Excellent water-proof ink! I primarily use it in my 180gsm sketchbook with watercolors & gouache. I often wait a few hours after painting so it's most effective to counter the amount of water I subject it to. Holds up well!

Excellent quality ink. Great flow, no feathering, an almost waterproof warm black ink. Love it.

Excellent choice of ink! This has turned out to be the perfect tone of Black for my everyday writing. I highly recommend this ink!

This was the middle ground I was looking for between the platinum carbon black and the De Atrimus black. Dries relatively quickly, flows a little smoother than the platinum, and I doesn’t dry overnight on the nib of my E95s. Very happy with this choice!

Great service and product came packaged extremely well! Additionally, came with a cool sticker and lollipop which was a pleasant surprise. Would definitely order from this company again!

quality black ink

My vibe is this is somehow darker than sailors basic black. I get excellent dark lines. Very striking and legible. Makes me question my perception of black. Highly recommend

I bought two black inks together, this and the Platinum Carbon ink. The Sailor Kiwaguro ink is perfectly black, while the Platinum ink is more of a very dark gray. The Sailor is a delight to write with, while the Platinum I probably will not use.

This black has been my standard black since I first tried it over a year ago. It stays black over time. It has a lovely flow. You can get away with using it on paper not meant for fountain pens, like bank checks and copy paper.

This is an awesome ink. I put in my black Mountblanc pen and it work great. Very well behaved and does not bleed even with cheep paper. It is a pleasure to use. Extremely water proof, the paper will disintegrate before the ink goes away. It can be smudged, more like than Platinum's Carbon ink. But I found the ink for my MB pen. Looking for a useful permanent black that you can use professionally this is it. s

Currently using this ink my Pilot Custom 74. It literally feels like I'm writing on ice; the pen glides across the page with no feedback, and this is with a fine Japanese nib.Not sure if this is normal for pigment inks as this is my first, but it is very well behaved. I have yet to have any issues with clogs either.

This has been my go-to everything-proof black for years now. There's simply nothing better at what it sets out to do.

This was a gift for our grandson, who is a novice with a fountain pen. He declared this is the finest pen he owns. Pen was shipped quickly and arrived in impeccable condition. Please accept our thanks for the precise way the order was handled. Thank you!

Pure black and beautiful! Works great on poor paper and even checkbooks with a fine tipped nib.

I was deciding between this and carbon black after testing many permanent black inks to use for work (permanent black or blue ink required). Carbon Black is slightly more water resistant but this is only apparent on coated papers where neither are perfectly water-proof. Kiwa Guro has better flow, dries fairly quickly, is very resistant to water and common alcohols, and (most importantly) is probably my best behaved ink on poor-quality paper. This is the most well-rounded permanent ink I've tried, comes with a price but I don't find it too difficult to justify if you really need it.

Nothing works on crappy paper like Kiwaguro. Nothing. It's a beautiful deep, consistent black, it flows super nicely, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In my search for a perfect black, I ordered ink samples of just about every black color I could find from Noodler's, Sailor, Pilot, Platinum, J. Herbin, and a few others. There were more than two dozen in total. I tested each one for a couple of days in my Lamy 2000 with an extra-extra fine custom grind. I loosely scored each one on the following criteria: - Dry Time - Line Thinness - Color - Flow BehaviorKiwa-guro isn't perfect by these measures, but it is excellent. Dry time on 80g Rhodia was around 5 seconds. This made it one of the fastest drying inks along with Noodler's Heart of Darkness and Iroshizuku Take-Sumi.As my hand writing is super tiny, I use only the finest of extra-fine nibs, and even had my pen custom ground to reduce the line diameter. The Lamy 2000 is well known for being something of a wet writer if not a gusher. With very wet inks, it placed down a thick heavy line for my tastes. This is particularly noticeable with all the Noodler's inks I tested. Take-Sumi and Kiwa-guro laid down the most consistently thin lines.Color is an area in which I have had to compromise slightly with this ink. I wished to have the darkest line possible. Kiwa-guro goes on reasonably dark, but dries to a slight grey-black rather than a true black. I believe this is largely due to the thinness of my nib and the overall small amount of ink that gets deposited on the page with each stroke. Other inks that made consistently thin lines gave similar performance, while inks which put down a wetter, thicker line (such as Heart of Darkness) were much darker.Finally, let's talk about flow. In comparison to the average ink, I would say that Kiwa-Guro is right in the middle. If you're used to wetter inks (such as much of the Noodler's line) you may perceive this to be a dry ink as I initially did. I have encountered no problems whatsoever with this ink's flow in my pens despite it being a pigmented ink. In summary, the perfect black ink doesn't exist, but for me, Kiwa-Guro is as close to perfect as I've found. I've standardized on it for all my writing.

I inked up my Metropolitan (F nib) with this ink, just to address a letter to my grandma. I really like how this ink performs, so it'll go into my rotation when I need to look more professional at work. (I'm the kind of person who keeps basic inks on hand, just in case.)The ink dries quickly. Writing on Rhodia paper with this ink feels like writing on butter!

Use it for work in the hospital and love that it doesn't smear. Use it in my Lamy Al-Star as an EDC

Flows smooth and is very pigmented. Looks beautiful in a journal. This is a top black ink for writing or drawing. You can't go wrong with the other popular black inks but kiwaguro is just special.

Buy this and be done with all other black inks forever.Yeah, it smells a bit of chemicals and is a bit expensive, but this ink is almost as black as Heart of Darkness, as feather resistant as x-feather, while being faster to dry than either. It also has some silver sheen and if you look carefully, some of the pigment crystals in the ink will have either a purple are green shimmer. Seriously, I use this at work, and even waterman and Namiki Blue inks feather on our terrible copy paper. This one doesn't in a western fine. I literally have to flood the feed to make the pen gush way wetter than normal to get even the smallest hint of feathering. This is the last black you will ever need or want. Photo attached is trying to show the light hitting the ink in the perfect angle to show the sheen and shimmer. The paper is Rhodia. In all other situations, this ink is dark black.

This behaves very nicely in my Pilot SFM nib. It lays a very crisp, clear line on the page no matter the paper - beautiful on good paper and almost no feathering on cheap copy paper. It also has no shading, which for me adds to legibility - I love a clear, sharp, high-contrast line on the page and that's what Kiwaguro delivers. Even though it's black, which could be considered boring, it's more like a very dark gray because of the slight shine of the pigment on the paper. Although not super wet, it goes on smoothly. This is one of only a very few inks I can use on cheap copy paper and still have clean lines with no feathering. The water resistance is just a bonus on top for me.

My favorite ink! Amazing black that dries quickly and smudge-resistant once dried.