Rigen Fountain Pen
The name "Rigen" is rather interesting. In the 1580's Kashio Rigen was the Bobby Fisher of the Japanese game "Go". In the early 1900's the famous Haiku and Tanka poet Kinoshita Hideyoshi took the pen name "Rigen"...as an interesting coincidence, he lived less than a hundred meters from my house in Kamakura. For the Japanese, the name "Rigen" draws a nuance of amazing wit, genius and artistic talent. A very appropriate name for a fountain pen. I do not know much about the Rigen Pen company other than it was located in the Kanda area of Tokyo. Kanda is the bookstore capitol of Japan. The streets are lined with nothing but bookstores. Thousands of them. If you love old books, then you would love Kanda. Every chance I get I spend a day trolling the shops for Mark Twain first editions. I know it sounds weird to look for antique American books in Japan, but that's Kanda. A few years back I visited all of these shops looking for fountain pens. I was able to find quite a few old highly prized Pilots like the Buddhist Scriptures pens and the Ultra, all at the original sticker prices. Sadly though, these stores have all been cleaned out now. I imagine the pens I didn't get to first, my friend Tokyo Russ, got to them first. Many of the Kanda bookstores also carry stationary and fountain pens. Most likely the "Rigen Pen Co." was one of these bookstores and the owner ordered pen parts with the name "Rigen" imprinted on the barrels and then sold these pens in his bookstore.
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