Spirit of Nakaya vs Namiki vs Sailor (or Pilot, Platinum, if you prefer)

[arcfide]

Okay, rather than the typical "which is better?" or "which should I buy?" questions for Nakaya or Namiki or Sailor's high end options, I was hoping to ask, what would you describe as the je ne sais quoi of each brand, the "spirit" of the brand's offerings and their "soul"? I'm being purposefully poetic here, because I'm trying to capture the emotional and tactile nuances with the question that are not captured just by factual observations like "this nib is springier and this nib uses 21K gold." 

 

Thoughts? What's your opinion? I'm specifically thinking of their higher end stuff, but if you'd prefer to opine on the mid-tier luxury offerings from Pilot or Platinum in comparison to the same from Sailor, I'm game for that, too. 

[silverlifter]

The way I see it:

 

Sailor, Namiki, Pilot et al are all fine corporations making high quality pens by volume. 

 

Nakaya is a bunch of old, semi-retired artists doing what they love.

 

 

 

 

[aimi]

In the middle-range market level eg. Pro Gear/1911, 912/823, 3776 (crazy how we recognize these seemingly arbitrary numbers):
 

• Sailor for its sparkly plastics (lizard brain says yes) and pencil-like feedback. It’s also awesome how they do a lot of collaborations with stationery stores like Pentonote and Bungubox.
• Pilot for its widely available, consumer-friendly nib options, like the WA, FA, Falcon, and PO. Compare this to Sailor where specialty grinds are harder to come by like the NT and Saibi Togi.
• I don’t own any Platinum pens above the Preppy... can’t make this comparison.

Did I understand your discussion topic correctly? Sorry if I didn’t!

[Barutti]

3 hours ago, silverlifter said:

The way I see it:

 

Sailor, Namiki, Pilot et al are all fine corporations making high quality pens by volume. 

 

Nakaya is a bunch of old, semi-retired artists doing what they love.

 

 

 

 

+1

I considered all 4 brands from Japan before choosing Nakaya.  And emotionally I prefer "hand made", not plastic Nakaya's.        

[lionelc]

for the sheer maki-e artistry - namiki, especially in their emperor series

 

for a boutique tailored writer - nakaya - they even have it in their tagline: for your hand only.  the choice of nibs is far greater and can be customised to most requests whether bought direct from nakaya or in the usa from nibs.com  

[MuddyWaters]

Pilot: nothing exciting reliability in all sizes

 

Platinum: reliable microblades at the end of cheap plastic

 

Sailor: our beautiful sensations allow us to jack up the prices

[arcfide]

3 hours ago, MuddyWaters said:

Pilot: nothing exciting reliability in all sizes

 

Platinum: reliable microblades at the end of cheap plastic

 

Sailor: our beautiful sensations allow us to jack up the prices

 

LOL! I love this. 

[mke]

Spirit in big companies? If you want spirit, you need to buy pens from smaller companies - Manupropria, Eboya, and others.

If you want well-made industrial scale fountain pens, nothing to say against Sailor, Platinum or Pilot/Namiki - they are good and reliable for not too much money.

 

 

 

 

 

[Maki-eMagic]

I'll bite on Nakaya and Namiki, because they are quite different to Platinum, Sailor and Pilot which are large corporations (of course knowing that Nakaya fall under Platinum and Namiki under Pilot).

 

Nakaya I think did a great job of marketing to Western sentiments, the romantic idea that the 30 years experience Platinum pen makers go produce pens for Nakaya instead of retiring, hand making your urushi tamenuri pens. I've spent a lot of time in Japan (though have never lived there), happy to be corrected on this, but in my experience a high proportion of the best craftspeople in japan are past retirement age and keep on working because they want to, so thats something you'd get from most high end pen companies and is not at all specific to Nakaya. And of course the flip side of working 30 years of Platinum is that in terms of urushi in the recent range you're talking mostly Platinum Izumo variants, and then the custom order maki-e Nakayas are done by the people who have been doing the decoration on the Izumo and Kanazawa etc pens, presumably. So I don't think its especially romantic or better than other companies for those reasons, but they do make extremely nice urushi pens with tamenuri, colours and shapes.

 

I think for Nakaya the customisation is a much bigger deal, if you want to get an ascending dragon v3 in long cigar 17mm, you really can, in whatever colour you want and with a wide range of nibs with some tuning according to your specifications. This is definitely very different to Namiki, it feels like it is saying you get the pen the way you want the pen, except of course you can't get bigger nibs (a shame as I feel a dorsal fin 2 would work well with something larger). If you ask for a custom design they will pretty much just make it if you can pay, and you can see many examples on their website - but this cuts both ways, some of the samples are really nice and some to my eyes are much less so.

 

Namiki by contrast is much more controlled. They have the history of being the maki-e pioneers, the Emperor range and moving into the Dunhill Namiki pens are usually regarded as the finest maki-e pens being made by anyone, with a few master craftsmen from other brands or independently being the competition at those very top levels. They don't have a monopoly on top end maki-e, I've held Sailors and Danitrios (not a Japanese company but they do have some high end Japanese maki-e artists producing for them) that were just as good and more expensive than Emperors.

 

This leads Namiki to be a much more traditional company in terms of aesthetic. There are many things in design terms which are simply unthinkable to Namiki which Nakaya or Danitrio would start work tomorrow on a custom pen, while Namiki would never allow it. They have a strong sense of what their aesthetic is, what represents them and what doesn't. It takes a lot to get a new design endorsed and accepted as part of the range. They also won't customise the pens, the though process I would guess is that theirs is the top end of maki-e design and you like their pens and buy them or you don't, they are not enticing through custom nib options, they are enticing through world-class quality and you can get a nibmeister to do what you like after that.

 

The Namiki kokkokai feels again very structured, with very high standards set until a member is allowed to start signing pens. I've been told that entrance criteria involves creation of your own goldfish pen that has to pass the standard, not sure if that is to the kokkokai or to one of the levels within it. A difference between Namiki and Nakaya here would be that assuming the Nakaya criteria for penmakers involves the 3 decades experience, contrast with Namiki where some of the master craftsmen can be younger, take the Emperor Goldfish made by Seiki Chida, around 50 years old (?) who has been making them for over a decade and created the masterpiece Kingfisher Dunhill Namiki some 12 years ago. So for me that is something where the Nakaya again benefit from a romantic marketing image which in reality doesn't necessarily translate into anything advantageous when compared to other top-end producers.

 

Both make very fine pens, Nakaya being into tamenuri and urushi colours as opposed to maki-e naturally are much cheaper than the top end Namiki because they are easier to produce (while still being objectively very difficult and slow to make, just not as difficult and complicated as the top end maki-e techniques). For me they aren't really a like for like comparison because they focus on different things. The Nakaya vs Namiki who is better conversation seems to be the domain of people who are looking in a certain price bracket from $1000 to $3000 or so where these two brands stand out in the Japanese options, but when the numbers go much further up the Nakaya offering quickly diminuishes to just custom creations while Namiki has quite a lot higher to go with the Emperors. This creates what I think of as a slightly artificial competition between Nakaya decapods and Namiki Chinkins, between Nakaya Dorsal Fin 2s and Namiki Urushi 50 size or Yukari Royals, but they are in each case very different pens, and even the Namiki Urushi line in Yukari Royale or Emperor 50 size is quite a different finish to the Nakaya urushi offerings with very different nib sizes.

 

For me, if you are into coloured and shaped urushi pens then Nakaya is the obvious offering, and if it's maki-e urushi pens then Namiki is the obvious offering. Sometimes you can find Danitrio or others doing both but availability may be tricky, I'm lucky that my local dealer can get some interesting Danitrios and I bought my wife a Biwa Player on Camel for chirstmas, with maki-e and some lovely red urushi.

 

In terms of spirit, not buying into the romantic marketing as described above, essentially the difference is Nakaya want to sell you what you want, Namiki want to sell what they have made if you like it. Namiki are certainly more traditional in design, but that is obvious from their offerings. I say not buying the romanticism, what I mean is that I dont think it is unique and I think it exists for both brands, the painstaking manual processes, the traditional methods and distain for shortcuts, and the commitment to consummate quality.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Maki-eMagic

[arcfide]

@Maki-eMagic

 

What a fun and enjoyable read! Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I really enjoy seeing these perspectives. 

[Maki-eMagic]

34 minutes ago, arcfide said:

@Maki-eMagic

 

What a fun and enjoyable read! Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I really enjoy seeing these perspectives. 

Most welcome, I find the Nakaya website a little crazy, about 90% of it is very consistent but then you see some few of the custom pen designs, or get to the customising options for choosing the clip to go on an exquisite urushi pen and then one or two of the options appear so unlike the rest of the aesthetic.. but having said that, finding things that seem very un-Japanese in Japan is a pretty common thing

[Barutti]

4 hours ago, Maki-eMagic said:

I'll bite on Nakaya and Namiki, because they are quite different to Platinum, Sailor and Pilot which are large corporations (of course knowing that Nakaya fall under Platinum and Namiki under Pilot).

...

 

It was best survey to compare Nakaya and Namiki, what I ever read. Thank you.

 

[Mexchin]

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/profile/156533-maki-emagic/

 

I believe Nakaya and Namiki pursue different markets.  Nakaya goes after the popular market while Namiki makes "artsy" pens.  With Namiki, as you move up the product lines, the design changes.  From the Yuhari Royale line to Emperor then to the limited edition line, you  see the composition changes from a pretty picture to telling a story, a Japanese folk lure or something uniquely Japanese (e.g. Toryumon, Yabusame.)  Danitrio follows more or less the same route as Namiki.  Their top end pens' design are magnificent.  Nakaya does not have that. 

[ezinternet]

IMO:  Nakaya and Namiki are both built  “to appreciate”. And being positive and appreciative (and joyful and loving) allows for the flow of mental creativity. 
 

I reach for my Namiki with a loupe (aging eyes) and a glass of bourbon, to appreciate the artistry. 
 

I reach for my Nakaya (or older Danitrio) to write with, using a handmade tool whose qualities keep whispering “so nice to use, to see, to feel” and me thinking “thanks for the work you put into this object” and thus I feel continuous appreciation.  
 

Dfferently delightful. (and I’m sorry if I’ve wandered far from the OP question) 

[Driften]

I feel a stronger connection to writing with my Nakaya Urushi pens then I do my Namiki #50 Emperor. I do have four Nakaya but just the one Namiki.

 

On the lower end I feel more of a connection to my Sailor pens then I do Pilot or Platinum. Strange I know considering who owns Nakaya and Namiki... 

[gerigo]

I have to say that I go through phases of infatuation for each of the Japanese brands.

 

Pilots make beautiful pens that work supremely well. However, the perfection of Pilot also makes their pens feel sterile for me.  This puts their pens a distant 3rd in my degree of infatuation.

 

Sailor I love because of their amazing nibs. The fact that their nibs are so suitable for Chinese that really elevates their level of infatuation as I am on the journey of improving my mandarin. However many of their pen designs and materials have very generic off the factory floor feel. Truthfully, I am not the type of collector that loves to have one design with a myriad different color combinations. I really enjoy their more unusual designs and bodies but those always carry a very hefty price tag. Despite saying this, the one all time favorite pen for me is the KOP ebonite in medium. 

 

Which then finally comes Platinum and related to them, Nakaya. I have to say that Nakaya have their fingers around me. I have 12-13 Nakaya's and while I type this, another new one is winging it's way to me. Strangely enough their imperfections make them very human and relatable. Their nibs, together with their wider variety and ability to accommodate modifications makes them both beautiful to look at and feel, and also serve as the perfect calligraphy tool. Also of all the filling system of the 3 companies, I like Platinum the best. The sturdy post with the teflon washer in the converter makes fitting the converter always feel secure. At the end of the day, it's Nakaya and Platinum for me. 

[Barutti]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:29 PM, gerigo said:

Which then finally comes Platinum and related to them, Nakaya. I have to say that Nakaya have their fingers around me. I have 12-13 Nakaya's and while I type this, another new one is winging it's way to me. Strangely enough their imperfections make them very human and relatable. Their nibs, together with their wider variety and ability to accommodate modifications makes them both beautiful to look at and feel, and also serve as the perfect calligraphy tool. Also of all the filling system of the 3 companies, I like Platinum the best. The sturdy post with the teflon washer in the converter makes fitting the converter always feel secure. At the end of the day, it's Nakaya and Platinum for me. 

+1

[Maki-eMagic]

I think Namiki are what I love the most, though I've platinum and a Nakaya on order. I've recently had the rare luxury of borrowing some pens off somebody I know, and am able to compare multiple versions of the same Namiki pens which I find really interesting. I'm busy photographing the whole set but look forward to doing a detailed study of the differences between two pens made by the same person a few years apart.