Sailor Pro Gear Ohatsu by Giftionery Delta

You can never have too much orange…

Let’s get this out of the way first – I love orange, to the point it could be classified as a medical condition. I’ll also admit to being a huge fan of Sailor – I currently own 7 Pro Gear and 2 Profit fountain pens. When it comes to their nibs, from UEF to Zoom, Sailor have always been amazing right out of the box every time. So when I saw Giftionery Delta post pictures of the orange “Ohatsu” on Instagram I knew right away that resistance was, in fact, futile.

The Store

Giftionery Delta is a stationary store located in Osaka, Japan – but they also sell a selection of products online via their Style-Dee website. They only ship domestically at the moment, but I was able to use my Tokyo middleman address with no issue, and then forwarded it to the States – about a week in total to get to the Boston area.

The History

The Ohatsu is part of a two-pen series, and a followup to last October’s “Tokubei” release – a beautiful purple Profit 21 with rhodium trim. Both pens feature “Ohatsu Tokubei” on the cap band as a way to unite the models. It was not until I looked into the history of this naming that things started to make more sense.

The stationary store traces its roots back to the original post-war store located in nearby Sonezaki. There is a Shinto shrine nearby called Tsuyu Tenjinsha – but it has a second name related to a famous Bunraku(文楽) puppet-play “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” – which is Ohatsu-no-Tenjin – named after the heroine in the play.

As described by OsakaStation.com:

“The play tells the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers, the geisha Ohatsu and the apprentice trader Tokubei, and it was supposedly based on a historical double suicide that took place at the shrine in 1703. In the play an unfortunate combination of family pressures, financial misfortune, and the betrayal of a friend, threaten to keep the lovers apart. Unable to live without each other, they meet at the shrine and take their own lives.”

I really love looking into the history of these naming choices as it always adds a new dimension to the pens, and it shows how much thought and effort is put into the release by the store.

The Pen

The Ohatsu Pro Gear contrasts its bright orange body with off-white end caps. The combination is quite stunning and the addition of gold flakes to the orange resin adds an extra depth to the body of the pen. The gold trim and clip compliment the flake in the body and tie the whole pen together nicely. The finial features the traditional Sailor anchor in gold set off by a black background. As mentioned earlier, the gold double cap band has “Ohatsu Tokubei” engraved in place of the traditional Sailor branding.

The 21k two-tone EF nib features the usual Sailor branding and scroll work, and it writes – as you would expect from Sailor – like a dream (though I do wish they had come up with a custom engraving design like we see with similar releases from Bungbox, Daimaru Fuji Central and Nagasawa).

As for specs – the Ohatsu follows standard Pro Gear weight and sizing. With the pen capped, the Ohatsu runs 5.1″ long, posting it comes in at 5.8″ long while un-posted it runs 4.5″ long. The wider .5″ body of the full size model does feel slightly better weighted in-hand over the slim models I have(24.5g/0.86oz vs. 19.5g/0.68oz), but not so much that I feel it affects the writing experience.

Packaging by Giftionery Delta was nicer than the usual blue Sailor clamshell box – with them opting instead for a paulownia wood box with blue velvet lining. The included pair of black Sailor cartridges work great though I would have preferred an included gold trimmed converter as well (like I received with the Nagasawa Tarumi Apricot Pro Gear).

The Verdict

So this was a bit of a no-brainer purchase for me, and the added step of researching the history behind the pen is always enlightening – never would have guessed a Romeo & Juliet situation was behind the naming convention.

If you have yet to buy a Pro Gear but don’t like orange there are a slew of options out there from transparent demonstrators to stealthy flat black models available – you really can’t go wrong. If you want to snag one of these beauties, they were still in stock as of September – but I would not expect to see them last much longer. If you need help with ordering one feel free to drop a comment below and I will try and answer your questions and point you in the direction I used to obtain mine.