Pilot Iroshizuku Ku Jaku

Pilot Iroshizuku is the luxury, high end line of inks made by Pilot. There are 24 permanent inks in the line and they have recently released some limited editions – some that have been exclusive to Tokyo and their 100 years limited edition ink.

In my experience, Iroshizuku inks are wet writers, great for any nib that is slightly dry or needs a little bit of help to keep going, and very well behaved. I haven’t had any with crazy sheen that never really truly dries and what I like most about this line of inks is that they have all been very easy to clean. As you know - this is an important ink quality for me.

Ku Jaku is a beautiful teal peacock colour. It is bluer than Syo ro, which is greener, and lighter and brighter than Tsuki yo, which I find to be duskier, bluer and darker than Ku Jaku. I’m always looking for the perfect teal peacock blue but am often disappointed as the inks I’ve purchased have ended up too green. In finer, drier nibs, this is certainly the case for Ku Jaku, but in wider wetter nibs, Ku Jaku turns into my perfect teal peacock blue. The colour in the 1.1mm stub nib on Tomoe River Paper is perfect for me and it continues into slighter finer nibs up to medium (which on my TWSBI has been adjusted to be quite wet).

This particular ink is too pigmented to be much of a shader, and whilst Iroshizuku isn’t famous for its sheen, you can certainly see that it does in the wider 1.1mm nib on Tomoe River Paper. There’s a tiny bit down to the medium TWSBI nib and I don’t see any at all in the fine. Its subtle but still present, making this pretty ink even prettier.

In my collection, I think the next closest ink to this colour is Sailor Yama Dori, which is darker and sheenier. The swatch of De Atramentis Pigeon Blue and Diamine Eau de Nil look similar to Ku Jaku in the photos, but in real life Pigeon Blue writes greener and Eau de Nil is greener and duskier than Ku Jaku.

In writing this review, I found Ku Jaku to be extremely difficult to photograph accurately. To my eye, the writing samples in the Fabriano photo is most similar to that of Ku Jaku in real life. All of the Flex nib writing samples (with the exception of Rhodia) is also representative of the true life colour of Ku Jaku. On Tomoe River paper, the photos look a tad darker.

When I pulled out my bottle of Ku Jaku for this review, I was really surprised to find out how much of this ink I had already used up. I did spill a tiny bit of it, but other than that, the rest of the ink has been used up by me. I guess that’s a true testament to how much I enjoy this ink.