Arigatô, Mr. Nagahara

Nagahara Nobuyoshi 1932-2015

In 1947 a 15 year-old boy went to work at the Sailor Pen Company in Hiroshima, Japan. He continued to work there for 64 years building a worldwide reputation as one of the finest fountain pen nib designers anywhere in the world. Nobuyoshi Nagahara, known as the “God of Fountain Pens” in Japan, passed away on March 11 of this year. This sad news came to me today with the arrival of Stationery Hobby Box (Shumi no bungu bako), issue 34. Following in the footsteps of his uncle and starting work as a boy in the Sailor factory, over the years he became a master craftsman of unparalleled genius, his reputation familiar to fountain pen aficionados all over the world. 

During my years of living in Japan I had several opportunities of meeting Mr. Nagahara at pen clinics and receiving advice about or adjustments to one or another of my several Sailor fountain pens. One might think it out of the question that such a respected craftsman would give ten or fifteen minutes of advice and help to lines of strangers, but that was Mr. Nagahara’s way at all of his clinics. I once asked if he would sign a page in the notebook I carried and with a laugh he took up my newly adjusted Sailor 1911, full of violet ink and dashed off his signature in the notebook.

Mr. Nagahara retired in 2011, leaving his son, Nagahara Yukio to take over his work at Sailor. In the true sense of traditional Japanese apprenticeship, there is little doubt that his 14 years of side-by-side work with his father guarantees that the Nagahara legacy is in good hands.

One of my favorite pens of Nagahara Nobuyoshi’s design is the susudake naginata in which the barrel and nib are encased in smoked bamboo. The process of smoking the bamboo over an open hearth is lengthy, sometimes carried over years at a time. The long absorption of smoke serves to harden the bamboo even more and to add elegant coloration to the grain. The result is called susudake, or smoked-stained bamboo. From this hard and beautifully colored bamboo, Mr. Nagahara made what is called the Susudake Naginata. The nib design is of 21k gold, long in body and slightly reminiscent of the old Japanese halberd or naginata.

Another Sailor favorite is the Sailor Profit 21 with its Naginata nib. What first caught my eye was the striking red and black body with gold trim, though it is not truly a red, more of an orangish red similar to persimmon—eyecatchingly beautiful in its elegant jet black, orangy-red and shiny gold trim. About the nib…One evening in Tokyo I was cleaning the pen and as will happen horribly on occasion, the pen slipped out of my hands and dropped like a missile, nib first to the hardwood floor. Any sharper and it would have stuck up quivering in the floor. I stood frozen in shock for half a minute imagining the newly blunted nib. No question it was badly damaged by the fall, and in a condition that required professional help. Three weeks later Mr. Nagahara was making an appearance at a pen clinic in Tokyo and I took the pen to him for repair. Apparently it was a simple fix for him, and within fifteen minutes he had the pen back to mint condition—and of course, no charge.

The article on Mr. Nagahara’s passing in Stationery Hobby Box suggests that for many, March 11, 2015 marked the end of an era.

Fountain Pens: Starting Young

The mailman brought a breeze of fresh air on Saturday. No matter the enticement of lush green outside my windows, August is ablaze in eastern Florida and days are defined by heat, humidity and mosquitos ready to pounce. Happily, a good part of all that was relieved by the arrival from a longtime Tokyo friend, of the latest issue of Stationery Hobby Box (Shumi no bungu bako). Since leaving Japan a few years back, Kumiko has never missed sending the magazine as quickly as a new issue appears on bookstore shelves. Volume 26 came out in June and like every issue contains over 150 glossy pages of articles and photographs highlighting fountain pens, ink and paper, pencils and a few dozen other stationery-related products.

The bold black copy on the cover this time suggests that people want to write with fountain pens (mannenhitsu de kakitai) and in Japan that is a not an exaggeration. Related to that idea is the magazine’s feature article about eight people who treasure their fountain pens and use them as a daily tool. Among them is a film producer, a stylist, a couple of businessmen, a teacher, and a high school student.

Yûdai Kamei is a seventeen year-old high school student in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama who got his first fountain pen in the third grade. Since that early age his enthusiasm has been nourished by parents who share to some extent their son’s interest in fountain pen history and quality writing instruments. How many fathers take their son on a summer holiday with the specific aim of browsing pen shops?

Yûdai’s collection of fountain pens now numbers ten. The article offers no listing of exactly what those pens are, but looking closely at the photos it is easy to spot a Montblanc Meisterstück 146 Doué, Pelikan 800, Pelikan M200 Demonstrator, Pelikano Junior, Pilot Custom 742, Lami Safari, Lami AL-Star, Platinum 3376 Century and two others difficult to distinguish, though one is a Montblanc. The photograph below shows his stated favorite, the Meisterstück 146 Doué, a gift from his parents at the time he entered high school.

Below the fountain pen in the photo is a bottle of Sailor Jentle Ink and a page from Yûdai’s school notes. The bottle of ink is Miyougi Amber bought on the above mentioned summer pen-trip with his father. The color is reflected in the brown ribbon running down the bottle from cap to base and again at the bottom of the page to the right. The ink is one he first saw in the August 2011, vol. 20 issue of Shumi no bungu bako. To the right is a page of school notes from the morning newspaper, different articles distinguished by a different ink. 

As a way of trial and error, Yûdai uses his journal to get a feeling for his pens used with different inks, a natural extension for any fountain pen aficionado striving to better understand a specific pen or ink. The photo shows a sample of writing with the Pelikan 800 and the Sailor Miyougi Amber ink.

Born in Saitama Prefecture in 1996, Yûdai is currently in the 11th grade and his favorite subject is government economy. Apart from fountain pens, his interests include cars and leather goods. He is also an avid reader, getting through about two books a week.

……………

For those who deny themselves nothing in the way of fine writing instruments, a full page advertisement in this latest issue of Stationery Hobby Box offers the new Montblanc Paul Klee Limited Edition fountain pen for a mere $28,643. ‘Limited Edition’ in this case means Montblanc made only seventy-nine of them.

Montblanc and…Montblanc

For the next several days a few hours can happily be devoted to reading the latest issue of my favorite magazine, Stationery Hobby Box, or Shumi no bungu bako. Volume 22 arrived on Monday, thanks to my ever faithful friend Kumiko and now a smorgasbord of new and upcoming stationery treasures are mine to dream about. It continues to be one of my regrets that life outside of Tokyo has made the riches of this magazine a painful tease, reminding me that what was once available a mile or two from my front door is now mostly out of reach. But in their way, stationery dreams are good too.

Surprisingly, on first look this issue does not have a whole lot that excites me. There have been times when my desire for a new release of ink, pen, or notebook has been hard to bear, knowing that none of it will ever reach me in this Florida beachtown un-attuned to the ways of pen and ink. So far, little in the sumptuous pages of Volume 22 has set my head spinning, but the satisfaction of just looking at pictures and reading the stories brings an agreeable buzz.

The cover this time shows a picture of the new Aurora Mar Tirreno fountain pen, a limited edition of only 480 in a green that is said to reflect the Tyrrhenian Sea and the forests that grow along Italy’s western coast from the island of Elba to Sicily. Most interesting so far is the article on pen cases and those chosen by a handful of prominent Japanese writers and illustrators. It sent me searching online for Japanese stores offering a particular pen case, the oddly named Delphonics Carrying model. More often than not the articles list a store or website that offer the item on display, but not this time. I managed to find the pen case on one site, but then found it excluded from the store’s online inventory. Good side is, that exclusion will save me $68.00.

The picture above gives a partial view of the Delphonics pen case, one that is quite a bit larger than the average pen case. The large Japanese characters at the bottom of the picture mean pretty much what the small English and red arrow to the left say: Check out [this] pen case!

Listed at $4,000, the newest addition to Montblanc’s series of famous name fountain pens is the Alfred Hitchcock, shown in the picture below. The pen also comes in a rollerball version for a little bit less than the fountain pen. These photos strike me as not quite up to par, since they offer no view of Mr Hitchcock’s signature, a feature standard on all of the famous name pens from Montblanc. Not a very inventive photo layout, very surprising in a magazine renown for its high quality and artful photographs.

The third thing that caught my interest is also from Montblanc, and is another of their new ink releases. This too is called Alfred Hitchcock, and is a bottle in the smaller size of 30 milliliters, but at the usual price of $25.00. This small size is not anything new with Montblanc ink, and usually indicates a limited edition. Experience tells me that in three months or so this ink will be sold out and hard to come by. Maybe a trip to the Montblanc store a couple of hours away should be added to the calendar. The color is exceptional, even for one already swimming in red ink.

Dusty Pages of Another Season

Journal entries: June 2006 - September 2007

MONDAY 12 JUNE 2006

Telephone call from Moriyama-san at Fullhalter, the new Pilot Custom 823 fountain pen is ready for pick up. The work wasn’t scheduled to be finished before 8 July.

SATURDAY 17 JUNE

Restaurant in Oimachi called the Sun Room, with Kumiko after picking up the Pilot fountain pen. Pen in hand and full of Montblanc black ink (a very old bottle from 1985). Always thrilled with a new pen from Moriyama-san, this one is no different. As smooth as cream, the nib a perfect width and the whole thing a comfortable size and weight in my hand. The old Montblanc black ink is a surprise—a happy surprise. It has a sumi-like shade that I like. Everything feels just right with both pen and ink.

MONDAY 19 JUNE

Flashback to a memory from early days in Japan when I saw almost every day young businessmen on the way to work wearing the familiar dark suit, and snowy white socks inside black or brown dress shoes. Fast forward 25 years and it’s no longer old-fashioned white socks, but the hugely popular low-cut sport socks which almost everyone wears now. Look at the feet of young businessmen on the train these days and you will see those ankle high socks in dress shoes. Statement on the Japanese male’s sense of fashion?

SATURDAY 24 JUNE

At de feet o’ Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.

Lordy, let yo’ mercy

Come driftin’ down on me.

At de feet o’ Jesus,

At yo’ feet I stand.

O, ma precious Jesus,

Please reach out yo’ hand. —Langston Hughes, 1932

TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER

Doutor for lunch, but luck is against me this time on my cherished 3rd floor. No sooner do I sit down at my favorite table, then here comes a herd of giggling, chattering housewives who quickly slam 3 tables together, pull down all the shades to erase the flood of sunlight and launch into loud banter.

In the middle of 3 books now, and depending upon where I am the book changes. Sitting at the kitchen table it’s book 13 in the Aubrey/Maturin series, slumped in the big blue chair it’s the book about Japanese student soldiers in WWII, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers. The 3rd book, and the one in my bag now is Dickens’ Great Expectations, also the one I read on the train or bus.

MONDAY 8 JANUARY 2008

“Coming of Age Day” in Japan. 20 year-olds are celebrating their new ADULT status. Tokyo cold, as it always is on this day of the year. Passed an enjoyable afternoon with Sawane-san in Shinjuku yesterday. Been a long time since I had walked about the area just east of the station, and the changes surprised me—though they shouldn’t have, since no city anywhere tears down and rebuilds as much as Japan. The old oden restaurant Isuzu that a friend and I went to almost every Friday night for 2 or 3 years is now a Starbucks. Too bad, since the building was pre-war and the inside of the bar-restaurant all of that period. Everything has changed, everything.

Sawane-san and I went to the fountain pen clinic at Isetan, but it turned out to be a slight disappointment. Sawane-san was unable to get his Sailor King Cobra repaired.

MONDAY 26 FEBRUARY

Looking for something to read and rummaging through the book closet, I uncovered something I don’t even remember buying, a rather handsome 1st edition hardback of Donald Richie’s Japanese Literature Reviewed (2003). It is a collection of his reviews written over the years for his weekly column in The Japan Times. Happy to find that.

SUNDAY 4 MARCH

Done with a workout at the health club and in Doutor now for a spot of iced coffee, some scribbling and hopefully some moments of quiet here on the 3rd floor. Such a warm, warm March day for Tokyo, especially for a day barely out of February. Read a good bit of Shiga Naoya while riding the stationery bike at Tipness. Almost 20 miles in 60 minutes and 4 Shiga short stories. Thinking I might do a Shiga story in the lit classes at the university during the 2007-08 school year. Maybe some Shiga, maybe some Miyazawa Kenji, and maybe a selection from Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Need to think too about finding a replacement for the dear-to-me E.B. White essay “Once More to the Lake.”

SUNDAY 4 MARCH

Reading Raymond Chandler these days. Talk about ‘economy of expression,’ Chandler can say more in 4 words than most can say in 24. Interesting essay by Chandler called “The Simple Act of Murder” that prefaces his collection of stories with the same name. Love what he said about famous English mystery writer Dorothy Sayers. She: ‘The detective story does not, and never can, attain the loftiest level of literary achievement.’ Chandler: ‘I do not know what the loftiest level of literary achievement is: neither did Aeschylus or Shakespeare; neither does Miss Sayers.’ —‘A male cutie with henna’d hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and tickled the keys lasciviously and sang “Stairway to the Stars” in a voice with half the steps missing.’ —Chandler, Farewell My Lovely

MONDAY 12 JUNE

Saw something on the Classic Fountain Pens website last night I’m going to buy. It’s a cleansing cream to remove ink from hands and fingers, and do I ever need something to get the ink off my hands. Most of the time my fingers look like a Technicolor screen test.

Enjoyed the movie I saw yesterday in Kichijôji. Bloody spectacle of 480 BC, the Spartan stand at Thermapolae. The fight and battle choreography was excellent, and almost like a bloody ballet with spears, swords and shields. Have to laugh at the critics who get so uppity about 300 being nothing but a shallow and bloody mishmash with no historical veracity. Are they trying to fool themselves with such pretentious claptrap? It’s a Hollywood spectacle, for God’s sake, a film treatment of a graphic novel. What the critics missed was the director’s faithfulness to the format of narrative told through a series of frames on a page. Again and again in the film you see characters in a ‘comic book’ pose. This is especially true in the lush and bloody fight scenes. Freeze the frame and move it straight onto the page of a graphic novel or comic book. Well done and completely over the head of the critics. Same kind of technique in the Japanese movie Ping Pong, which also originated as a comic book.

SUNDAY 30 SEPTEMBER

Rainy and slightly chilly day in Tokyo. Some might call it autumn weather, but to me it doesn’t have that feeling. The air is different. What we call autumn in Tokyo has an entire vocabulary all its own, and there’s none of that in this last day of September. Nonetheless, I wear an autumn-intended pullover despite the contradiction of my sockless feet in a pair of Rockport deck shoes.

Pilot Workhorse

The day I picked up from Moriyama-san at Fullhalter the new Pilot Custom 823 fountain pen is a day I still remember. Something of a surprise to get the call saying the pen was ready a good three weeks ahead of the promised date. It was July 17, 2006 and according to my summer schedule, perfect timing. It’s usual to expect a six-week waiting period when ordering a customized fountain pen at Fullhalter, the tiny pen shop owned by Nobuhiko Moriyama in the Oimachi neighborhood of Tokyo, and I was not expecting the pen to be ready before my departure for the US three weeks later. In the shop Moriyama-san filled the pen with a bottle of ink I had brought along, carefully explaining the plunger-vacuum filling system.

From an old journal, my first scribbles with the new pen…

‘Restaurant in Oimachi called Sun Room with Kumiko after picking up the Pilot Custom 823. First time to write with the pen—ink is Montblanc Black, a bottle bought in 1985. Moriyama-san, who worked for Montblanc almost thirty years, says the ink is even better today than at the time I bought it. Black ink in a pen ordered primarily for that color and the old Montblanc ink is a happy surprise, a sumi-like shade of black that strikes the perfect chord. Always thrilled with a new pen from Moriyama-san, this one no different. As smooth as cream, nib a perfect width, the weight and size in my hand comfortable…’

That pen is today still one of my favorites. During five years of regular use it has never failed to satisfy in the same way it did that first time back in 2006. Most would not call it inexpensive, but Pilot’s fine engineering and classic design of the Custom 823 are worth the higher price. It is nothing less than a rock solid writing instrument. My original idea of using the pen for only black ink wore off in time and these days it sees a wide range of inks from half a dozen makers.

Pilot makes the Custom 823 in three choices: clear, amber-brown and black. The barrel of the black model is smoky and like the other two shows the amount of ink in the pen. The black one caught my attention from the beginning. As with most of my pens, I ordered a medium nib, but had it customized by Moriyama-san to suit the line and flow I prefer. The 14k gold nib is the largest one made by Pilot, the No. 15. There is sometimes fear that a fountain pen will leak during airplane flights, but that will never happen with Pilot’s engineering of this pen. Tightening the barrel end cap seals off the ink chamber from the nib, cutting off the ink supply and preventing the possibility of leaks. When ready to write, twist the end cap a turn or two and ink is released into the nib.

Nothing too modern or avant garde about the shape of the 823. It is the classic cigar shape with a gold pocket clip. This ball clip seems a little tight, but for those who don’t often put a pen in their shirt pocket this feature is of little concern. There is a broad gold band at the bottom of the cap engraved with ✭✭✭ PILOT MADE IN JAPAN ✭✭✭ CUSTOM 823. Not anything that could be described as unusually large, neither is it a small pen. It measures 5 and 7/8 inches long capped, 5 and 1/8 inches without the cap, and 6 and 3/8 inches posted; the diameter measures a half inch.

The pen’s plunger-vacuum system for filling uses a washer mounted on a thin rod to create a vacuum in the barrel. Releasing the vacuum fills the barrel with ink. Unscrew the barrel end cap and pull out the plunger; put the nib into the ink then push the plunger back in. Wait about ten seconds and then lift the nib from the ink. The 823 will hold 1.5ml of ink. That’s a lot of ink.

Few will find anything to complain about in the smooth ink flow from this pen. Neither will skips ever be a problem as long as there is ink in the pen and the barrel end cap is open a turn or more. For a year or so I used only black ink in the pen but have since filled it with an assortment of inks and colors from J Herbin, Iroshizuku, Montblanc and De Atramentis, getting superior results with each. The only ink that proved troublesome was the Sailor Kiwaguro carbon ink, but this is a risky ink in any pen because of the carbon nanoparticles and surfactants in the ink.

Because of its reliability the Custom 823 is what might be dubbed the workhorse fountain pen, one that will always put the words on paper in a smooth trouble-free flow of ink, day after day, year after year.

Smoked Bamboo

A second look at the Sailor Susudake Naginata…

In the last few weeks of long years spent in Japan a process of winnowing began with the boxes, closets and shelves of things accumulated over time. Obvious that everything couldn’t be packed and shipped to Florida, but it was also obvious that some of those accumulations had achieved special value as tokens of memory, curious tidbits or in some cases an irreplaceable tool of daily life. There was enough to fill several boxes with hard to find objects of limited number, antique bits and pieces, each carrying an unmistakable imprint of Japan.

When it came to the packing of fountain pens, I counted nine Japanese pens, most of them Sailor. Each of the nine was treasured, used regularly and soon to be carefully wrapped and packed for shipping. But something was missing.

I found it a week later at Kingdom Note, a favorite pen shop in Shinjuku. Had someone asked before that what I was looking for, the answer would have been, “I’m not quite sure.”

The moment I saw the Sailor Susudake Naginata the answer came to me. It was a pen made by Japan’s ‘god of the fountain pen’ Nobuyoshi Nagahara, bearing the patented mark of traditional Japanese craft, smoked bamboo—a pen that would mark my time in Japan and my love of Japanese craftsmanship.

For centuries bamboo has been a common element in Japanese life, showing up in poetry, proverbs, chopsticks, body armor, sword guards as well as handles, writing brushes, and following the line of poetry and writing brushes, fountain pens. The wood is known for its strength and resilience as well as beauty, and for those reasons found its place among the objects of daily life.

But the bamboo is not merely cut and quickly fashioned into useful pieces. There is a lengthy process of smoking the bamboo over an open hearth, sometimes for years at a time. The rarest examples of susudake passed as much as a hundred years absorbing the smoke of generations. This long absorption of smoke serves to harden the bamboo even more and to add elegant coloration to the grain. The result is called susudake, or smoked-stained bamboo.

From this hard and beautifully colored bamboo, Sailor’s master nib craftsman has made what is called the Susudake Naginata. Naginata is a nib design of Mr Nagahara’s, long in body and slightly reminiscent of the old Japanese halberd or naginata. The nib is 21k gold, and as with other Sailor fountain pens is offered in a range of sizes from fine to broad. For those desiring other nib sizes, John Mottishaw at Classic Fountain Pens offers the pen with a nib in a wider range of sizes.

Before buying and using the Sailor Susudake I had had some experience with another of the Naginata pens and knew it qualities well, so risk on that account was zero. Like most of my pens, the Susudake has a medium nib with good flex. The flow of ink is smooth with never a hint of skip, always generous, never stingy. It is precisely the kind of nib and ink flow that Mr Nagahara is long famous for.

In the ultimate sense, pleasure from this fountain pen comes with its value as a kind of totem or relic of the Japan years. It has its time in the weekly pen rotation, but when not inked up and lounging on my writing desk it sits displayed on its own shelf, resting on the backs of two small silver cats.

The photograph with the sample writing was done with Iroshizuku Yama-guri ink in a Faber-Castell journal.

Interested in the earlier Susudake post? Look here.

Bounty of Pens

An interesting package came today. But it was one of those double-edge sword kind of things. I’ve had much of the afternoon to examine, clean and polish most of fifteen different fountain pens, a fun and also educational afternoon for me any way you look at it. The other side of it is, the pens are not mine and there is a measure of covetousness about handling so many classy fountain pens that have to go back to the owner in a week’s time.

This past Friday while in town for the day, a friend wondered if I would be willing to take a look at his collection of fountain pens and give him some idea of what he has. That might impress you as odd, someone with a fine collection of pens, but with little knowledge of exactly what it is he has lined up in a glass showcase. But this is someone who likes the look of fountain pens, finds the shape, the design and colors interesting, though isn’t driven to write with the pens, or to even ink them in some cases. At least five of the pens I looked at today have never been inked. Maybe his fascination with the pens is a little like my own interest in tobacco related objects. I don’t smoke, but am drawn to the paraphernalia of smoking.

Of the fifteen fountain pens (and one Montblanc ballpoint), so far I have only looked closely at ten of them, and have not written with any of them. For the moment, the ten are all newly cleaned and polished, but still without ink. Filling the pens and trying them out is something I will do over the next couple of days.

The ten I have chosen to showcase here are as follows, from left to right:

1. Lamy AL-Star with a fine nib

2. Montblanc Meisterstuck 146 / B nib

3. Montblanc Marcel Proust / M nib

4. Porsche P'3110 / M nib

5. Alfred Dunhill, model unknown / M nib

6. Visconti Voyager / B nib

7. Mabie Todd Swan Leverless / No. 4 Eternal nib

8. Louis Cartier, model unknown / M nib

9. Waterman Philéas / F nib

10. Visconti Van Gogh / M nib

I took photos of two pairs that I particularly like, though a writing test will come later. The first pair (second photo) is the Montblanc 146 and the Marcel Proust. I have a 146 of my own, but without the silver cap. The Marcel Proust is from the famous writers series and is very handsome.

The third photo shows the Swan Leverless, one I like because of its vintage look. It is paired with the Porsche P'3110, which has a very unusual barrel of woven gold and silver bands.

I will say more about these fountain pens after I’ve had a chance to try them out on paper with an assortment of inks. Stay tuned.