Sailor Jentle Oku Yama

The Sailor Jentle Four Seasons inks were released in 2010, shortly following the discontinuation of their original Jentle inks – the Grenade, Peche, Epinard range of inks (which have since been re-released). I recall rushing out to purchase Sailor Grenade shortly after the originals were discontinued as I wasn’t keen on the “new” Sailor Jentle four seasons red ink – Oku Yama, as I thought it was too brown leaning at the time. As you can see from this review, I eventually caved and purchased Oku Yama as well.

Sailor Oku Yama is a well behaved red ink is slightly pink toned. It leans marginally browner than Grenade (original), which I feel has a pink undertone. Bungubox Tears of Clown (the other red Sailor ink in my collection) is also pretty similar in colour, but a stronger sheener, which I will talk a bit more about.

Oku Yama is a pretty pigmented ink, so its hard to see any shading other than in wider nibs. There is a bit of gold sheen, that leans a little green, but its not as prominent as some of sailor’s other inks or some of the newer sheening inks on the market these days.

I enjoy a bit of sheen but not when it is so strong that it impacts drying time or smears the page. I could only see the sheen on the 52gsm Tomoe River Paper. Out of the three red Sailor inks I own, I think the Bungubox Tears of Clown is the strongest sheener.

Typical of red inks, its quite difficult to clean all remnants of the ink out of your pen. I do the soak and sonicate method I described in a previous blog post, and it took me a few rounds in the ultrasonicator to get most of the ink out of the nib. Even so, when I took the nib out to dry on a paper towel, a very small amount of the ink seeped out onto the paper towel, so its still not perfectly clean.  

Overall, I don’t reach for Oku Yama very often, if I am craving a red ink I will typically choose Grenade or Bungubox Tears of Clown, both of which are “pinker” and more to my preference.

Sorry that the Broad and Medium nib writing samples are swapped around (I thought I had the broad nib in without realising it was medium till I started the broad writing sample!).