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This article is a revised and greatly expanded version of Parts II-VII of a seven-part series that appeared from February 2019 to February 2020 in Pen World Magazine. Part I of the series was an introduction that discussed the earlier history of long/short pens.
In the early 1960s, a new type of fountain pen burst onto the market in Japan. Called “pocket pens,” these pens appeared in myriad trim variations under dozens of manufacturers’ names.
In the early 1960s, the space race and Hideo Shima’s radical new bullet train (right), perhaps leavened by the futuristic American automotive stylings of Harley Earl, spawned great changes in the Japanese aesthetic, and a new type of fountain pen burst onto the market. Called “pocket pens” (ポケットペン, pokettopen), these pens appeared in myriad trim variations under dozens of manufacturers’ names. Their unifying characteristic was an extraordinarily long gripping section mated with a very stubby barrel as shown below, a design concept explored before and since by a number of Western manufacturers. They were between 4" and 5" (~10.6 cm to 12.7 cm) long when capped, too short to be comfortable in most people’s hands when unposted — but the extended cap required by the long section produced a comfortable posted length reaching toward 6" (~15 cm) and, in some few cases, slightly exceeding that length. These pens were all designed with a friction-fitting cap using a clutch that bears on the gripping section like that in the Parker 61. The clutch also bears on the short barrel, making a firm and reliable assembly for use.
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| This 1970s Pilot advertisement featured the Elite S, Pilot’s first and best known pocket pen. |
Most pocket pens are very light in weight for extended writing. To throw the balance forward, a consideration that was vital given the virtual necessity of posting, the vast majority of styles featured caps made of anodized or enameled aluminum, with a few models fitted with plastic caps. Less expensive pens were made with clips similar to the typical Western clips of the day: stamped from relatively thin sheet steel, formed usually into a U-shaped channel, polished, plated, and secured to the cap by tabs fitted into slots on the cap body and bent over inside. In most cases, better pens were fitted with clips stamped cookie-cutter fashion out of thick sheet steel and then sanded or tumbled to remove burrs before final shaping, polishing, and plating. Because these more solid clips would be too stiff to lift from the cap surface if permanently secured, they are invariably spring loaded.
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In almost a separate class are pocket pens with bodies made of premium materials such as wood, stainless steel, or sterling silver. These pens are inevitably heavier than their aluminum or plastic cousins.
In this article, I shall touch first on the “Big Three,” Sailor, Platinum, and Pilot, in that order, and follow them with the “rest of the pack,” ordered alphabetically. Following the brand-specific sections, the discussion will turn to various features that were, in general, common to many brands (e.g., pens decorated with botanical or similar designs).
Little hard information about the history of Japanese pocket pens is available; even the extant manufacturers themselves have not retained the older documents necessary to assemble anything resembling a complete history. The earliest known modern pocket pen was produced by Sailor and advertised as the “Sailor Mini.” Shown here in its original retail packaging is a third-generation Mini from the mid-1960s.
Most sources, including the Sailor Pen Company itself, cite 1963 as the year in which the Sailor Mini appeared. The first-generation Sailor Mini pen shown below bears a date code reading D.G, indicating that it was made in July 1963. The hot-stamped anchor logo on this pen’s barrel is also somewhat unusual; that decoration soon disappeared from Sailor’s production.
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Platinum’s first pocket pens came to market in 1963, with Pilot joining the fray a year later, in 1964. In most cases, the times of entry of minor companies, the “rest of the pack,” are not documented and are unknown.
In the Japanese language, every syllable is an “open” syllable, ending in a vowel sound; the only oddity is the sound of the letter N, which by itself is considered an open syllable.
Also, the sound of the letter L does not appear in Japanese.
Not generally known as a highly innovative company, the Sailor Pen Company made some interesting choices in its first-model pocket pens. The internal design was remarkably original: the nib is inlaid into a small, somewhat ring-shaped nib carrier by being placed into a mold cavity, with the carrier then injection molded around it to create an inseparable assembly. The nib/carrier assembly surrounds the feed, which resembles the feed in a Parker 45 and is inserted through the carrier from the front. The comb portion of the ink path is a separate part that slides onto the feed from the back end, and the whole assembly is then inserted into the shell from the back and secured by a plastic nut that holds a rubber seal and also carries the piercing tube for the ink cartridge. This design, so far as I know, appears on no other pocket-pen models.
Another interesting departure from traditional styling can be seen in the clip used on the original Sailor Mini. In the capped photo of the pen below, the clip can be seen to be a strip of spring metal folded back upon itself rather than the usual solid-appearing clip (most of which were spring mounted). This design is a variation on a 1920s invention (U.S. Patent No 1,629,835) used by the Chas. H. Ingersoll Dollar Pen Company in the United States.
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In the latter half of 1964, a new inlaid-nib design appeared, with the nib transferred to the shell to eliminate the separate nib carrier, creating a design that was mechanically identical to that of Sheaffer’s PFM. The pens shown below were made in September 1964 (upper) and October 1965 (lower). Sailor Minis of this period could also be had with a cap with a plastic crown, illustrated by the upper pen below. This cap was a feature of a line priced lower than the pen with the all-metal cap.
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The pen shown below bears no date codes, but its cap style argues for a date roughly the same as that for the pens shown previously. This pen is an anomaly, with a section that is half metal and comes apart at the joint between metal and plastic. Unlike the inlaid nibs on other early Sailor Mini models, this pen’s 14K nib is loose, held in place only by the shapes of the feed and the section’s interior. The nib and feed are installed from the back of the front half of the section, whose metal outer shell is glued onto the exterior of a plastic part with the necessary threading and interior shape. The feed itself comprises four separate parts: a front portion with top and bottom halves, and a rear portion with top and bottom halves held together by an elastomer collar that also forms the seal at the mid-section joint. The rear section part screws into the back of the front part, compressing the collar to make a seal and secure the nib and feed in place. The rear section part also carries the cartridge piercing tube, into which the rear half of the feed fits.Could this pen have been a prototype for a model that did not pan out?
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The next pen makes everything clear. Around its cap lip, flanking the Japanese flag, is the text TOKYO 1964, and on the back is the Olympic torch. The pen was made in August 1963, for sale at the next year’s Olympic games in Tokyo.
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Sailor soon eliminated the Ingersoll-style clip in favor of a more traditional design. The second-generation inlaid nib gave way to the style shown below, which appears to be a typical semi-hooded nib secured to a one-piece feed by folded-under tabs inherited from the Chilton Wing-flow of the 1930s. Nibs of this latter style, however, continued to be inlaid into the plastic of the shell at least until 1967; but shortly thereafter the design evolved into the tab-secured style, which was and still is much more economical to manufacture. The middle pen below, made in Taiwan in January 1975, has the tab-secured nib and also shows an interesting decoration on its cap, in the form of a stylized peacock. The bottom pen, whose model number was 15-085, has a plated metal surface that is “chased” with lightly roll-engraved lines resembling the serrations on a bread knife’s blade. This decorative treatment also appears elsewhere in the pantheon of Japanese pocket pens, implying but not proving a common manufacturer of at least the caps and barrels of the relevant pens.
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The next two pens, dressed all in black, were made by Sailor — but the all-black treatment seems to have been very popular for a time, and similar black pens appeared in the stables of all three major manufacturers and an unknown number of lesser firms. The upper pen is fitted with an 18K nib, while the lower one has a 21K white gold nib. It is not clear what the Blackletter-styled letter Y on the lower pen’s cap signified, but the presence of a corresponding Y sticker on the cap suggests that it was might have been something more than a standard design applied to all examples of that model.
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Sailor might have been considering a new logo at some point around 1969; the pen shown below, yet another all-black specimen, was made in July 1969 and appears to show a stylized letter S lying on its side immediately above the Sailor name.
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To broaden the appeal of its pens, Sailor looked at the possibilities in using marbled enameling on metal caps and barrels, a technique that both Parker and Sheaffer were using with great success at roughly the same time. One of the most attractive outcomes of this styling decision was the pen shown here:
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In most of modern Asia, sex is a topic that is considered obscene. During the Edo period (CE 1603–1868), however, art that boldly celebrated the pleasures of love and sex, called shunga, was widely distributed, mostly as woodcut prints, and was part of the mainstream culture in Japan. A very few modern pen manufacturers such as Visconti have produced lavish limited-edition shunga pens, and at least one of Japan’s Big Three produced a very mild example of the genre on a standard pocket pen during the Shōwa era. The pen shown below was made by Sailor in August of 1971. The markings all around the cap are very small-scale stick-figure illustrations of sexual positions.
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The Platinum Pen Company’s corporate history names the Platinum “Poket” series, launched in late 1963, as the company’s entry into the pocket pen market. Shown below are pens resembling pictures on Platinum’s website of the Poket PK-2000 (upper, 18K gold nib, also shown earlier) and PK-1000 (lower, 14K gold nib), which were priced at ¥2,000 and ¥1,000, respectively. These pens illustrate the nib style most commonly found on high-quality pocket pens, with a semi-hooded nib secured to the feed by Wing-flow style tabs.
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The lower of the two pens shown above was made in January 1968. Engraving on the underside of the gripping section identifies it as a souvenir of an annual conference promoting the National Mutual Insurance Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives:
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A distinguishing feature of Platinum’s design was a squared-off back end to the barrel, resembling the end of the contemporaneous Sheaffer PFM and Imperial models. On pens with metal barrels, as illustrated below, the end is indented in the form of a shallow pyramid. On plastic barrels, the end is flat.
The squared-off end, as typical as it was on Platinum pocket pens, is unfortunately not diagnostic. Some models were made with rounded barrels as shown by the silver and gold metalized ¥4,000 pens here, which are fitted with 14K white and yellow gold nibs, respectively, and the more modest black pen, whose nib trim ring shows quite dramatically the corrosive effects of ink on plated metal parts:
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Another round-ended Platinum design was this rhodium-plated pen with grouped parallel engraved lines, fitted with an 18K nib. Instead of the traditional flat barrel end and Platinum’s usual sloped cap crown or a flat cap end, this pen had a gold-plated domed tassie on the barrel and a matching tassie at the cap crown:
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David Rzeszotarski, a knowledgeable collector of Japanese pens, has speculated that Platinum’s success with pocket pens and with the variety of decorative treatments it applied to writing instruments during the 1960s and 1970s (of which I shall have more to say later), along with its early adoption of cartridges, fueled the company’s ascent from a relatively insignificant position in the second tier to its Big Three status today.
Manufacturers can also broaden their offerings by producing a range of nib grades, from fine to broad or with shapes such as a stub or a music nib. Because of the pervasive need for fine and very fine nibs for writing kanji characters, Japanese pocket pens with broad or shaped nibs are uncommon. The first-generation Pilot Elite S shown later in this article has a broad nib. Another example is this Platinum pen with a three-tined 18K music nib that is properly flexible with good flow. Note also the zogan inlaid trim just above the nib.
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One of Platinum’s most attractively simple pocket pen designs featured nothing more than a little gold plating and the company name. The brilliant metallic red color of these pens puts one in mind of rubies, and the perceived value of rubies might have been the factor that set the price of this pen at ¥5,000. This pen might have been paired in a set with a ballpoint; that pen is shown later in this article.
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In the eternal quest for something beautiful and different, Platinum came up with the finish on the pen shown below. At first glance it appears to be urushi with a sprinkling of gold flakes, but it is merely a spattered application of a colored lacquer over a gold-plated metal base. This finish also appeared in red; but the red lacquer wore away quite rapidly under ordinary handling, and pens in the red are difficult to find in good condition.
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A step past “beautiful” is “beautiful and luxurious.” The pens shown below wear that description quite elegantly, the first two with striking metal caps and the third and fourth in more restrained ways.
The body of the first pen appears to be paktong, in an engraved pattern identical to, but cut more deeply than, the Écossais pattern that appeared on the Parker 75 in 1971. This pen, which rather surprisingly has a steel nib, was made in 1978.
The second pen is genuinely luxurious, as it is made of 950 silver (richer than sterling silver, which is 925). This pen, made in 1972, is fitted with a nib made of platinum alloy.
The third pen was made in 1973. Although its section and barrel are longitudinally grooved with pairs of lines separated by a wider space, it seems otherwise relatively ordinary; but the 18K nib is fitted with a solid 18K trim ring matching the diameter of the somewhat angular shell, lending a strong, masculine appearance and also avoiding the problem of corrosion that plagues so many pens with plated-metal trim rings adjacent to the nib. The 18K trim ring, so far as is known, is unique to this Platinum model.
The final pen in this group has a 14K nib and a plated trim ring; with tassies at both ends and a clip featuring inlays of black resin, it is quietly elegant.
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From time to time, one manufacturer’s distinctive functional features appear in copy form on another manufacturer’s pens. Perhaps the best known pen with a nib that is essentially symmetrical top to bottom and is designed to write either normally or “flipped” (rotated so that its top surface becomes the underside and the nib writes much finer) is the Parker 180. Both Pilot and Platinum, however, had produced their own two-sided pens some years before Parker’s version hit the scene. These pens might actually have been the inspiration for Parker’s 1977 entry into the two-sided market. Shown here is a Platinum PKW-5000 pocket pen from 1977, a long/short version of the company’s brushed stainless steel full-length model called the Two Way. The middle photo shows the pen from the side, exposing its flattened nib and the feed beneath it. The nib reinforcing bar on the top, which encloses a functional feed on the nib’s upper surface, is metal.
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In most industries, engineers have a maxim: “Anything you can do, I can do cheaper." In the case of the PKW-5000, Platinum’s own engineers followed that rule to produce the lower-cost model shown below. This model’s steel nib has a narrow rib formed downward along each side edge for strength, and its top-side feed is plastic like that on the underside. When this pen is capped, it looks like a typical Platinum model with the squared-off barrel and sloped cap crown. This nib configuration also appears later in this article, on certain lesser-tier pens.
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The appreciation of all aspects of nature, including animals, trees, plants and flowers, and even interesting stones, has long been part of the Japanese aesthetic. Japanese pen makers have embraced this concept by producing pens made of wood, and pocket pens were among the models to receive that treatment. Shown here is a 1972 Platinum pocket pen made of cherry wood. Somewhat surprisingly, its nib is only 14K gold. As with other exotic materials, wooden pens like this commanded a premium in price and are more difficult to find today.
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Many organizations around the world have mascots, but the Japanese are the world’s mascot champions. Mascots in Japan promote regions, places, organizations, businesses, events, and more. Osaka alone has more than 40 mascots representing the prefecture. Mascots are often whimsical, and they range from cute to creepy, wild to wacky. The two pens shown here were both made by Platinum. The stylized cartoon crab on the first pen fits all of these categories, and it appears to have been a snack food company’s mascot. I have not identified the source of the dragonfly on the second pen. (These pens were once all white; they have a protective lacquer coating on the exterior that has yellowed with age.)
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| Pens lent by David Rzeszotarski | ||
If you are manufacturing a product, you need to sell it. The first pen shown below, colored in aqua and fitted with an attractive bifurcated clip and a steel nib, was a regular Platinum model. The second pen, a similar model but much less common because of the small Platinum logo plaque attached to the clip, was made probably as a salesman’s sample that could be left with a dealer for examination, testing, and display for prospective buyers.
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As did many other manufacturers, Platinum made pens under both sub-brands and house brands. Perhaps the best known of Platinum’s house-branded pocket pens were those branded “Athena,” and one of its sub-brands was President. Both of these brands will be discussed later in this article.
The third member of Japan’s Big Three writing instrument companies, along with Sailor and Platinum, was the Pilot Pen Company (now officially named the Pilot Corporation). Not to be left behind, Pilot joined the pocket-pen revolution in 1964 with the Elite S. The S distinguished the new “Short” pens from the existing range of full-length Elite models of varying designs, as illustrated here by a top-line gold-plated full-length Custom Elite (first pen). Pilot offered pocket pens in a wide variety of different finishes, probably starting with the black plastic barrel and black enameled aluminum cap shown here on first- (second pen) and second-generation (third pen) models. The second generation appeared in 1972 or 1973; the example shown here appears to have been a special model produced for sale as a souvenir aboard ships of Princess Cruise Lines; the reason it bears an imprint with the name CORAL PRINCESS, a ship that was launched in 2003, is not clear. The first-generation pen shown here is fitted with a 14K nib; the second-generation model has an 18K nib.
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The nib in the second-generation pen above is installed in an elegant and rather unusual way: the feed is entirely concealed within the end of the shell, and the nib is held in place by pressure between the feed and the top of the shell. The capillary element that brings ink from the buried feed to the nib is a small piece of open-cell foamed plastic. This design is referred to as a fingernail nib.
All Pilot nibs showing a crescent-shaped hole near the base are fitted in this aesthetically pleasing manner, which has the practical advantage of protecting the user’s hands from contact with the inky feed. Pens of this design, however, are prone to cracking of the shell around the base of the nib. This problem is less common with pocket pens than with earlier Super and full-length Elite models.
At the same time that the second-generation Elite S came out, Pilot also produced the model shown below in black and burgundy, a noticeable upgrade at ¥5,000, with a gold-plated bezel around the 18K nib.
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To attract women, Pilot created a range of pens called Lady, made in feminine colors and fitted with a trimly streamlined clip. The two Lady pens shown here provide a good example of how the “feminizing” was done. The upper pen has a rose-red plastic barrel and a satin-anodized aluminum cap that is tinted ever so slightly pink, with a subtle botanical decoration in the form of a bright polished design against the satin surface of the cap. The lower pen is tinted blue, with the same decoration on its cap, chrome-plated furniture instead of the usual gold plating, and a metal barrel to complete a unified color theme. As illustrated later in this article, other Lady models wore painted decoration to compete with similarly treated models from Platinum and Sailor.
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Among the Pilot models that are less common today was the Laureate, a plastic-capped pen with the streamlined Lady clip, identified by the single script letter L on the cap. Like the Elite before it, the Laureate appeared in both pocket-pen and full-length models. The full-length Laureate featured an open nib with a gold-plated trim bezel, while pocket-pen Laureates had fingernail nibs. Pilot has since offered other pens named Laureate (meaning “worthy of the greatest honor”), notably a slender brushed stainless steel full-length model that was offered in multiple writing modes; but the fountain pen, in both full-length and pocket-pen versions, appears to have been the first use of the name. Shown here with a full-length Laureate are white, burgundy, green, and blue Laureate pocket pens.
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Pilot offered a range of pocket pen models named “Short.” These pens had a more traditional configuration, with a somewhat shorter cap and a barrel made partially of metal that matched the cap to give the illusion of a very long cap without the latter’s actually subsuming the entire length of the barrel. Shown here is the lowest-priced Short pen, which sold for ¥1,000 and is today somewhat uncommon.
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Other Short models turned out not to have been so strictly traditional after all. The pen shown below, a higher-priced Short model, is an innovative pen recalling telescoping pens of the early 20th century. Uncapping the pen also pulls the shell out from the barrel, extending the pen " (15 mm) to make it longer than it would otherwise be (middle view, shown not extended), for better balance when writing.
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Like Platinum, Pilot made house-brand pens. Shown here are two pens branded gakken/pilot. Gakken Co., Ltd, is a well-known Tokyo-based publishing house. Like many other house-brand pens, these pens are fitted with steel nibs.
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The art of merchandising popular products and creations took hold in Japan just as it had done elsewhere in the world. Pilot teamed up with other companies to produce pocket-pen sets with such subjects as Tom Wilson’s absurdly philosophical cartoon character Ziggy, the late 1970s smash-hit pop singing duo Pink Lady (ピンクレディー, Pinkuredī), and singer/actress Junko Sakurada. Shown here are a 1976 Gakken Ziggy pen set containing a vinyl “passbook” case and bookmark, a pad with Ziggy art and pages for memos, a calendar, and a pocket pen with one cartridge; and a 1978 Pink Lady pen with two cartridges:
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Both of these pens have steel nibs. The Ziggy pen is identical to the silver-colored pen shown immediately above, including the gakken/pilot imprint at the cap lip. The Pink Lady pen is identical to the gold-colored pen above except that the distinctive Pink Lady logo, which includes “Mie and Kei,” the nicknames of singers Mitsuyo Nemoto and Keiko Masuda, is silkscreened on the cap, replacing the gakken/pilot imprint:
A lower-priced version of the Pink Lady pen lacked the Pink Lady logo on the cap and came in a box that was similarly decorated but smaller.
The merchandising game extended to pens specifically targeted at the school-age crowd and pop-culture fans. Here are five Pilot LE 02 pens, made in 1970 and based on the theme of Mach 5, the unique and unbeatable race car used by the popular manga/anime character Speed Racer (マッハ GoGoGo, Mach GoGoGo, in Japan). The steel-reinforced plastic clip marks the pen as a lower-priced model, but the clip is plenty sturdy and would stand up well to school use. Pilot produced the Mach 5 pen with barrels, clips, and cap decoration in at least the five colors shown below, and fitted it with a high-quality 14K nib more typical of higher-end models.
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In 1964, the Parker Pen Company introduced a new pen with its cap and barrel made of finely crosshatched sterling silver. The Parker 75 Sterling Ciselé was an immediate hit and soon supplanted the earlier Parker “51” in the company’s advertising as “the world’s most wanted pen.” As shown by the sterling silver Pilot pocket pen below, made in 1977 and fitted with an 18K white gold nib, the elegant sterling Parker pen did not go unnoticed by the competition. The pen shown here is hot-stamped JAT on the shell, suggesting that it was originally purchased by Japan Airport Terminal Company, Ltd, to celebrate the May 1978 opening of duty-free and other merchandise sales, hotel reservation services, and other operations at the newly opened Narita International Airport.
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Perhaps the most sought-after of Pilot’s pocket pens today is the elegant MYU (ミユー, pronounced myuu, where uu sounds as in rude). Possibly named after the Greek letter mu (µ), it was announced on April 1, 1971, as the MYU 701, model number M-350SS (shown below, upper) at a price of ¥3,500. Pilot might have taken the design cue for the MYU’s integral nib (U.S. Patent No 4,269,528) from the titanium Parker T-1 of 1970. The T-1 was unreliable and incredibly costly (and consequently short-lived); but the MYU’s design included adaptations that made it realistic to manufacture and sell in quantity. Like Parker’s Flighter models and various of Pilot’s own Elite models, the MYU was brushed stainless steel rather than titanium, and it lacked the gimmicky user-adjustable flow feature of the T-1. MYU pens were initially equipped with urushi-covered feeds, but these were soon replaced with plastic feeds that have proven to be more reliable. The MYU 701 wore the plain stainless steel finish shown below. The ¥5,000 MYU 500BS (Black Striped), wearing etched grooves filled with black enamel (below, lower), appeared in 1973, and there was also a “white” striped version (grooved like the 500BS, but with the grooves unpainted), which is quite difficult to find and commensurately costly.
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When it was new, the MYU sold relatively poorly in Japan, and today it is not impossible to find stickered examples still in the original cellophane. The MYU 701, at least, remained in production until 1980, and it was rebooted in October 2008, however, in a limited edition of 9,000 pens, named the M90 (written ミユー90, Mu 90) to celebrate Pilot’s 90th year in business.
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The M90 was made slightly fatter than the MYU so that it could accept a CON-50 piston converter, and it was fitted with an improved (albeit somewhat less aesthetically pleasing) cap clutch. Its stylistic changes included a longer, more streamlined clip, a subtle script M90 on the right side of the clip shoulder, and replacement of the flat matte-black cap-crown decoration with a blue spinel cabochon:
The MYU’s lack of success did not dissuade Pilot from offering stainless steel pens. In addition to a full-length integral-nib pen called the Murex, which was introduced in 1977, there followed several stainless pocket pens of less exotic construction, including the Volex…
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...and a series of crosshatched models identical among themselves except for being fitted with different nibs:
With an open steel nib set off by a metal trim ring, as on the Volex:
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With a large rhodium-plated 18K gold nib in the common semi-hooded style found on many pocket pens:
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With an inset rhodium-plated 14K gold nib in the same style as the nib on the sterling pen shown earlier:
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There was also a version of at least the second of these crosshatched pens that was fitted with a plastic barrel instead of the stainless steel barrel shown here.
Neither Platinum nor Sailor followed Pilot’s lead with the MYU and its patented integral nib, for which — given its less-than-spectacular success — they were probably grateful. Sailor did, however, produce a brushed all-stainless pen (below). Sailor’s initial design, as shown by the first pen here, was unusual, with a white gold open nib fitted to a stainless steel section whose profile matches that of the pen’s barrel. The second pen here, a Sailor WG, reflects the pinnacle of Sailor’s all-stainless pocket-pen designs, with a section whose profile matches that of the cap and a black striped pattern that might have been intended to take on Pilot’s MYU 500BS.
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Sailor also came out with a range of more conventional pens (below), still with stainless steel caps but fitted with plastic sections. The top pen below carried a ¥3,000 price tag. The two lower pens, with plastic barrels, 14K yellow gold nibs, and no zogan, were priced lower, at ¥2,000. These two pens form an interesting contrast: the blue one’s furniture, except for the clip, is chrome plated (“reverse trim”).
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In 1976, Sailor produced one of the most visually exciting pocket pens of all, shown below. Fitted with an 18K white gold nib, the pen is covered with an artistic mixture of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and meaningless hieroglyph-like symbols. The design was etched deeply into the stainless steel and painted flat black, giving it a remarkable visual and tactile impact. It might seem odd that this limited-production Egyptian-inspired pen was given the Greek name “Olympia,” but it was almost certainly named for the pen shop that commissioned it. The Olympia pen, originally priced at ¥5,000, is today quite rare and carries a correspondingly high price. The pen shown here was made in July 1976.
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A sad footnote to the Olympia’s story is that this was the last Sailor model to be etched and painted as described in the preceding paragraph. The etching technique that was used involved highly toxic chemicals and posed a danger to the workers’ lives, and it was banned by the Japanese government shortly after the Olympia pens were made.
Platinum went a more conventional way as well, producing a variety of stainless models but not one with a stainless section. The third pen shown here added cross-lines to the pattern on the pen immediately above it to create a stainless pen that closely mimicked the crosshatching on the three stainless Pilot pens shown earlier. The two bottom Platinum pens below, the BelAge model in blue and red (with matching 0.5 mm repeating pencils), are like the first pen (a Platinum 600) except for their lack of a zogan and their strikingly modern decoration consisting of a stylized sunburst. With a price of ¥5,000, they were at or very near the top of the price range.The BelAge pencil sold for ¥2,500, a price higher than many pocket fountain pens, including Platinum’s own PK-2000 from 1963.
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While many lower-line pocket pens were fitted with steel nibs, the preference among the more well-heeled buying public was for gold, and the more of it the better. The first Japanese pocket pen with a nib richer than 14K was Platinum’s PK-2000, introduced in 1963. It took a while before anyone contested the “karat crown,” but it finally happened in 1969 when Sailor brought out pens with 21K nibs. From then until 1974, the Big Three engaged in a “Karat War,” generally known in Asia as the “K Golden Point War,” to offer nibs with more gold than the competition. 21K nibs, now a common feature of Sailor’s upper ranges, were only the first salvo in the war. Raising the ante, Platinum began offering 22K nibs in 1970, at which point Pilot hitched its wagon to the same star. Shown here are (top) a Pilot Elite S-22 model marked Elite 22 on the cap and 22K on the nib and the barrel), and Platinum PK-22-3000 and PK-22-5000 models with 22K nibs and bifurcated clips like that on two models shown earlier. These pens were priced at ¥3,000, ¥3,000, and ¥5,000, respectively:
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The Platinum PK-22-5000, fitted with a larger nib than its lesser sibling, also featured a square cap crown that was pyramidally recessed to match the pen’s barrel end (as illustrated on a barrel earlier in this article), and the cap was made of extra-thick aluminum to give the pen a richer, more substantial feeling in the hand without being impracticably heavy.
Pilot beat a strategic retreat at 22K, leaving Platinum and Sailor to battle it out — which they did by producing 23K nibs, with Platinum’s hitting the market in 1970 and Sailor’s following in 1971. Shown here are Platinum and Sailor 23K models. Platinum trumpeted 23K in the cap imprint and also in an uncolored hot-stamp imprint on the barrel of the PK-23-3000. Sailor, not so blatant, made its version using features that might be expected of a higher-line model: a stylish wide flat clip, an unusually wide girth, and at 0.63 oz (17.8 g) significantly greater weight than most other pocket pens, which weigh from 0.35 to 0.53 oz (10 to 15 g). This model appears somewhat prone to stress cracking of its plastic cap. Platinum’s 23K pocket pens are scarce and are much more difficult to find than Sailor’s.
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Several other manufacturers entered the Karat War along the way; but after 1974, the war seems to have ended in a truce as everyone but Sailor backed off from anything richer than 18K while Sailor lodged itself at 21K. Then, in 1996, long after the popularity of pocket pens had faded, Sailor secured a final, incontestable, victory in the Karat War by offering a slender full-length pen (an existing model called the Gracile, shown below) with a 24K nib (below the pen). This nib was not actually pure gold; it was about 23.98K (999). While it was thick enough to be usably stiff, it was so soft that a fingernail could scratch it. The pen did not sell well, and it was soon withdrawn. Today, examples of the Gracile with a 24K nib are scarce, and they command very high prices.
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Before World War II, there were hundreds of small pen manufacturers in Japan, many housed in frame-built factories not much larger than a modern three-car garage. Many of them went out of business when their facilities were destroyed during the war, and more failed in the postwar economic collapse. Those that remained produced pens at all quality levels, from the infamous cheap throwaway level to fine writing instruments of very high quality. It would be impossible for me to list and illustrate them all, but I believe that the variety of pens and makers that follows will well serve to introduce you to the fascination of these largely ignored pens.
Athena is a house brand of the famous Maruzen bookstore in Tokyo, known for its wide-ranging collection of English-language books, newspapers, magazines, calendars, textbooks, and much more. Athena pocket pens made by Platinum for Maruzen had steel nibs. As shown here, they featured Platinum’s characteristic square-ended barrel mated with very pale champagne-anodized caps having a plastic cap crown that matched the pen’s body color.
Then, as now, some manufacturers bought nibs from firms that specialized in them. The nib in this pen bears a JIS number indicating that it was produced by Ishikawa-Kinpen Seisakusho, a pen manufacturer that also jobbed nibs to other manufacturers.
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I have found no information on the maker of Camy pens. The pen shown here is of high quality and bears cap-lip trim that is superficially similar to the trim on Pilot Elite S pens. The logo, imprinted as part of the cap-lip trim, is the text C.M within an ellipse. The pen’s construction is somewhat typical of that found in pens by the Big Three: a nib and feed that appear to be installed from the rear of the shell—but without the usual internal nut securing them—and a cookie cutter-style sprung clip. The steel nib is imprinted with the C.M logo and a six-digit number (which looks like a patent number), while the barrel is hot-stamped with the name CAMY and a different six-digit number.
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Center pocket pens came from the Center Fountain Pen Company, Ltd, located in Osaka. Apparently founded in 1946, the company is still in business today, selling low-priced pens, pencils, and other pocket accessories. Known mostly for the lower tier pens it produced in the 1950s, Center nevertheless put out some very respectable pocket pens. The upper pen here is a typical example of Center’s lower line; this pen was priced at ¥1,000. It featured a 14K nib and a zogan inlay above the nib. The lower pen here here is a more up-line model; the cap design trumpets the fact that it has an 18K nib. Like many other brands, Center pens were built to use Platinum cartridges and converters, but there was a major difference between this higher-line Center pen and most or all of its kin: this pen, as stubby as it is, can accept a full-length Platinum piston converter.
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No pen manufacturer is known to have offered a line of pens named Continental-G. These writing instruments were almost certainly a house brand, probably for a luxury retailer. The set shown below was sold in a costly for the time, velvet-covered, satin-lined metal clamshell box, and on the satin were the words “German Style.” The bodies are machined brass, plated with 14K gold. The fountain pen’s nib is also 14K. As with many other private-order products, there were no marks on the box or either pen to identify the manufacturer, but disassembly of the fountain pen identified that pen, at least, as having been made by Sailor.
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The Engel pen shown below has a gold-plated steel nib bearing the Engel logo and the number 850. Given this pen’s exact resemblance to a Platinum pen, with the characteristic square barrel end and slashed cap crown, Engel might appear to have been a Platinum sub-brand — but a look inside tells a different story.
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Platinum pocket pens are held together by an internal nut that screws into the shell near its middle to secure the nib and feed, with the tail of the feed extending through the nut to connect with the cartridge or converter. For the center joint, there is a separate threaded connector that also secures the trim ring. In this Engel pen, however, the nut and the center-joint connector are a single plastic part, deeply cup shaped and with a hole in the center of its base for the tail of the feed, which extends almost to the center joint. Attached to the base of the cup, where it butts against the feed, is a metal grommet that connects to the cartridge or converter.
The Engel brand almost certainly belonged to another company that either jobbed some of its parts from Platinum or did an excellent job of counterfeiting.
The Ferme Fountain Pen Company, Ltd, whose name was drawn from the French word ferme, meaning firm or solid, was founded in 1928. A small Tokyo-based company, it produced both full-length and pocket pens of good quality at reasonable prices, and it remained in business until about 1985, when financial difficulties forced it to cease operation. The company was allied with Ishikawa-Kinpen Seisakusho (Ishikawa Gold-Pen Manufacturer), which was founded by Seisaku Ishikawa. The company’s logo (the letter W in a circle) appears on some pens at the clip shoulder and on others on the cap band. The three pens here, the upper two with steel nibs and the third with an 18K nib and a diagonally milled band, are typical of Ferme production. At some point, the company lost the word “Fountain” from its name; the top pen’s cap imprint reads FERME Ⓦ PEN.CO, with a dot between PEN and CO as shown here.
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According to the Japanese-language book 万年筆の友達 (Fountain Pen Friend), by Kōichi Furuyama, Ferme bought nibs from Montblanc, although when, and which models received Montblanc-made nibs, is not made clear. The pen shown below, with its logo on the band, has a nib that looks remarkably like some Montblanc nibs of the 1960s, which would lend credence to Furuyama’s statement — but the nib bears a JIS number identifying Ishikawa as the maker. (Some Parley-branded pens have similar nibs, also made by Ishikawa.) Ferme also made sign (felt- or fiber-tipped) pens, of which an example is illustrated later in this article.
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Because no pen manufacturer named Gem is known, I think that Gem might have been a house brand. I can find no information on Gem fountain pens in Japan. This pen does have a clip like no other I have seen, and the small zogan above the gem-imprinted 14K nib is an indication that it was not a cheap throwaway. As a relatively uncommon design touch, the back half of the barrel is faceted, or “sided,” with six sides, and the end of the barrel is a flat hexagon.
The nib in this pen bears a JIS number indicating that it was produced by Kabutogi Seisakusho Tabata, operated by Ginjiro Kabutogi. This company’s name is also associated with Seilon pens.
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The nib in this pen bears a JIS number indicating that it was produced by Kabutogi Seisakusho Tabata, operated by Ginjiro Kabutogi. This company’s name is also associated with Seilon pens.
The next Gem pen also features the zogan, the sided barrel, and the shape of the clip, but in this case the clip is made like that of the Pilot Mach 5: injection-molded plastic with a spring steel core. The barrel of this pen is hot-stamped with an elliptical logo containing the name TOKUGI Kamoto’s PEN.
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The IMS name on the two pens below implies a house brand. Until it closed in August 1921, there was in Fukuoka, Japan, a large cultural, social, and shopping complex called Tenjin IMS (天神 IMS, Heavenly Gods Inter Media Station). It was in a single high-rise building housing dozens upon dozens of shops along with cafés and galleries, and it was often thought of as a single huge department store. The gold-plated steel nibs, identical to the one on the lower-line Platinum pen shown earlier, are designed to write on either side. These flippable pens were apparently OEMed to IMS by Teikin, which in turn appears to have jobbed them from Platinum. The cap and barrel of the upper pen here are roll-engraved in the same manner as on the “chased” Sailor pen described earlier in this article.
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Beginning in the 1930s, Kumiai pens were produced by Yamagata K.H.R., which started with larger urushi-clad ebonite eyedropper-fillers, probably employing local rice farmers to produce and assemble parts under contract. (The word kumiai means “union” in Japanese.) Later offering primarily steel-nibbed celluloid models, Kumiai also produced some pens in cast acrylic and sold a range fitted with excellent gold nibs. The company’s pocket pens are among the most beautifully styled of all, and they featured very good nibs. The first three pens shown here appear to share a common manufacturer with pens produced under the Parley brand, not to be confused with Sailor’s Parley model name, and also with Yotubisi pens.
The first pen shown here is fairly typical in overall appearance, but it is relatively early in Yamagata’s production of pocket pens; when it was made, the company did not yet have the resources to injection-mold its plastic parts. As can be seen in the attractive pearl-like color variation of the shell, the plastic parts of this pen were machined from cast acrylic. The nib is 18K. The second pen is a duplicate of the first, but with a more elaborate textured and plated body finish like that of the third pen, which iis fitted with an injection-molded plastic shell and is presumably a later model.
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Possibly made during the Karat War, the third pen has an unusually styled 21K nib. Instead of being rounded laterally to match the shape of the barrel, or flattened with its two side edges bent downward as many semi-hooded Japanese nibs are, this elegant nib is sided, with five facets:
The pens shown below stand near the peak of pocket-pen art, exemplifying the fine work that came from Kumiai. The first, finished in red urushi lacquer with raden work (inlaid bits of abalone shell) in a wave pattern, is highly uncommon. The second, while not so brilliantly flashy, is still elegant, with all-over usu-nashiji maki-e on black lacquer. This pen also features the same 21K nib that was used on the pen above. Unfortunately, the built-up lacquer on the barrel prevents the pen from posting all the way to the center joint; but it is a beautiful pen nonetheless. The third, although plain urushi, is still very attractive and likewise features the 21K nib.
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As well as high-end models, Kumiai also produced pens that were fitted with smaller, more ordinary, nibs and were aimed more at the general population; but — as illustrated here by a pen with a 14K nib — even those were designed and decorated attractively. As on the first Kumiai pen shown above, the starburst design on this pens’s cap is engraved, not stamped or painted, and the cut facets make the stars sparkle under bright light. With a posted length of 6" (15.44 cm), this is an unusually long pocket pen.
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Makoto pens were apparently made by a stationery company that is still in business offering pads with an accompanying pen, journals, and similar paper goods. The pens today are all ballpoints. During the 1970s, Makoto was also offering manga-themed pencils in packages with decoration designed by popular manga artists of the time.
The first pen shown here is mechanically ordinary, with its feed and steel nib inserted from the front, but its brushed stainless steel exterior and its deep cobalt blue transparent section set it apart from the crowd:
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The rest of the Makoto pens illustrated are of more than average interest by virtue of their construction: there is a second threaded joint in the middle of the shell, as illustrated in the middle view of the first pen. (Note also the squeeze converter that is installed in this pen.) With this almost invisible “extra” joint, the same nib section could be used in pocket pens, for which it was augmented by the back half of the shell and mated to a stubby barrel, and in full-length pens, for which it would be mated to just a full-length barrel. The lighter band of color in the second pen’s section reflects the fact that this pen was made of a semitransparent material; you can see the threads of the extra joint.
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Along with the first pen above, the two Makoto pens shown below illustrate a design feature that, among pocket pens, is apparently unique to Makoto: they have breather tubes. (The red pen above does not have a breather tube.) Coupled with the converters they were fitted with, the breather tubes suggest that these pens might have been intended to be considered as having a non-removable filling system.
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The nibs in all of the Makoto pens here except the second turquoise pen bear a JIS number indicating that they came from Honda Kinpen-Seisakusho, a nib factory operated by the Honda family. That pen has an unidentified 14K nib but is otherwise identical to the first turquoise pen above.
Tokyo’s Master Pen Company, Ltd, was a major second-tier manufacturer during the 1950s, with models ranging from mediocre to good (but not exceptional) in quality. At least one authority states that Master was acquired by Pilot in the early 1960s. The Master pen shown below has a semi-hooded 14K nib, but otherwise it is of mediocre quality. It is interesting, nonetheless, because it is one of the very few Japanese pocket pens I have encountered that bear patent numbers: in this case, Japanese Patent No 472,850. (I also own nearly a dozen other Master pens, all full size, none of which bears a patent number.)
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Master also did a little out-of-the-box designing in the creation of the very compact pocket pen shown below. Priced at ¥300, this inexpensive metal-bodied pen features what is essentially a bulb filler, a short squeezable sac with no sac guard. The cap has no clutch; instead, it relies for its security on three ridges protruding from the barrel adjacent to the center ring, which is itself merely a formed protrusion encircling the barrel. This clutchless design is typical of the cheap pocket pens being produced today, of which more later.
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Given the tremendous diversification of the Mitsubishi Corporation, it is not surprising to see the Mitsubishi name on a fountain pen. The Mitsubishi pocket pen shown here was not made by Mitsubishi, however; it came from a Sailor factory. Internally, it is identical to the first-generation Sailors illustrated in this article except for a plastic threaded barrel connector instead of the metal one on the Sailor models. Externally, it has the spring-loaded solid clip that became virtually standard relatively early in the evolution of the pocket pen. Its date code indicates that it was made two years after the first Sailor Mini pens hit the market.
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I have found no information on the maker of Mitukan writing instruments other than that it was apparently a stationery company and was in business during the Shōwa era (1926–1989), and that it made fountain pens and repeater pencils. The Mitukan pens shown below, priced at ¥300 (upper three) and ¥200 (bottom), have steel nibs and were made from cast acrylic — note the color streaks in the gray and green pens’ resin parts — rather than molded plastic. This fact suggests that they were made at a time when the company did not have, and perhaps could not afford, injection molding equipment. Note that the lower-priced pen does not post all the way down to the center joint; while this is a less aesthetically pleasing design, it does provide a longer posted length for this very short pen.
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Many Mitukan pens with gold-colored caps, like the upper three shown above, have the legend lain super fine gold imprinted at the cap lip. In this context, the word “lain” is a simple mistake in translation that was intended to mean plated.
Often considered a second-tier manufacturer, the Morison Fountain Pen Company, Ltd, was founded in 1918 by Torajirō Tanigawa as the Kikaku Fountain Pen Manufacturing Company, Ltd. In 1933 the company changed its name to the Morison Factory Company, Ltd, to capitalize on the Japanese people’s preference for pens with Western names.
During World War II, the company was an industry leader, producing pens at several quality levels and at one point in 1942 outselling Pilot, Platinum, Push, and Sailor. The later progress of the war saw Morison’s facilities converted to electronic parts production and subsequently destroyed. After the war, Morison rebuilt, changed its name to the Morison Fountain Pen Company, and produced both fountain and ballpoint pens, concentrating on the use of colorful celluloid to attract younger buyers. To reduce costs, fountain pen nibs were tipped with a patented hard alloy, called Moridosmin, that was probably similar to refined iridosmine.
By the 1960s, Morison was somewhat reduced, and in 1970 the Tanigawa family restarted the company; but it became a job shop in the late 1970s or early 1980s, producing pens and parts for companies such as the Kintetsu department store in Osaka. Ceasing operations in the early 1990s, it was revived again in 1999 by the Tanigawa family as the Morison Factory Company to produce plastic pen parts. Morison exists today only as a bar/café in which it sells other brands of pens.
One of Morison’s early pocket pen models, possibly the first, was called the Demi & Chic. Introduced in 1966, this pen did not post all the way down to the center joint like the pens from the Big Three. Its barrel had a step that allowed for slightly better streamlining when capped, and its cap featured body-colored trim above the usual satin aluminum part of the cap. The two Demi & Chic pens shown here, both fitted with 14K nibs, illustrate varying trim levels; the lower pen, with its gold-plated end caps, was at the upper end of this range.
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During the heyday of the pocket pen, from the mid-1960s to about 1980, Morison was there in spades with excellent pens ranging from beautiful pens like those shown below, able to compete head-to-head with the “big boys,” to simpler, more economical models like the two with aqua barrels further down.
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Fitted with a very small 14K nib that is mostly hooded, the next pen strikes the eye as a low-end model, yet its sculptured barrel trim ring suggests otherwise. This charming pen, such a slight departure from the usual Morison pattern, speaks to surprising little touches of artistry at Morison and, indeed, at other pocket pen manufacturers as well.
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Like the Big Three, Morison made house-brand pens — or did they? Shown below are two Morison pens with 14K nibs, identical in every respect except that the lower one is imprinted ThreeStar on the cap where the upper one’s imprint, in the same decorative typeface, reads Morison.
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There are two possibilities here:
Whatever the arrangement was that produced pens branded ThreeStar, it did not stop with relatively inexpensive (¥1,000) pens like the one shown above. The ThreeStar pens below are like the one above except for their metal caps and barrels. Both are a slightly heavier gauge of metal, implying a step up the model range. The upper pen is decorated with broad panels of parallel lines alternating with smooth and is rhodium plated, while the lower pen is polished with a discreet gold-plated center ring and carries a ¥3000 price tag. Both of these pens are fitted with 18K nibs.
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Makers of writing instruments have long packaged their wares as matched sets. Until the ascendancy of the ballpoint, such a set would contain a fountain pen and a mechanical pencil; when ballpoints came into wide use, sets grew from two to three instruments. Morison was certainly not the only maker of pocket pens to offer sets, but the company did produce some modern-looking and remarkably attractive ones. Shown here is a four-piece set, in which the fourth piece is a lead case for the pencil. The pencil is a repeater type, and the ballpoint pen is a button-type retractable.
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The nib in the above set’s fountain pen is 14K. For those who did not feel able to afford a gold nib, the same set (less the lead case) was also available with a steel-nibbed fountain pen:
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Navy was a brand used for second-tier pens produced by the Ohmi Yoko Company, Ltd, a manufacturer located in Minami, a ward in the city of Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. The company appears to have been in business from the late 1930s at least into the mid-1980s. Navy pens were generally fitted with steel nibs; but there exist a few with gold nibs. Navy nibs are characterized by an elegant anchor-shaped breather hole, and some extant pens, both full sized models and pocket pens like the one shown here, have remarkably attractive conical nibs that are cut away on the sides.
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| (Pen lent by David Rzeszotarski) | |
Parley was a brand used by an unknown company, but it is likely that at least some parley pens were manufactured by the same company that made at least some Kumiai pens and also Yotsubishi pens. The Parley pen shown here has a cap and a barrel that are identical to those on two of the Kumiai pens shown earlier in this article and on the Yotsubishi pen shown later, including the gold-plated clip and center ring but without the typical Kumiai red cap jewel. The major difference is in the design of the section, which is fitted with a full-sized open nib resembling the nibs on some Montblanc pens of the 1960 and 1970s, but — as with a Ferme pen illustrated earlier — the JIS number (3231) on the nib shows that it did not come from Montblanc, but was made by Ishikawa-Kinpen Seisakusho.
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See Pioneer.
The Pioneer Company, Ltd, was founded in 1945 and incorporated in 1972. Based in Tokyo, it no longer produces fountain pens but is currently a leading manufacturer of inexpensive mechanical pencils, ballpoint pens, and other stationery items. The pen shown here is fitted with a true inlaid (nonremovable) steel nib, once gold plated, that was made by Kawakami-Giken. The zogan trim above the nib is also steel, and it appears to be part of the nib itself.
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Ordinarily, the section (shell) of a pocket pen is quite long, with a short barrel. Pioneer took a different approach. Although they have the same form factor as ordinary pocket pens, Pioneer’s pocket pens were made differently. The joint between section and barrel, instead of being located at the center band, is at the inconspicuous metal ring roughly of the distance from the center band to the nib. This oddly placed joint allowed Pioneer to use the same nib section in pocket pens, for which it was mated to a shortish barrel that combined the back half of an elongated shell and a stubby “barrel” into a single part, and in full-length pens, for which it would be mated to a full-length barrel.
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Pioneer also sold identical pens under the Pendes brand. Shown here is a black Pendes pen.
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President was a sub-brand produced by Platinum, which has since subsumed the name into its model range. On the examples shown below, the name Platinum does not appear; but the shape of the barrel end and the presence of the S☆N globe above the President name on the cap (upper) or on the nib (lower) provide self-documenting origin information for these pens:
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After subsuming the President name into its main product line, Platinum produced the same pens under its own name. The green Platinum 200 below is identical to the green President 200 above except for the cap imprint, and the black Platinum 300 below (middle) is the same pen with a slightly larger nib and the addition of a zogan. The Platinum 600 (bottom) is another step up, almost identical to the 300 but with a platinum alloy nib and a wider trim ring at the center joint.
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The Oda Manufacturing Company of Tokyo, which was apparently in business from the latter 1940s into the 1970s or 1980s, produced pens under the Rieyōn brand name. Very little else is known about Oda or Rieyōn. Through the 1950s, the company’s pens were low-priced eyedropper-filling models featuring plastic bodies and caps and fitted with steel nibs.
Later, there was at least one completely clear squeeze-filling model machined from acrylic and decorated with a mixture of white dots and red dots suggesting the Hinomaru (日の丸, “circle of the sun,” the red circle on the Japanese flag). Pocket pens were fitted with the aluminum caps and steel nibs typical of lower-end Japanese pocket pens.
At some point, however, the pen shown below appeared on the market, machined from cast acrylic and fitted with a 14K nib made by Hatanaka Koseido.
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With its unusually shaped cap that features a spring-loaded clip, this pen’s styling bears a marked resemblance to that of women’s lipsticks, eye liners, and other beauty aids of the 1980s, and it is clearly a higher-line model. Its nib appears to be date coded for the 41st week, beginning Sunday, October 4, of 1981.
I have found no information on the manufacturer of this pen. I label the brand as Solar based on the SOLAR imprint on the pen’s gold-plated tipped steel nib. The imprint is steepled and broken across the two tines; see the drawing below the pen photos. The pen bears no other markings except a SUPER GOLD imprint at the cap lip. The nib installs from the front, as was typically done by lower-tier manufacturers. The formed-up clip is attached by bent-over tabs inside the cap rather than being spring loaded. This pen, whose barrel is aluminum like the cap, is of high quality except for the crudely stamped nib imprint.
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The Swan Fountain Pen Factory Company was founded by Nobuo Itō in 1900. Itō was not above a bit — or a lot — of deceptive advertising, and by 1912 his catalog carried numerous pens that were lookalikes for their “Swan” counterparts in the catalog of British pen manufacturer Mabie, Todd & Company, which took notice of the resemblance and objected to it. Some legal wrangling ensued, from which Itō emerged victorious because he had registered the Swan name before Mabie Todd began exporting pens to Japan. By 1918, Itō’s company had captured 60% of the Japanese market. During World War II, Swan’s factory was devastated, and after the war the company fell into a gradual decline and finally failed in the late 1970s. Toward the end of its life, Swan offered several models of pocket pens, imprinting and advertising them with the Swan logo that Itō had decades earlier “adopted” from Mabie Todd, which was by the 1970s defunct. The pens were definitely third-tier products, but at least some of them were made by Teikoku Kin-Pen, the manufacturer of Teikin pens, and they were surprisingly well made. The Swan pen shown here, a steel-nibbed model made by Teikoku Kin-Pen, is decorated a little more elegantly than many Swans, which were typically quite plain.
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One of the more unusual pocket pens was the PRESTAR (“Precision Star”) Techni Ace technical pen, a product of the Fuji-Z (pronounced Fuji Zet, or フジゼット, Fuji Zetto, in Japanese) Fountain Pen Company. Founded in 1949 by Syuichi Fujimoto, who was later joined by his son Hiroshi, Fuji-Z was approached in 1952 by Morison to develop a stylographic pen that did not infringe on the design of the Rotring Tintenkuli. Within about a year, the company released its first stylographic pen, called the “free pen,” under its own Japanese Patent No 423,660. Over the next few years, Fuji-Z stylographic pens became very popular in Japan. Full-length eyedropper-filling PRESTAR drawing pens appeared in cased sets of three (0.15 mm, 0.3 mm, and 0.5 mm), with a bottle of ink, and there were additional point sizes available as well.
In 1970, Fuji-Z introduced the PRESTAR Techni Ace at Expo 70, a world’s fair held in Suito, Osaka Prefecture. The Techni Ace was a radical departure from the usual eyedropper-filling technical pens. The overall appearance of the Techni Ace, however, suggests that Fuji-Z jobbed these pocket technical pens, or at least their bodies, from Pilot, whose then-current long cartridges fueled them. (They work just as well with the shorter modern Pilot cartridge or a CON-20 or CON-40 converter.) The length of the cartridge pushed the length of the pen to 5" (140 mm) when capped, out of the range usually associated with pocket pens. Together with a disk-shaped plastic wrench for swapping the interchangeable points to draw lines of different widths, the Techni Ace was packaged in a box bearing the PRESTAR brand name. The point in the pen is marked 0.2, and the loose point shown is marked 0.5. An explanation of how stylographic pens work can be found in Design Features: Stylographic Pens; the specific mechanism of the Techni Ace is the later version described in that article, and the point unit’s friction-fitted back end cap is colored for quick identification of the point size.
Fuji-Z ceased production in 1976 after a business dispute.
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Teikin pens were sold by Teikoku Kin-Pen Kaisha (Empire Gold Pen, Ltd), a small stationery company located in Tokyo. Founded in 1916, the company is still in business but no longer offers pens. It is not clear whether the company made any of its own pens or jobbed them all. Teikin fountain pens were designed initially for the promotional market as a result of orders from Tokyo’s Obunsha Publishing House for pens to offer as premiums to magazine subscribers. Shown here is a Teikin/Obunsha pen with its packaging, featuring baseball star Sadaharu Oh, who is widely considered one of Japan’a all-time greatest players:
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The above pen’s clip is interesting: the clip ball is a red plastic part that matches the shell, secured by passing through a hole in the clip, with the potion on the top side of the clip molded as a diamond-shaped rivet head. The Sadaharu Oh pen also appeared with black shell and clip ball/decoration.
The next pen is perhaps more typical of the Teikin catalog. It bears common stylistic markers of other Teikin pens, including a nib and a feed that are installed from the front of the section instead of through the back. The pen is fitted with a gold-plated steel nib. The off-center placement of the Teikin imprint near the cap lip is a manufacturing anomaly; the imprint was usually centered under the clip.
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During the heyday of the pocket pen, Teikoku Kin-Pen jobbed pens from Pilot, Platinum, and Sailor, each supplier providing pens that used its own proprietary cartridges and converters. Shown below are four Teikin pens: a typical model made by Platinum (upper; note the squared-off barrel end), with a 14K nib; a polished pen engraved in the same manner as the “chased” Sailor pen pictured earlier in this article; and two models marked with the Obunsha name. The lower three pens were made by Sailor, and although they are “fancier” than the one made by Platinum, they have steel nibs. Further increasing the variety for collectors, the Obunsha pens have different trim bands, and the shell of the lower one is noticeably longer than the other; but both have the same overall capped length.
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Teikin pens were not limited to inexpensive or relatively plain models. The first pen in the group above was jobbed from Platinum and fitted with a 14K nib, and the pen shown below has an 18K nib, a zogan, and an attractively sculptured center ring that blends knurled edges with a “rope” center.
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The three pens below are fitted with flippable nibs and feeds identical to those in the IMS pens described earlier in this article. Teikoku Kin-Pen is known to have jobbed pens from Platinum, and Platinum sold a lower-line flippable pen that is identical to the IMS/Teikin design. Because there exist new-in-box IMS-imprinted pens in Teikin packaging, the most likely scenario is that Platinum was the original source and that Teikin sold some of the pens on to IMS.
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See Morison.
The Etō Company, Ltd., was one of the myriad small pen companies located in Osaka. Founded in 1919 to make pencils, the company was owned by the S. Etō family. It began making pens in 1929, selling them only in Manchuria because of contractual obligations in Japan. Beginning in the early 1930s, Etō started selling its pens and pencils in Japan under the Vanco brand, continuing through the 1960s. The range was varied, including some models with sterling silver overlays and some hand-painted models. The products were generally of high quality, and many of the pens featured gold nibs. Some postwar Vanco pens featured a well-shaped steel duo-point nib that the company branded as the “Duet” nib, and during the 1950s Etō also used a “home grown” telescoping piston mechanism that functioned like Montblanc’s but was of a different design. At 3" (86.1 mm) capped and 4" (108.7 mm) posted, this tiny lower-line pocket pen is interesting as one of the shortest pocket pens known. It has a steel nib that is imprinted only with the word SPECIAL.
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The gold nibs in some Venus models bear the JIS number 4366, which identifies Hatanaka Koseido, a small company operated by the Hatanaka family; and Hatanaka Koseido is believed to have been the maker of these pens. The construction of the pen illustrated here, like that of the Pioneer pen shown earlier in this article, features a short section and a long barrel, maintaining the pocket-pen form factor with a long cap that seats where the center joint is located in ordinary pocket pens. Unlike the Pioneer pen, however, this Venus model has a barrel turned from a single piece of metal, such that its finish matches that of the cap perfectly.
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(also seen as Yotubishi or Yotubisi) Ishi-Shoten (Ishi & Co.) was founded in Tokyo in 1925 by Yoshinosuke Ishī, who had been making pens one by one as early as 1916. The company began operation with only ten workers; but it jumped in with both feet, producing high-quality pens that were more elegant in appearance than the usual BHR and BCHR models of the time. Within a year or so, at the dawn of the Shōwa era, Ishī assembled a cadre of lacquer artists and began producing a line of high-quality maki-e pens to sell in competition with Pilot’s Namiki brand—but at more economical prices.
In about 1941, Ishi-Shoten changed its name to Ishi-Seisakusho. After World War II, newly under the direction of Ishī’s son Yasuo, it continued to produce ever more beautiful maki-e and raden pens, most of which are now highly desirable collector’s items.
The company’s logo, which also yielded the brand name for its pens, was an array of four diamonds (yotsubishi in Japanese) in a diamond shape. As noted above, the brand name was not always spelled consistently; on the pen illustrated below, it is spelled Yotubisi, and it also appears as Yotubishi. Ishi-Seisakusho ceased operation in 1984.
Judging by the identical clips and cap treatments, it appears that Yotsubishi probably manufactured some pens for Kumiai and possibly also for Parley, which might have been a Yotsubishi sub-brand..
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The next two pens, branded SUPER DE LUXE, reflect lesser models from Yotsubishi, and they were probably jobbed to a separate company. The two are identical except for their nib imprints. The upper pen bears only an 18K imprint on its nib, while the lower pen’s nib is imprinted with a fleur-de-lis and the text 8 GOLD.
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In Japan, as in other countries, there were lower-tier manufacturers who did not put brand names on their pens, A case in point is this charming ladies’ pen, with a remarkably attractively finished cap, whose only identifying mark is a JIS number on the formerly gold-plated nib that identifies the nib maker as Honda Kinpen-Seisakusho, a job shop operated by the Honda family. Because purple (紫, murasaki, or パープル, pāpuru) symbolizes royalty in Japan, the use of purple might have been intended to lend a note of class:
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The pens shown below are branded LINE GOLD (upper) and SUPER GOLD (lower). I have been unable to find any information on the maker of these pens. I assign them to a single maker because their clips are identical and because they are fitted with identical hard rubber feeds installed, like modern ones, from the front together with the nibs. The LINE GOLD pen has a gold-plated steel nib with no JIS number or other maker’s identification; the SUPER GOLD pen has a 14K nib of the same style, marked with the JIS symbol and a JIS number identifying it as having been made by Honda Kinpen-Seisakusho, a job-shop nib maker. Neither pen has any further identification.
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One way to attract buyers, especially younger buyers, is to increase the “bling” of your product’s appearance. The eye-popping orange and bright-gold pen shown here is a good example of this marketing technique. Unfortunately, this pen has no marking of any kind to identify its maker. Its small steel nib, clutchless cap, and lack of a center ring identify it as a low-tier model—but even so, its formed-up clip is spring loaded like those of the pen’s more expensive cousins.
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Given that only a small subset of all possible colors will please the buying public, the number of variations that can be applied to any design without resorting to patterned materials — not easy to do with injection molding — is necessarily limited. Japanese pen manufacturers broadened their ranges of offerings by applying artful screen-printed surface decoration, often botanical designs, to otherwise ordinary pens. As suggested by this fragment from a 1969 Platinum catalog page, Platinum seems to have been a leader in this style of decoration:
As noted earlier, that leadership might have contributed to the company’s rise out of the second tier. Shown below are some of the many attractive designs to be found on pocket pens, with their manufacturers’ names. Pens bearing designs like these sold for prices higher than similar plain pens. Today, these pens are more difficult to find than plain ones, especially in good condition, and they frequently command significantly higher prices. The Pilot Carnations and Sailor Hearts pens shown here are tinted pink, with the Sailor’s color being the more pronounced.
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| Camellias, Pilot | |
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| Carnations, Pilot | |
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| Bluebells, Pilot | |
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| Iris, Pilot | |
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| Butterflies, Platinum | |
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| Ginkgo Leaves, Platinum | |
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| Hibiscus, Platinum | |
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| Hydrangea, Platinum | |
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| Pansies, Platinum | |
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| Passion Flowers, Platinum | |
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| Posies, Platinum | |
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| Shamrocks, Platinum | |
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| Strawberries, Platinum | |
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| Tulips, Platinum | |
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| Hearts, Sailor | |
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| Hibiscus, Sailor | |
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| Roses, Sailor | |
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| Tulips, Sailor |
The pens above sold in the general price range of ¥3,000. For the more well heeled (or perhaps more sophisticated) customer, less was more. The Pilot pen shown below, with fanciful tulip-like flowers, sold for ¥5,000. Its floral decoration was debossed and plated with gold for a subtly rich look. This pen also has bright crimson cabochons, just barely convex, at both ends. The back side of the clip tag reads レデイ コールド (Redei Kōrudo, probably Serene Lady).
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At least one manufacturer, Sailor, managed to take advantage of a “patterned” molding; the shell of the pen shown below is a difficult-to-photograph pearlescent white, very slightly marbled. The dark spots on this pen’s cap (better seen in the zoomed views) also illustrate the pitting that can occur in anodized aluminum caps and barrels.
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And one manufacturer, Platinum, found a way to offer hearts without enameling or lacquering anything. Skeleton pens are not uncommon in today’s market, but the Platinum pen shown here, with two heart-shaped cutouts in its cap, might be the grandfather of all of them. By designing the cutouts so that they would be red when the pen is capped but discreetly steel colored when the pen is exposed in public, being used, Platinum even eliminated the potential embarrassment factor.
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To promote their pocket pens by showing off the pens’ internals, some companies built transparent demonstrator models. Some of these pens might have been true demonstrators, intended to be used by retailers in showing the features to prospective purchasers. Others, or perhaps all of them, were made for sale to the public. The three colorless full-demonstrator pens shown here came from Platinum, Pilot, and Sailor.
The gold-plated steel nib on the Platinum pen (immediately below) is imprinted with Platinum 10 years, the S☆N globe, and the JIS symbol, a design that Platinum used from 1953 into the early 1960s — but the pen shown here was more likely made in the 1970s. This pen was purchased in complete retail packaging, suggesting that it was for sale to the public.
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Pilot produced two fully transparent demonstrators, one with a matte black cap and one with a champagne enameled cap. Both were fitted with steel Volex-style open nibs and clips like that on the MYU (both discussed earlier in this article). Shown below is the champagne version. The pen illustrated here was made in May 1975.
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Sailor also produced a clear demonstrator, fitting it with a 21K nib instead of the steel used by the other two members of the Big Three. This pen, otherwise an ordinary Mini 21, features colorless interior parts. The example shown here, made in April 1981, exhibits a slight amount of discoloration in the feed at points where stress cracks or molding voids have allowed ink to seep in:
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As of this writing, I know of no colorless full-demonstrator pocket pens other than the three presented above; but Pilot did create some half-demonstrators, such as this black Elite S made in March 1979:
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Perhaps the most novel of Pilot’s half-demonstrator pocket pens, though, were the KaraKara (カラカラ, “Color Color”) series. These pens, targeted primarily at school-age buyers, came packaged as a complete pen together with two spare cap-and-barrel sets of different colors. The idea was that the purchaser could mix and match the colored body parts as the mood struck him or her. There were at least seven colors available: red, orange, yellow, three blues, and a violet. Sets were offered with the bodies matched in color or with the bodies scrambled; for example, yellow cap/orange barrel, light blue cap/red barrel, and dark blue cap/violet barrel; and the pens were also available individually. The user could, of course, further scramble any of the colors as desired. Shown here is a matched-color set, with the pen assembled in the red body, with spare bodies in yellow and the lightest of the three blues. These pens are all half-demonstrators, with clear sections.
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Some KaraKara pens were also fitted with white sections or 18K gold nibs, or both, apparently for slightly different market segments. The pens below have both of these features:
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Pilot reused the plastic-capped Laureate pattern to produce a series of fully transparent pocket pens in various colors. The blue and pink examples shown below were made in March and April 1979, respectively.
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From a distance of 30–60 years, Japanese pocket pens can seem pretty retro. But the 1970s pocket pen model shown here beats all others in the retro department. This pen’s decoration, a repeating stylized papyrus plant, is an example of the Egyptian Revival trend that influenced many Japanese companies’ products from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. A much more literally interpreted example of Egyptian Revival design can be seen in the Sailor Olympia, shown earlier in this article.
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More significant than the decoration, however, is the nib. Unbranded but clearly made by Platinum, the pen has a nib fitted with a functional over/underfeed system similar to designs of the early 20th century. The underfeed is the usual plastic feed, and the overfeed is a narrow leaf of very thin stainless steel, unplated, that is spot welded to the top surface of the 18K gold-plated steel nib at the nib’s back end. The overfeed lies closely along the top of the nib and covers the entire length of the slit except the last 2 mm or so. When the pen is filled, the capillary space between the nib and the overfeed is filled with ink, making available to the tip a slightly greater reserve of ink when the user begins to write.
The nib bears the JIS number 3232, indicating that it was made by Kawakami-Giken, a job shop owned by Haruo Kawakami.
The decoration of pens has never been limited to only what manufacturers do in their factories. Personalizing pens in other ways, such as by engraving initials or names, has been part of the scene since the manufacture of pens began. The silvery-capped Kumiai pen shown earlier is a woman’s pen and is personalized on the underside of its shell with the name Yōko Amashiro (天代洋子).
The location of personalizations like this one on pocket pens seems to be pretty well fixed to the underside of the shell. This makes sense given the lack of real estate on the barrel and the common use of thin aluminum for caps.
Another way to personalize a pen is to have artwork executed on its surface. One way to do this, more common in the past than now, is the engraving of a design on the pen. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many manufacturers produced both roll- and hand-engraved pens; and pens bearing unique artwork hand engraved by jewelers or independent artists were also not uncommon. With their appreciation for the things of nature, the Japanese do truly lovely work of the latter sort. Shown here is a Morison pen made of heavier-than-usual aluminum, engraved with the design of a crane and pine branches (both symbols of longevity) with tufts of grass on small hillocks at the bottom and clouds at the top.
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The most ultimately Japanese type of artwork is probably maki-e, the application of abstract or figural artwork to a lacquered surface (usually urushi) using gold powder. The gold is applied while the surface is wet and sticky, and the wet lacquer bonds the gold in place. The technique can involve the application of dozens or even hundreds of extremely thin coats of lacquer. Japanese pen companies produce and sell pens decorated with maki-e; but the work can also be done by an independent artist at the request of a pen’s owner, as with the plum-blossom decoration on the Sailor 21K pocket pen shown here. This particular pen’s decoration is maki-e only in a very limited sense, however. The basic artwork was screen-printed and applied as a sticker containing no real gold, with finishing embellishment added by hand. A coat of clear lacquer protects the art. Work of this type is much less costly than real maki-e, but it is of course not nearly so fine. It has no real collector value.
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It should be noted that none of the Big Three is known to have produced pocket pens with maki-e designs of this type; nor are there known examples from any other manufacturers. Any pocket pen offered with artwork like the above example should be understood to have been decorated after it was first sold. You should be aware of what you are getting; make sure you understand whether you are buying real maki-e or fake.
Other examples of personalized pens in this article include the second pen shown in the discussion of Platinum, which I consider to be personalized because it was engraved by hand, and a Tombow ballpoint shown later.
In addition to their regular retail lines, some manufacturers offer promotional merchandise, i.e., trinkets or tchotchkes imprinted with a customer’s business name and intended to be used as giveaways to the purchaser’s customers or as service awards to employees. Pens have long been hot in the promotional-goods market, and several Japanese pen companies have produced promotional pens. Some are bargain-basement items, of a quality that invites a quick trip into the trash, but others have been of surprisingly high quality for giveaways.
The first pen below is a Sailor pocket pen with a 21K nib, bearing a discreet Coca-Cola imprint on its shell. This pen might have been given to a Coke distributor, or it might have been given as a service award to a Coke employee. The second pen, also by Sailor, has a steel nib and a green-foil cap imprint promoting Fujifilm’s then-new Pocket Fujica 200 camera. The third pen, of distinctly lower quality, is a flippable steel-nibbed Teikin pen imprinted with the Nikon logo; this pen and the Pocket Fujica promo above it, were almost certainly intended as customer giveaways.
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Several more promotional pens appear in the next section.
Although it appears initially to have been limited to fountain pens, the pocket pen form factor did not remain the exclusive province of the fountain pen. Perhaps puzzlingly, the Big Three appear to have produced relatively few pocket pens as ballpoint, rollerball, fude (brush), or sign (felt- or fiber-tipped) versions; but many other manufacturers were there to fill the gap. In this article, we shall look at some of these writing instruments, organized alphabetically by brand name.
Ballpoint pocket pens are known to have been sold by Auto, Center, Lion, Morison, Newman, Newton, Pilot, Platinum, Sailor, Swan, Tombow, and Zebra; and there were undoubtedly other makers. Rollerballs (which used ordinary fountain pen ink) came from KenPen, Newman, Platinum, and probably others. Sign pens, in one form or another, are dirt-common these days in the usual full-length size, but they have not been so well known as pocket pens.
The Ferme Fountain Pen Company, Ltd, of Tokyo, did not produce only fountain pens. Shown here is a Ferme sign pen with a partially transparent section. This pen, which was sold with a cartridge of red ink, has a green screen-printed legend on the back of the cap that reads ミドリ十字 “Midorijūji,” “Green Cross Corporation.” This company was Japan’s first commercial blood bank.
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Kaimei Company, Ltd, was founded in 1898 to produce an India ink that would be acceptable to Japanese writers. With the success of its ink, the company soon began making fude (brush) pens. When pocket pens became popular, they appeared under the Kaimei brand. (The word kaimei means “enlightenment” in Japanese.) Kaimei is now a producer of pastels, paints, brushes, and other artists’ materials. The Model MA6101 pen illustrated here, built and styled like pocket pens of the 1970s even to the use of Platinum cartridges, is in current production as of this writing. Its clip, however, is the formed, tab-attached style, not the more costly stamped, spring-loaded style.
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I have not been able to find any information on KenPen as a company in its own right. Except for a different rollerball front end, the KenPen Rotarypen was identical to one of Platinum’s standard square-ended pocket-pen designs; and like their Platinum siblings, KenPen rollerballs came in several colors, of which the all-black pen below seems to be by far the most common, They could use Platinum cartridges as well as KenPen-branded cartridges. It is possible that KenPen was a sub-brand of Platinum; this supposition is strengthened by the fact that Newman (see immediately below) also marketed a rollerball that was identical to the KenPen. Even the packaging, a textured gold-colored pasteboard box with a slip-off cover, was the same. Only the printed instruction sheets and the brand names differed between the two.
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In addition to making button-actuated ballpoints that carried the same color schemes as some of its gaudier fountain pens, Morison also joined the party with ballpoints that were stylistically matched to fountain pens and could not be recognized as ballpoints until they were uncapped. The same caps and barrels could be used, leaving only the section to be designed for manufacture. Shown here is a typical Morison pen of this type.
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Newman was a brand name used by the Tatsuwa Manufacturing Company, Ltd, known as a maker of high-quality mechanical pencils, especially sterling silver models, in the 1950s and 1960s. Also appearing under the Newman brand were ballpoints like the first pen below and a rollerball (second pen below) that was identical to the KenPen described immediately above, even to the Rotarypen model name.
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Although not a pen, the writing instrument shown below, a Newman pocket pencil, deserves honorable mention. It is a real pencil, not a miniature or a novelty item, and its tiny size makes it the smallest writing instrument in this article.
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| (Pencil lent by David Rzeszotarski) | |
The Newton Manufacturing Company was founded in 1909 by George W. Newton of Newton, Iowa, to manufacture and market his “Safety Magazine Match Safe.” The company manufactured the match safe and other promotional products until 1943, when a fire destroyed its factory. Newton had also started a national distribution network during the Great Depression, and that became the company’s focus after the fire. In late May 2015, Newton went bankrupt, and within a week it was acquired by a competitor, HALO Branded Solutions of Sterling, Illinois. I have seen many Newton promotional ballpoints, but the 1973 pen shown here, made by an unknown Japanese manufacturer, is the only Newton pocket pen I know of. It bears the five-line screen-printed imprint shown below it:
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WESTBROOK’S |
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| (Pen lent by David Rzeszotarski) | |
Pilot also produced ballpoint pocket pens, and probably rollerballs as well. As with those from Platinum, these instruments were individually priced, but they were probably also offered in sets with fountain pens. Shown here is an Elite S ballpoint. The trim on this pen matches that on the 1973 second-generation Elite S fountain pen shown earlier.
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Along with its fountain pens, Platinum produced ballpoints and rollerballs. These instruments were individually priced, but it is possible that they were also offered in sets with fountain pens. Shown here are a ballpoint (upper) that matches the ruby-colored fountain pen shown earlier, and an all-black “stealth” rollerball (lower). Ballpoints and rollerballs were less expensive than fountain pens; the rollerball shown here, obviously not a base-line model, was priced at only ¥1000.
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Based on the typical Platinum square-ended barrel and clip, it appears that Platinum also produced ballpoint pens under the Rush brand. It is not clear whether Rush was a sub-brand or a separate company to which Platinum jobbed pens. Shown here is a Rush ballpoint.
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See Platinum.
Not only did Sailor produce a promotional fountain pen for Nikon, but it also made the Nikon promotional ballpoint shown here.
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Nobuo Itō’s Swan Fountain Pen Factory Company, founded in 1900, went into a decline after World War II and finally went out of business in the late 1970s. Swan did not limit itself to fountain pens, however, and at some point it changed its name to the Swan Pen Company, as imprinted on the caps of these two Swan ballpoint pens. These pen body styles, with a knurled center ring making the black pen being slightly the more expensive of the two, are more typical of Swan’s production than the black fountain pen shown earlier.
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During the 1980s, the Shihodo Company, Ltd, a Tokyo-based manufacturer of printing inks and chemicals, and a distributor of stationery and office supplies, offered pocket fude pens, like the one shown here, under the Takara brand name. (The word takara means “treasure” in Japanese.) It is not clear whether Shihodo manufactured its pens or jobbed them. Like many other companies’ products, several Takara models bore names that included the word Super (スペアー , su-pe-ā).
The Shihodo company is still in business today, still selling several types of high-end fude pens. All of the current models, however, are full length.
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The name Tombow is a Westernization of トンボ, tonbo, which means dragonfly in Japanese. The company was founded by Harunosuke Ogawa in 1913, when he began producing wooden pencils and opened the Harunosuke Ogawa Pencil shop in Asakusa. The Tombow name appeared in 1927 as a trademark for one of the company’s pencil models, and in 1939 the company was reorganized as two companies, the Tombow Pencil Manufacturing Company, Ltd and the Tombow Pencil Trade Company, Ltd. 1958 saw the introduction of ballpoint pens, and in 1971 the Tombow Ballpoint Pen Division was established. For a brief period, Tombow produced a few fountain pen models, notably the hugely fat Egg, but the company has never concentrated on fountain pens. Shown here are an upper-level Tombow ballpoint and a lesser ballpoint model with a personalized barrel.
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As with fountain pens, pens in other writing modes entered the market without their makers’ having put an identifiable brand name on the products. Among those are the pens shown here.
The script D on the first pen here might or might not be a company logo; it seems more like the script L on the Pilot Laureate. Whoever the manufacturer was, this pen is well made.
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Of somewhat lesser quality is the next pen, a promotional item. There are several services in Japan that list part-time jobs that are available. These services began by publishing daily pamphlets or tabloid-type newspapers, and most have now migrated to the Internet. The script on the pen’s cap reads アルバイトニュース (Arubaitonyūsu, “Part Time Job News”). The diagonal checkerboard pattern on the cap is youthful and modern, probably intended to appeal to a younger audience.
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The white keychain ballpoint pen below might be a promotional item, or it might not. In either case, it is a practical conjoining of two items frequently carried in women’s purses. The pen itself is very compact, only 3" (81.4 mm) long when capped. This pen, even if it is not a promotional giveaway, can definitely be considered a novelty item — but nonetheless a useful one.
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A segment of the market that we have not yet addressed is the luxury market: pens made for, and in some cases by, retailers specializing in jewelry and other personal goods for the very wealthy. In Europe and America, these would be companies like Cartier and Tiffany. In Japan, one of the best known was Yamazaki Kikinzoku Kogyo (Yamazaki K.K.), located in the Ginza, an upscale shopping district in Tokyo. Founded by Kamekichi Yamazaki in 1892 as Shimizu Shoten, a manufacturing retailer of fine jewelry, the company pioneered Japanese use of the karat scale for measuring the purity of gold and, in collaboration with the Shokosha Company, Ltd (now the Citizen Watch Company, Ltd), produced the first Japanese-made pocket watch. Among Yamazaki K.K.’s product lines were writing instruments, and one of the company’s products was the Hoshiesu ballpoint pocket pen shown below. This elegant guilloché-finished pen is made of solid silver of an unmarked purity, lacquered to prevent tarnish. Now known as Ginza Tanaka, the company is still in business.
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Unsurprisingly, the appearance of pocket pens in Japan spawned a certain amount of imitation in other countries. In China, the Tianjin Fountain Pen Factory produced pens like the Rainbow 239 (shown here), with the oft-seen Parker “51”-style hooded nib (of gold-plated steel) and a bulb filler. Capped, the 239 resembles a typical Japanese pocket pen, although the proportions of its cap and barrel are not quite those of the traditional pocket pens. When uncapped, it reveals the same short gripping section/shell that has been used on innumerable full-length Chinese pens. (This was a cost-saving measure, designed to take advantage of the economies of scale.) To compensate for the short shell, the cap does not post all the way down to the center ring; but even so, the pen still posts about " (12.7 mm) shorter than the typical Japanese pocket pen.
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In 1955, a Taiwanese stationery company known as Civilization Press changed its name to SKB Civilization Pen Corporation and began purchasing pen components and assembling them to support its original business, founded in 1951. The company’s first own-branded pen, the model 830, appeared in 1959. In 1963, the company purchased from Platinum the necessary machinery to make its own pens. In 1970, SKB began producing its own nibs. The pen shown here looks very Japanese, even to the styling of the cap, where we find a Platinum-style slashed crown and a Sailor-style clip. Internally, the pen is a duplicate of Platinum pens of the same period, even to the squeeze converter (which is branded SKB).
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Mangyongdae (만경대) is a ward in the city of Pyongyang, North Korea. The Mangyongdae Disabled Soldiers’ Fountain Pen Factory, established in 1952 to provide work for soldiers disabled by wounds during the Korean War, produced true Japanese-style pocket pens, of which the one shown here is an example:
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The Mangyongdae pen shown above, although plain, has a better finish than contemporaneous Chinese pens like the Rainbow 239 above, and its build quality appears good. It is fitted with a 12K gold nib that resembles nibs used in China and which might have been imported by the Korean factory. The pen’s styling takes from the best of Japanese design, imitating Pilot’s nib design, Platinum’s squared-off barrel end, and a zogan on the shell. Like many inexpensive Chinese pens, it is a self-filler — in this case, a well-made bulb-filler.
Although not nearly so popular as they once were, pocket pens are still being manufactured as of this writing. The longevity star is the Pilot Elite S family, currently featured in Pilot’s range in the form of the Elite 95S, a reboot version based on the design of the 1975 model shown earlier, but with an inset nib like that on the third of the crosshatched stainless steel Elite pens also shown earlier. The new version, commonly known as the E95S but catalogued officially by Pilot as the Elite 95S, was released in 2013 as part of Pilot’s celebration of the company’s 95th year in business. Here are the two Elite 95S pen models in Pilot’s catalog as of this writing:
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Catalogs, however, do not always tell the whole story. The blue Elite 95S shown below is an uncatalogued variant made in November 2014, produced exclusively for Pilot shareholders owning 500 to 999 shares and packaged in a special box with a 15-ml bottle of Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink. The blue of the pen is the same color as the Pilot logo. This set was one of a series of gifts made for shareholders and was never released to the public. Examples found for sale today are being, or have been, sold by their stockholder owners.
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Most of the companies listed in this article are now gone. In addition to those from Kaimei and Pilot, I have seen pocket pens for sale in the U.S.A. from such makers as Muji and Ohto (fountain pens), and Zebra (ballpoint pens). Shown here are an Ohto Tasche and a Zebra Minna. These pens, unlike the pens from Kaimei and Pilot, are sold at very low prices, and the fountain pens are fitted with commodity steel nib units and are designed to use short International cartridges. They are, nevertheless, quite serviceable, and when the fountain pens’ nibs are tuned they will write very well, similarly to the more expensive Pilot pens. These low-priced pens are very compact, and they will fit into the smallest of pockets.
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As noted earlier, Kaimei, Takara (Shihodo Company), and Tombow are still in business, although only Kaimei now offers pocket pens; and whether Tombow offers fountain pens at all is unclear. Makoto is also in business, offering pads and other stationery items as well as ballpoint pens, but not fountain pens.
Stepping outside Japan again, we find the Moonman 80 Mini. This very short Chinese fountain pen (below), jobbed by Shanghai Jingdian from an unidentified manufacturer, looks like a “squished” version of the classic Parker 45. Uncapping it reinforces that impression, as the 80 Mini’s nib assembly (nib, feed, and threaded collar) is fully interchangeable with its Parker equivalent. Like the Rainbow 239, the 80 Mini lacks the characteristically elongated pocket-pen cap and has a relatively short gripping section; and, as with the Rainbow, the cap does not post all the way down to the center ring.
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One of the more interesting pocket pens of the 21st century was the Lanbitou 3009 Space Pen (shown below), a short-lived Chinese product. This pen appeared in 2012, exciting a flurry of activity in the market, and then quickly disappeared. As of this writing, Lanbitou currently produces fountain pens, but the 3009 Space Pen has not returned to the market.
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The 3009 is about the same size as the Ohto fountain pen shown earlier, and when it is capped, it is also very similar in shape; but it does not use a commodity nib unit, instead reflecting the smoothly tapered shell design that is so characteristic of the older pocket pens. It has a short section mated with a longer barrel after the fashion of the Pioneer and Venus pens described in earlier, and it is fitted with a breather-tube sqeeze filler and a very positive snap cap that clicks in place both for capping and for posting.
Clearly, there is much to be learned of the history of vintage Japanese pocket pens, and of copies made elsewhere. The late Frank Dubiel was fond of remarking, “It’s just a pen.” The question, then, arises: are pocket pens “just” pens? In the sense that every pen is just a pen, yes, but there is little doubt that they offer variety and history enough to make an interesting — and visually appealing — focused collection. The botanicals alone would make a fascinating collection; a collection of promotional items, even more difficult to find, could be very rewarding.
Unfortunately, anodized aluminum caps are sometimes subject to pitting, which appears as small “fleabite” marks. Another potential problem is that the spring tension of the clutch could split a plastic cap over time. Splits can also occur in plastic sections and barrels, especially at the open ends. Accordingly, it behooves the collector to examine these pens with great care to detect pitting or cracks.
Aside from a small number of models fitted with non-removable fillers, all pocket pens were designed to use ink cartridges. Some manufacturers also made converters to fit their pocket pens. Shown here are squeeze-type Platinum, Sailor, and Ferme pocket-pen converters:
All of Pilot’s pocket pens can accept either a CON-20 or a CON-40 converter, and the 2008 limited-edition M90 also accepts the CON-50. Platinum’s short converter is now exceedingly uncommon, and most others are virtually unobtainable. To broaden the selection of pocket pens usable with converters, I have written an article showing how to modify a standard piston-type Platinum converter to fit pocket pens of several brands. At this time, I do not know of any way to adapt a modern converter to pocket pens that use Sailor cartridges; the only known converter that will fit those pens is Sailor’s own short converter.
On July 1, 1964, JPY ¥2,000 and ¥1,000 were equivalent to USD $5.56 and $2.78, respectively, or $46.76 and $23.38 in January 2021 (equivalent value provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). 
The purpose of flexibility in a music nib is to allow the tines to spread for drawing note bodies when writing music manuscripts. Modern Japanese “music” nibs are not true music nibs because they are not flexible.
The Japanese word ゾーガン (zōgan) means “inlay” and was originally applied to metal-on-metal inlay. Use of the word has expanded to include wood or shell on wood, clay on clay (pottery), and many other forms of inlay. Collectors of Japanese pens use the term to refer to the inlaid part itself: “This pen has a zogan.”
The MYU 701 shown in this article, made in May 1971, is the earliest dated MYU pen I have seen. At that time, the urushi-coated feed was in use.
A full-length integral-nib model called the Murex was introduced in 1977, but that did not signal the demise of the MYU as some collectors have theorized. A blog post from Pen Cluster, a dealer in the Ginza, describes an MYU 701 with a manufacturing date of July 1980, and I have personally seen another dated December 1980.
Information about the M90’s release date and production quantity, and the ways the name was written, came from a contemporaneous page on the website of the Sumiri stationery store in Omihachiman, Japan.
The Olympia’s design was based on a sterling silver set with the same basic decoration, comprising a pencil and a ballpoint pen, each priced at ¥7,000, and a full-length fountain pen priced at ¥13,000. This set, with the recessed areas darkened chemically instead of being painted, was marked SAILOR, not OLYMPIA.
JIS refers to Japanese Industrial Standards. Each manufacturer wanting to mark its products as being JIS compliant receives a unique identification number that should appear on the product or its packaging along with the JIS symbol unless the product is not intended for export. A list of manufacturers and their JIS numbers can be found in Japan Industrial Standard Nib Manufacturer Numbers.
The Japanese patent site is very difficult to use, and I have not yet succeeded in tracking down this patent.
Because it is not known with any certainty whether Rieyōn pens were still being made as late as the 1980s, the numbers on the nib might not be a date code. See Japanese Date Coding Systems.
Purple can also symbolize many things besides royalty, including spirituality, nobility, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, arrogance, and mourning. This list came from a blog page by Kalina Watson-Roberts.
The letters S and N are the initials of Shunichi Nakata, the founder of Platinum.
The name is engraved on the pen in the traditional Japanese fashion, with the surname before the personal name: Amashiro Yōko.
The Pocket Fujica 200 used 110 (Kodak Instamatic) film cartridges. It was packaged with a flashcube and an optional extender stalk that raised the flashcube a few inches above the camera for slightly better portrait lighting.
Japanese caked inks dry with a flat matte surface, and the people objected to the somewhat shiny surface of dried India ink.
The Newton pen is not date coded, but its age can be determined from the date of Westbrook’s opening in 1949.
The Hoshiesu name, written as ホシエス, means, literally, “Star S,” and it corresponds to Yamazaki K.K.’s logo consisting of a five-pointed star with the letter S in its center.
The three-letter name SKB was chosen to stand for Smooth Knowing (intellectuality) Beauty (aesthetic feeling), bringing the company’s name up to date and also expressing founder Lu Rong’s core philosophy.
In 1985–1986, in advance of the 13th Pyongyang International Youth Students Festival, all disabled people in Pyongyang were forcibly relocated so that foreigners would not encounter them, and the factory became the Mangyongdae Honored Veterans Fountain Pen Factory. The date of manufacture of the Mangyongdae pen shown in this article is uncertain.
It is widely believed that the Elite 95S was released in 2014 to celebrate Pilot’s 95th anniversary, but a Pilot press release titled 万年筆 『エリート９５Ｓ』 新発売 (Fountain pen "Elite 95S" new release) and issued June 19, 2013, states that the release date was Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
The specifics of who received these pens came from a blog entry on the Elite 95S by Yú Shēng and from David Rzeszotarski.
The nib units in some Moonman 80 Mini pens are secured by an adhesive that will release with gentle heat.
The information in this article is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative or complete. If you have additions or corrections to this page, please consider sharing them with us to improve the accuracy of our information. My thanks to David Rzeszotarski for providing some of the information, for his assistance in gathering many of the pens shown here, and for the time he spent in performing technical and textual edits on this article. Thanks also to Yu Shēng, some of whose blog posts I have mined for various tidbits.
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