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The Asking Price for this pen is:

$500

That price is not written stone. If you have something for a full or partial trade, let's talk about it.

Any questions? Please send an e-mail to: rd@kamakurapens.com

Here is a 1980's Pilot Delux with a splendid Japanese red crested crane rendered in hira-maki-e with urushi lacquer. Quite an outstanding pen.

This pen is perfectly mint with the original price tag.

The Pen is signed with Pilot's "Kokkokai" signature.

In Ancient Japan the crane was known as 'the bird of happiness' and was often referred to as 'Honourable Lord Crane'. and was the 'Patriarch of the feathered tribe'.

The crane's white is said to symbolize purity, the red head for vitality (and also connected with fire). The birds are associated with fidelity because they pair for life.

They are also symbols of longevity and in both China and Japan are often drawn with pine trees, tortoises, stones and bamboo - all symbols of long life. Both cultures also associated cranes with good fortune and prosperity so they are often painted with the sun - a symbol of social ambition. Cranes painted in flight represent rising fortunes or prosperous times just ahead.

The powerful wings of the crane were said to be able to convey souls to the Western Paradise and to take people to higher levels of spiritual consciousness.

Ancient symbolism included the crane with the phoenix, mandarin duck, heron and wagtail as a representation of the five relationships between people. The crane symbolises the father-son relationship - when it sings, its young answer.

Japanese creation myths talk of a legendary warrior who conquered his foes to extend the borders of ancient Japan. On his death, his soul took the form of a crane and flew away.

Legend has it that Yorimoto in the 12th century attached labels to the legs of cranes and asked people who captured them to record their location on the label and re-release the birds - a very early program of bird banding to find out about the movements of a species. Some of Yorimoto's birds were claimed to have still been alive several centuries after his death, giving rise to the notion that a crane lived for a thousand years.

Another legend records that at Kakamura in the 11th century a feudal leader celebrated a Buddhist festival in which birds and animals are set free, by releasing hundreds of cranes as thanksgiving after a successful battle. Each had a prayer strip on its leg to pray for those killed in battle. This appears to be the first recorded association of the crane with celebration of peace and prayers for those lost in war.

It is apparent that as populations of cranes declined, artists drew on the work of other artists for details of the birds. When a crane stands, it appears to to have a black tail, but the only black feathers are on the trailing edges of their long wings. Yet for centuries, many artists in China and Japan portrayed flying cranes with black tail feathers. While the symbolism is clearly more important than biological accuracy, it is interesting to note that the symbol came very close to outliving the bird which inspired it.