Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink, one of the highest quality ink products on the market, and most expensive, has a wide variety of colors, all of which are found in Japan’s natural world and reflect its beauty. Each Pilot Namiki Iroshizuku ink comes in a unique bottle and a Japanese name with its name also written in Japanese characters. Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink is a beautiful orange color, which translates to “sunset” in Japanese. This wonderful bright true orange color fountain pen ink is a deep orange color, with a very slight red tin to it. Its color is comparable to Noodler Ink Summer Tangier and Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin ink colors. As are all Pilot Iroshizuku inks, Yu Yake is easy to clean out of your pen, has good flow and is well regarded as a pen friendly ink, that has rich color.

Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake Ink

Testing Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink we found the following characteristics that you may find helpful when choosing your next ink color to purchase:

Testing Factors

During this review we used a Glass dip pen made by J. Herbin pen and ink company on Rhodia graph paper. The dip pen has a fine nib equivalent.

Bottle Sizes

Pilot Iroshizuku ink comes in the best ink bottle on the market, a hand blown heavy weighted glass bottle with an internal ink reservoir. The Pilot Iroshizuku ink bottle is display quality and also servers as an ink well. The bottle comes with 50 ml. of high quality ink. Recently, Pilot also introduced 3 pack ink sets in different color combinations of the most popular ink colors in a smaller 15 ml. size glass bottle. Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink is included in one of these three packs paired with Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji and Pilot Iroshizuku Kon Peki inks.

Cost

Being a luxury ink, Pilot Iroshizuku ink is on the expensive side, retailing for $36.00, but is available at Pen Chalet for $28.00 or 20% off the full retail price. The smaller 3 packs which come in 15 ml. small bottles and includes three different inks retails for $40.00 for all 3 bottles, or $32.00.

Dry Time

Like all Pilot Iroshizuku inks, Yu Yake is a fairly quick drying ink, which was completely dry and didn’t smear or smudge after about 5 seconds (using the glass dip pen).

Bleed Through

We experienced no bleeding while using Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink. Not even using the full soaked cotton swab.

Feathering

Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink did not feather at all during normal use and produced nice clean lines, while using Rhodia Bloc 18 paper. Even during the water test, only very slight feathering was experienced, but overall this ink holds up very well.

Water Test

Letting Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink dry for about 3 minutes, then running a wet cotton swab over the ink sample produced some slight color smearing and very slight feathering. Although Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink is not water proof, it held up very well under the water test.

Shading

Like most orange inks, Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink can produce some nice shading depending on what size ink nibs are used.

Conclusion about the Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink

Pilot Iroshizuku Yu Yake ink is a high quality luxury ink that has great characteristics, a wonderful ink bottle, and is quick drying.  As with most luxury products and services, we feel the price is worth it as you get a fabulous ink that performs very well, looks fabulous and comes in the best ink bottle on the market(the Pelikan Edelstein ink being a close second). Over all a great fountain pen ink from Pilot. Happy Writing watching and writing with this “Yu Yake” sunset ink somewhere in the world!