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Sailor Hougado Pen Gallery Nodaiko Violet For a long time I had my eye on the Hougado Pen Gallery inks, a shop located in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, Japan on the island of Shikoku. Their original series of bespoke Sailor inks were kinds of blacks, and don’t seem to be reviewed here on FPN, except one by Lgsoltek, which has references to writing samples by saskia_madding, who didn’t like them. The shop has another series of inks based on the well known Japanese book Botchan. This book may be as famous in Japan as Huckleberry Finn is in America. The inks are colors representing some of the main characters in the book. Boochan Blue after Botchan, the main character in the novel, a mathematics instructor. Nodaiko Violet after Nodaiko, The Redshirt’s sidekick and accomplice. Yamaarashi Sepia, after Yama Arashi, the head math teacher at the school in the novel. Uranari Green, after Uranari, the school’s English teacher engaged to Madonna. The Redshirt, the “bad guy” in the novel, who himself wants Madonna’s affections. Madonna Purple, the beautiful local girl engaged to Uranari by arrangement. The information on the characters comes from a Wikipedia page about the novel Botchan and this helps explain the colors to those of us not familiar with the book. Sadly I have to have limits, and I rarely buy inks that I won’t ever use (reds), but I recently obtained some of these inks. The box top has a sticker label with a picture of the book’s author Natsume Sōseki, in thought, along with the shop name and ink color. Perhaps he’s planning the next chapter, or considering the next words in his famous novel. This is a deep rich violet similar in hue to the Quinacridone Violet pigment, especially as used in some watercolor paints. It's definitely not bright, but a muted color. While dark, it cannot be mistaken for black. It's quite wet, and in the wet Fine nib of the Edison Premiere used in this review, the line was somewhat wider. On the inkjet paper, the pen wrote more like a broad with a great deal of show through. The ink is not water resistant. I didn't have any problems writing, no hard starts, skips, nib dry out. No staining observed on the converter. Pen: Edison Premiere (F-steel) Papers: MvL=Mohawk via Linen, TR=Tomoe River, Hij=Hammermill 28 lb inkjet, Rhodia=Rhodia 90g ivory. Camera: iPhone 7 You can see on this image how much show through there is on the inkjet paper with this wet "Fine" nib.