Ink Review - Pilot Iroshizuku ina-ho

Hello, Chrissy here again and today I’m reviewing Pilot Iroshizuku ina-ho ink.

From Japanese this translates to Rice Ear and is a light to medium yellowish brown colour similar to the colour of wheat. It tends to lean slightly blue/grey and has a blue dye content when chroma tested. It’s an unusual shade of ink and I found it difficult to find comparison inks to match it against from my collection.

Ina-ho is a well-behaved ink that didn’t suffer from any skips or hard starts when I put the uncapped pen down to do swab tests, dry times and water resistance. It flowed well and felt quite wet and smooth writing. I didn’t see any feathering on the papers I wrote on.

It dried very quickly in 6 seconds on the Clairefontaine Triomphe paper and didn’t smear after it was dry.

I thought it tends to show up better when writing on white papers than it does when writing on cream papers.

Available in attractive Pilot Iroshizuku 50ml glass bottles from The Writing Desk.

Flow Rate: Very good.
Lubrication: Very smooth.
Nib Dry-out: Not noticed.
Start-up: Immediate.
Saturation: Not saturated
Shading Potential: Lots of nice shading seen.
Show-Through: None seen on Clairefontaine Triomphe.
Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Not seen
Nib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen, even after a week in the pen.
Staining (pen): Not seen after several days - easy clean-up.
Staining (hands): Washed off of my hands easily.
Clogging: Not seen.
Water resistance: Not sold as waterproof, but the blue grey content is water resistant.