Ink Snippet: Sailor Jentle Four Seasons Kin-Mokusei

Starting this month, Sailor will be releasing an additional eight inks worldwide as part of its Four Seasons lineup. Just like with Rikyu-Cha, I couldn’t wait for Kin-Mokusei, so I bought a bottle from Japan this summer, and have been using it since.

I initially tried Sailor Kin-Mokusei in both a modern Parker Duofold with a medium stub and in a Sailor Professional Gear with fine nib. Flow and behavior were good with both pens, and dry time was unremarkable. But even though Kin-Mokusei is a Sailor ink, it makes a poor match for a Sailor fine nib. Kin-Mokusei is just too light, and too bright, to be legible from such a narrow nib on all papers.

Here is a writing sample on Rhodia, with the Sailor fine second.

That photo is limited to two dimensions, so it can’t adequately convey the glare transmitted under bright artificial light by Kin-Mokusei from the narrow line written by a Sailor fine nib on bright fountain-pen friendly papers like Rhodia or Clairefontaine. It’s not a good combination if you want to write words with your ultra-fine nib that you want people to be able to read.

But I adored Kin-Mokusei from the medium nib.

Kin-Mokusei’s brightness grabs attention, in a nice way, but what makes Kin-Mokusei so special is that the brightness is layered over a yellow base that makes the ink subtler than you’d imagine.

It’s luscious. The yellow tint that doesn’t tone down Kin-Mokusei, exactly, but it does bring a burnish and a subtlety. It saves the orange from reaching eye-searing levels of brightness. It looks natural.

The shading is beautiful but never garish.

Sheen fans will be able to do something with this, too.

In terms of behavior, Kin-Mokusei does feather some on poor copy paper, but I found it absolutely usable on Staples Sustainable Earth. In fact, the absorbency of Sustainable Earth made that just about the only paper that allowed me to comfortably read Kin-Mokusei from the Sailor fine nib.

Sailor Kin-Mokusei cleaned up very easily from both pens. It has practically no water resistance — none on Rhodia (which is true for many inks), but not so much even on absorbent regular paper. If you work poolside, use a different ink.

Here is paper towel chromatography. As was obvious from the writing samples, there is a lot of yellow in this orange ink.

For comparison inks, as one would expect, Kin-Mokusei is very close to the no-longer available Sailor Jentle Apricot. Here are the two inks together.

And here is chromatography, with Apricot on the left and Kin-Mokusei on the right.

Apricot and Kin-Mokusei are not identical, I don’t think, but they sure seem to use the same dyes in very similar combination. Nearly identical? Oh yes; they are close enough for me, and I would never need to own both. If you have been longing for Apricot, I heartily recommend you just wait for Kin-Mokusei. It’s cheaper, and you’ll get a newer, fresher ink. And more pop (aka, more of that pink dye that darkens it just a tad).

Here is a comparison of Kin-Mokusei with some other orange inks.

Kin-Mokusei is the brightest, but also the lightest. Most interesting to me as a comparison here is Caran d’Ache Electric Orange, which is actually a bright ink, too, but much less yellow. And of course, all these less-yellow orange inks are legible from a fine nib.

I’m not so upset that the yellow tint of Kin-Mokusei makes it a no-go for a very fine nib. Since it’s that yellow tint is also responsible for the lovely color In fact, Kin-Mokusei is so special in any not-narrow nib that it’s an orange ink I can’t pass up. And for me that’s a very short list.