caused by the free falling Japanese yen in the financial markets? Is it a deliberate strategy to make the popular and even humble Safari a more upscale pen?

I do not have any answer, but I think an expensive Safari would lose a great deal of the current appeal among users and collectors.

Parker 50 Falcon – Sailor Yama-dori

Bruno Taut
July 14th, 2024
etiquetas: Lamy, mercado

Questions without Answers

Today I wanted to reflect on an old question about which recent developments are making it a bit more relevant.

What do we mean when we say that Montblanc is a German pen? Or, in other words, how do we ascribe a pen brand to a country?

The question might sound either obvious or irrelevant. In actual terms, it is both.

Usually, we aficionados largely follow the tradition and initial birthplace of the brand. Thus, Montblanc is German and Parker, American. But changes in the property and delocalization of the production pose a number of questions to this strategy: Is Parker still American when its production and headquarters are located in France since 2011? Or is it still American because the parent company –Newell Brands-- is American?

American or French?

But if so, is Lamy now a Japanese brand?

And then we see the problem—any criterion we might want to follow will result in some strange or paradoxical conclusion.

Interestingly enough, the big three Japanese companies and their brands are among the easiest to identify as Japanese—Japanese production, Japanese capital, Japanese headquarters...

Japanese Platinum.

And then marketing enters the scene. The prestige of the label “Made in Japan” tempt other makers to claim it for themselves based, more often than not, on very weak arguments. Such was the case, at least for a while, of Danitrio: Taiwanese capital based in California using German nibs and with Japanese decoration. Enough to be Japanese?

And that is the problem after all—capital, components, manufacturing, etc can all have different locations and ascribing one single country to that melange is, at least , inaccurate. And misses completely the economics of pen production.

German or Japanese?

So, in this state of events, it would be much easier to simply ignore the category of country of origin and stick to the brand. After all, we might be ready to identify Lamy as Japanese or Parker as French.

But.. what am I doing writing about Japanese pens?

WiPens Toledo – Pilot (Thai) Black

Bruno Taut
May 2024
etiquetas: mercado, metabitácora

Stories

I have often said that I just write about what I see. And then I publish my texts and wait to see how readers react to them.

Not many comments do I receive on this blog, but the information stays here and anyone can come back to check it. And at some point someone sees it and continues writing the story.

That is what Joshua Danley, author of The Pelikan's Perch, just did. He now tells the story of Kabutogi Ginjiro's Pelikan nibs from a different perspective while adding a lot of information on the original –Pelikan's— counterparts of the moment.

Only one of those nibs was made by Pelikan.

Two suspiciously similar pens, but only one of them is an Ishi Shoten-Yotsubishi. The other, on the back, is anonymous, but its nib was made by Kabutogi Ginjiro.

And that is great as the whole point of these texts is to learn about fountain pens and about their history.

Thanks, Joshua.

Romillo WiPens Toledo – Pilot (Thai) Black

Bruno Taut
April 16th, 2024
etiquetas: Pelikan, nibmeister Kabutogi Ginjiro, metabitácora

Flat

To my friend Michel.

I won't speak about pens today, but about notebooks and paper. Although I use notebooks to write these texts, this one comes as a reaction to some recent news. This is the story:

The so-called Oscars of the stationery world, officially named The Stationery Awards (::1::, ::2::), are announced in February each year. On this occasion, 2024, the Grand Price was for the Pentel Matte Hop ballpen, but what matters more to us is the Functional Award given to the Kokuyo “Flat Kimochii” notebook, on which the company had been working for about three years.

The functional virtue praised by the jury is that these notebooks lie flat on the table when open.

Kokuyo's Campus "Flat Kimochii".

But, is that new?

Mr. Nakamura, of Nakamura Insantsujo, had created a flat notebook around 2015. He did that in collaboration with a book binding business located in the neighborhood of this office in the Kita district in Tokyo.

A potential big order of those newly made notebooks drove Nakamura Insatsujo to produce a large number of them. But the order was canceled and the company was left with a big unsold stock.

Nakamura Insatsujo's "Granddad's Notebook".

Mr. Nakamura, then about to retire, gave some of those notebooks to his granddaughter. She, in turn, on January 1st of 2016 published a Twitter message praising them and complaining about the lack of exposure they had. The Tweet became viral and Nakamura Insatsujo received orders from retailers, making the notebook a best seller while acquiring the nickname of “Granddad's Notebook”.

On its side, Showa Noto, a company well known in Japan for its stationery products for school children, had developed a similar notebook. However, it was quickly discontinued as the binding glue was not durable enough.

Then, in that year of 2016, Showa and Nakamura reached an agreement of collaboration: now both companies produced these flat notebooks. In 2020 the "Granddad's Notebook" received an award of the Ministry of Education, and in 2021 the Stationery Award.

Showa's "Granddad's Notebook".

Kokuyo's development started in 2021 and the "Flat Kimochii" received the Stationery Award for its functionality in 2024.


My thanks to Poplicola-san.


NOTES:
Stationery Awards: https://www.fusosha.co.jp/special/bunbougu/
Stationery Awards 2024: https://bungu.store/collections/stationery-awards-2024
Chronology of the "Granddad's Notebook": https://nakaprin.jp/?page_id=1324
More information on the "Granddad's Notebook": https://dojwy.com/about-resilience/
Showa Noto's press release August 2016: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000009.000015458.html
Showa Noto's flat notebooks: https://www.showa-note.co.jp/products/search_result?freeword=&category=&series=5015&size=
Kokuyo's Campus "Flat Kimochii": https://www.kokuyo-st.co.jp/en/stationery/campus_flat/

WiPens Toledo – Pilot (Thai) Black

Bruno Taut
March 3rd, 2024
etiquetas: papelería, Kokuyo, Nakamura Insatsujo, Showa Noto

Added Value

Regular commenter Saltire Turquoise posed a very interesting question to my initial description of Sakai Eisuke's prototypes made for Pilot in early 1980s: Why can't Pilot make pens like those?

Although probably intended as rhetorical, it does trigger some reflections on the current situation of the pen market.

The first and easy answer to that question is a series of economic concerns—is there a market for those pens? Would they be economically viable?

It is worth to remember that Pilot does have a pen with similar characteristics to those prototypes: ebonite, urushi, Japanese eyedropper... but just bigger, much bigger—the Namiki Urushi 50. And this pen has a price of JPY 150000 in Japan. Expensive or not is anybody's guess, but it is not a pen you see everyday in the hands of aficionados.

From back to front, Pilot Urushi 50 (prior in time to the current Namiki model), Sakai's #10 and Sakai's #3.

However, I can think of a good argument for the marketing of pens like those Saltire Turquoise craved for–those prototypes and smaller versions of the Namiki Urushi 50.

In recent years we have seen how some Chinese companies have copied some very iconic Japanese (and other) fountain pens—Pilot Capless, Pilot Custom Urushi, Sailor ProGear, Platinum Curidas are some examples of pens with Chinese counterparts at much lower prices.

Jinhao or Sailor?

Lanbitou or Platinum?

In this scenario, little can the Japanese companies do save increase the value of their products. And pens like those Sakai's prototypes or like some older models offer interesting templates of what could offer that added value to their catalogs.

The critical question, however, can only be answered experimentally—is the market ready for those more expensive pens?

Thanks, Saltire Turqouise, for your questions.

Pilot Custom 748 – Pilot (Thai) Black

Bruno Taut
March 26th 2024
Etiquetas: Pilot, Sakai Eisuke, mercado, Japón

Pilot vs. Ban-ei

So, these prototypes were made by Sakai Eisuke. Then, how are they compared to other pens made by this master?

Needless to say, Mr. Sakai made pens in many shapes, some of which I have shown on these pages. However, balance models in a number of sizes and decorations were a very common canvas that came out of Sakai's lathe.

Four Ban-ei balance pens in four different sizes.

On the following pictures we see Sakai's prototypes and balance Ban-ei pens side by side. Do they share a common language?

From left to right, Pilot's Sakai #3, Ban-ei 4-bu, Pilot's Sakai #10, and Ban-ei 5-bu.

On top, Ban-ei "nashi nuri" in size 5-bu. Bottom, Pilot's Sakai #3.

Pilot Custom 74, Yamada Seisakusho – Diamine Teal

Bruno Taut
March 21st 2024
Etiquetas: Pilot, Ban-ei, Sakai Eisuke

Sakai's #10

The size 3 nib we saw on the previous text makes that pen a strange creature with no clear counterpart in the general catalog of Pilot.

On the contrary, the size 10 pen uses a more standard –and contemporary- Pilot nib. In fact, we can see a close relative in the form of the Pilot 65, the commemorative pen Pilot launched in 1983.

As we can see on the following picture, their nibs and feeds are identical to he manufacturing date, September of 1983.

These are the dimensions of these two pens:

	.Pilot 65.	.Sakai's 10.
Length closed (mm)	140	146
Length open (mm)	126	124
Length posted (mm)	159	176
Diameter (mm)	13.5	15.0
Weight (g)	17.9	18.6

Lotus Saral Titanium – Pilot (thai) Black

Bruno Taut
March 19th, 2024
etiquetas: Sakai Eisuke, Pilot, plumín