Facebook Blurb # 26 – Whatever Floats your Boat

WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR BOAT – Ahoy there, you landlubbers! When the US Navy needed a lively and exuberant song for a recruiting ad campaign, the Village People (of “Y.M.C.A.” fame) came up with “In The Navy.” The 1979 music video praising the life of a sailor was shot at the San Diego Naval Base aboard the USS Reasoner, and peaked at No. 3 on the US Billboard Hot charts.

Listening to this disco hit during a recent Seventies-themed party, I was reminded of the naval origins of two iconic Japanese fountain pens – Pilot and Sailor.

Ryosuke Namiki, an engineer in international merchant ships who later became a professor at the Tokyo Merchant Marine Academy, left his job in 1915 to found a small factory producing gold pen nibs. Expanding the business to make fountain pens, he established the Namiki Manufacturing Co. in 1918 with fellow crew member Masao Wada. Encountering a problem with the abrasion of their nibs, Namiki observed that pens overseas contained iridium, the same corrosion-resistant metal used as supporting pins of compasses so indispensable to captains in piloting their ships. In 1938, they re-named the company Pilot Pen Co., Ltd., a homage to their pen’s nautical underpinnings.

And just four years earlier, Kyugoro Sakata, an engineer from the naval port of Hiroshima, came across an English-made fountain pen brought by a visiting sailor friend. Determined to replace the traditional Japanese brush pen, Sakata decided to produce finely crafted writing instruments, and together with his brother, formed the Sakata Manufactory in 1911 to first make solid gold pen nibs. The brothers started producing fountain pens in 1917, re-naming their company Sailor Pen Co., Ltd., with the hope that business would eventually expand overseas, like a sailor’s voyages.

Perhaps unwittingly, these two mariners rocked the boat of traditional Japanese writing instruments, and engineered a sea change in the fountain pen industry with their creations.

A 2007 Pilot “Vanishing Point” Limited Edition in Orange, from a series originally released in 1963 as Capless, and a 2017 Sailor “ProGear” in Persimmon with Gold Trim both lean against a vintage green 1970’s Avon perfume bottle shaped like a Viking ship and aptly called “Viking Discoverer After Shave.”