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The Large Pen
The earliest fountain pens sold in Japan were the stylographic pens. The popular department store Maruzen began importing the Caws Stylographic pen in the very early 1900's. The Japanese traditionally wrote with brush pens, so before they could write anything they needed to take time to mix their inks from a carbon ink stone. To mix the inks well, it took at least five to ten minutes. Imagine being able to bypass this process and use a pen that already had its ink inside its barrel. That was huge. However, the stylographic pen's needle point didn't go well with the rough Japanese paper. One early Japanese writer said that using a stylographic pen made his teeth hurt. The next big innovation was the Under-Over feed pens. Maruzen had met with English pen maker De La Rue at the Paris World Fair in 1900, and had made an agreement to import their Onoto pens to Japan. Make no mistake, a Japanese person owning an Onoto pen had the same prestige then as a person owning a brand new Mercedes S-class today. Most people could only look at the pens with envious eyes. Soon however, Japanese manufacturers learned how to vulcanize hard rubber and began making their own under over feed pens. A few years latter they would start manufacturing thier own gold nibs as well. The Large Pen Co. was one of the early manufacturers to make all of their own parts, making the pen more affordable so that anyone could afford a pen. One of the problems with these under over feeds, is that they tend to gush ink. To write with one of these pens, you really need to have a tissue handy to catch the ink and prevent it from blotting your paper. Without a tissue, the writers would use a quick wrist jerk while holding the pen, to force some of the loose ink out of the feed and onto a blotter...or the floor. Many Japanese public buildings and post offices prohibbited these fountain pens because they detested cleaning up after their patron's ink spills. I love my maki-e pens, but what I love more, are the Taishou pens. These are pens made during the reign of Emperor Taishou, from 1912 to 1926. These are the pens made before Ryousuke Namiki would think of coating his hard rubber pens with urushi lacquer to keep them from oxidizing. Japan's steamy summers and humid rainny season is not kind to fountain pens. And after many great earthquakes and wars, not many of these pens have survived. The ones I do find tend to be very worn and faded. However, I do have one Large pen in my collection. It is a real treasure. |
