Sailor Manyo Nobiru — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A muted olive-moss green. Sailor's own framing and the bottle label point to a fresh, vital green — my swatches read considerably more subdued and yellow-leaning than the label suggests, closer to dried herb than spring growth, and it drops to a very dark charcoal-green where it pools.

Shading: High. The writing sample moves through pale yellow-green to deep olive within single letters, and heavier pooling leaves hard-edged near-black halos.

Sheen: None visible in my swatches on Tomoe River. The dark edging is concentrated ink, not a metallic sheen.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Nobiru is Japanese wild garlic — a foraged allium with a garlic smell and a leek-ish taste, long credited with restorative powers. It belongs to a Manyo release built around food rather than flowers: things people actually ate in ancient Japan and wrote about in the Man'yōshū, the "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves". Wild allium turns up there in one gloriously petty poem by Naga no Okimaro, in which the poet demands sea bream with vinegar, fermented paste and pounded hiru, and asks not to be shown the water-plant soup. A thousand-odd years later, this is an ink named after it.

This is a hand-decanted 4ml sample vial from my own bottle.
Photos are my own swatches on Tomoe River Paper.
I'm a collector and I'm always happy to talk ink, so please message me if you have any questions.