Pen + Message is a small stationery shop tucked away on a back street near Motomachi Station in Kobe, Japan. They sell a lovely small selection of inks, as well as a decent amount of different paper products and high end fountain pens. They’ve also been offering Sailor exclusive inks for a while now and have their own set of five inks (of which this is a part of) as well a collaborative set of three inks with Rivermail in Yamashina called “Writing Lab”. All of these come in the lovely tall or vase sailor bottle.

I visited Pen + Message back in August 2018. It’s was a quaint store and one of the few that let you take photos! The staff were very friendly and helpful; will definitely go back if possible. Cigar one of the first, if not the first, Japanese exclusive Sailor ink that I coveted when I first found out about Japanese exclusive Sailor inks. I did get a sample of it from somewhere but I was too worried to ink it (I need to save it for an important purpose! - it never came). Then when I eventually did get my hands on it, I neglected to use it! Terrible. Finally, I’ve put that behind me and I’ve inked what was one of Sailor’s most desirable inks, for me. Does it hold up to what I wanted it to be?

This ink is a green tinted brown and I quite like this type of colour as an ink. However, I’m possibly in the minority in liking this colour. A colour very similar to this, Pantone 448 C was chosen as the world’s ugliest colour and was chosen in Australia as the colour of plain packaging for tobacco products for exactly that reason. The RGB values of Pantone 448 C are 67 56 29 and the RGB values of a lighter section from the non-saturated part of the Tomoe River Swatch is 64 55 27. That’s only a 3, 1, and 2 point difference, respectively, between the two! The two darker parts maintain a comparable ratio. It’s a similar story on Rhodia, which is lighter overall, but having the middle swatch as the closest to Pantone 448 C with an RGB value of 70 58 29 (a difference of 3, 3, and 2 points respectively). We also now have a name for the colour! Originally being called “olive green” (which, while not a traditional olive green colour I can imagine olives looking like this) the Australian Olive Association didn’t like the association with plain packaging and an undesirable colour (understandable). Instead it was was called “drab dark brown” by the Australian Government. So there we have it, Pen + Message Cigar is a drab dark brown colour (I think ‘cigar’ is better - though the irony that this is called cigar and the Australian government use it on tobacco products to put people off smoking is not lost on me.

That said, the less saturated part of the swatch isn’t the only colour and in the saturated parts the ink picks up a lot more blue in it (as well as becoming very dark, almost black, at times). And when you look at the written line, especially on Tomoe River there is some hue shift throughout the shaded line, as we’ll see below.

The ink is slightly dryer than what you would expect from Sailor but it is far from dry and wetter than what I’d call moderately dry. Performs fairly well on all papers but does have some colour changes depending on the paper.

On Rhodia there is less shading than on Tomoe River, which is a surprise as the opposite is often true. It’s a smooth shading on both papers with low-moderate contrast. On Tomoe River there is some hue shift as well with the shaded areas being more brown leaning and the lighter areas having more of a green cast. On Rhodia the colour remains more consistent.

There’s the barest hint of haloing. It’s very faint, however.

On Tomoe River the sheen is a lovely fiery copper red. It isn’t a strong sheen but it’s present in most of the written lines, especially the shaded areas, and especially the swatch. The copper sheen enhances the brown in the shaded areas to make it seem much redder and increases the contrast of the shading because the hue is now more dramatically different.

On Rhodia - side note, my new pads of Rhodia are feathering more than I remember them feathering in the past; is anyone else noticing this? - there is practically no sheen. On the edge of the swatch there is the tiniest amount of sheen but none whatsoever anywhere else, unfortunately.

The sheen manifests quite differently depending on the paper! On Tomoe River, Original Crown Mill and G. Lalo paper the sheen presents more as an edge sheen; appearing on the edge of where the ink has pooled. On Midori especially but also Life paper and Franklin-Christoph Firma-Flex, the ink is more of a matte sheen that covers the whole line and swatch. This gives the ink a much browner and orangier look compared to the edge sheen which leaves the bulk of the ink without sheen and showing the green undertones.

The chromatography is pretty interesting because there is a lot of blue. I mentioned above that the ink colour when very saturated takes on a blue hue, but that’s the only time you see it. The rest of the time it’s a green tinted brown. The chromatography here shows a pale blue moving to a green brown before going to a green-yellow and finally ending with a vibrant teal tinted blue.

Dry time on Rhodia was very quick at 15 seconds and fairly quick as well on Tomoe River! a bit of a surprise there.

The ink isn’t water resistant but there is something left behind when you wash the ink. On Rhodia the blue of the chromatography is left behind quite visibly. On Tomoe River it is as well but it’s much more pale.

As mentioned, on Rhodia Pen + Message Cigar is a more consistent hue keeping a green tinted yellow-brown throughout. The saturation is noticeably less than on Tomoe River and the ink feels a little dryer and less lubricated. There is also no smear which his nice.

There are a few more inks from Sailor now that are a similar colour which so it’s interesting to see how they are different.

• Robert Oster Bronze: Is yellower and less green as well as more saturated and a bit lighter;

• Robert Oster Melon Tea: is a little greener than Robert Oster Bronze and a little darker. There’s a hint of pink in the lightest part. It’s comparable to Pen + Message Cigar;

• (Sailor) Ishida Bungu Gagome: is more contrasty, more saturated, and yellower;

• (Sailor) Mitsukoshi Baikoucha: is darker with less contrast, and a bit greener as well;

• (Sailor) Penlux Pine: is very similar but a little paler and a little greener;

• Sailor Rikyu-cha: is greener, lighter and noticeably more saturated;

• KWZ 150 Confederation Brown: is fairly comparably to Rikyu-Cha. Greener, lighter and much more saturated; and

• Noodler’s Burma Road Brown: Is very green with much less yellow. A lot of contrast and a similar darkness overall.

I’m getting a lot of feathering on new Rhodia pads lately and I’m not sure why! These inks shouldn’t be feathering but they are.

The only ink that prevents with any sheen is, interestingly, Robert Oster Melon Tea! It’s a very dull matte grey sheen and not similar at all to the sheen of Pen + Message Cigar.

Pen + Message Cigar really comes to life on Tomoe River. There’s a lot more green and a richer colour overall as well as more contrast.. The ink is a little more lubricated feeling on Tomoe River and there is no smearing again.

• Robert Oster Bronze: is a lot lighter! The heavy areas lose a lot of saturation and the ink is noticeably yellow;

• Robert Oster Melon Tea: has become browner and redder losing much of it’s green tint on Rhodia;

• (Sailor) Ishida Bungu Gagome: is very much a brown ink with pretty much no green at all;

• (Sailor) Mitsukoshi Baikoucha: isn’t too dissimilar on Tomoe River but it is still less saturated and browner;

• (Sailor) Penlux Pine: this is still the closest of the bunch with a similar amount of green, saturation and darkness. Very similar on Tomoe River. What might be a little different is the darker shading isn’t as brown as with Cigar;

• Sailor Rikyu-cha: is fairly similar this time! It’s a little bluer in it’s green tint and again less brown;

• KWZ 150 Confederation Brown: much yellower and more saturated; and

• Noodler’s Burma Road Brown: much greener and more saturated. The written line is darker too.

Robert Oster Bronze has no sheen and Robert Oster Melon Tea has a matte grey edge sheen - a type of sheen that I’ve come to associate with Robert Oster inks due to how common this type of sheen is. Similarly Noodler’s Burma Road Brown has a silver matte sheen and KWZ 150 Confederation Brown has a shiny silver sheen (both of these also took a ridiculous amount of time to dry with a wet saturated swatch). The four other Sailor inks all have a similar coppery red sheen to Pen + Message Cigar. Ishida Bungu Gagome is the weakest with the rest fairly comparable. Rikyu-cha has a redder colour than the slightly more orange Penlux Pine and Mitsukoshi Baikoucha.

So how does this stand up compared to how much I wanted this ink? Well, I think I moved on a little with this type of ink colour. I really liked this colour in 2017 on whenever I was most into this type of colour. Tastes change and mine did here slightly. I do absolutely still love this colour but just not as much. Using this ink on Tomoe River, however, really is a joy. The somewhat subtle sheen really adds a lot of character to this ink. It isn’t my favourite Sailor ink, and while I probably wouldn’t include it in a hypothetical top-5 it isn’t that far away and I do really enjoy using it and seeing it.

But how do you get it? The ink is mid-to-upper range in price for Sailor exclusive inks in Japan at ¥2,750, including tax. This puts it at (as of this writing) around AU$40, US$25, £20, and €24. Certainly not the cheapest ink but it’s not outlandish either. As for getting the ink to you there are two options; use a proxy buying service (easiest but pricier), or go there in person (most expensive but more fun). There is a third, and the cheapest option, which is a forwarding service, but I and friends who also buy inks from Japan, have been having issues with forwarding services required detailed a Material Safety Data Sheet on each of the brands of inks in the shipment. This can be difficult or even impossible to get from the original store (remember that they don’t explicitly allow international shipments!). I’d advise avoiding forwarding services for inks from Japan (unless of course you know of one that isn’t fussy?)! Unfortunately that’s the case with all tall bottle sailor inks and indeed most Sailor store exclusive inks. It’s part of the fun for me (MSDS sheets notwithstanding).

As usual, images of the ink on other paper types is below.

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