Pilot notes that “Iroshizuku” is a word created by combining the Japanese word for coloring (iro) and dew or droplet (shizuku). So Iroshizuku is “colored dew,” or, most understandably to the English speaker “color droplets.” A fitting name for a line of liquid inks.
The Iroshizuku inks are, generally speaking, known to be reasonably priced, nicely colored, relatively practical, and very easy to use. These are dependable inks that are very user-friendly. Being a luxury ink, they have subtle color tones and excellent overall performance in almost all fountain pens.
The Iroshizuku colors range from a relatively standard charcoal black to a range of blues, to all sorts of more exotic pinks, oranges, and greens. The most popular inks in the series are the blacks and blues, but also purples, like Murasaki-shikibu and Yama-budo. The middle tones — light brown and bamboo green for example — are the sorts of natural tones that the series is designed to show off, but they are less practical and less popular than something like the charcoal black (Take-sumi) or blue-black (Shin-kai).
The original line of colors
To celebrate 100 years of fine writing - inspired by the 7 Gods of Fortune Ebisu, Daikoku-ten, Bishamon-ten, Benzai-ten, Fuku-roku-ju, Juro-jin and Hotei-son, Pilot released an expansion to their iroshizuku line. Very limited quantity is available.
Certain Pilot Iroshizuku ink are now available in cartidges as well.
