Kakimori #01 Po ink bottle on top of box

Kakimori #01 Po on Leuchtturm1917

Ink

Kakimori is the name of a stationery store in Tokyo. In late 2021, they released a line of pigment inks with names inspired by Japanese onomatopoeia. They are housed in cute round glass bottles meant to evoke the shape of a water droplet on a flat surface.

Each ink has a brief writeup that evokes a certain imagery and feeling for the colour. I admit that I bought some inks based more on the imagery it evokes than any actual interest in the colour itself. For Po:

A colour tucked away in our hearts. Po is the way we blush when falling in love; the warmth of a face admired from afar.
Kakimori website

I’m tickled that Japan has a sound effect for blushing. Granted these are mostly used in manga so perhaps it helps to differentiate between the different types of blushing.

The ink is a bright red colour with a wet flow. In shading, it ranges from unsaturated red to saturated red. I thought the lighter parts do resemble the colour of a person blushing (at least based on what I’ve seen in anime).

Ink colour residue left on fountain pen nib

I expected it to be harder to clean out the pen due to the fact that it’s a pigment ink but it was easy to clean out of the barrel. I did not have to dismantle the pen. The problem is with the ink that had dried, like those on the nib. It was hard to clean away the dried ink and soaking in water did not seem to make much difference.

On Leuchtturm1917 paper,