Sailor Shikiori Tsukuyo-no-Minamo Fountain Pen Review

As a person new to the fountain pen hobby, I want to get a diverse pen and nib experience. And experiencing the famous Sailor feedback was on the top of my list. After a bit of research on cheap-ish ways to experience the Sailor feedback, wading amongst recommendations of Lecoule and Profit Junior, I stumbled upon the Shikiori Tsukuyo-no-Minamo. While looking at its reviews, I found that quite a few people said its nib was a class above the Lecoules, with one review even proclaiming that it was one of the best nibs below $100. With the Lecoule and Profit Jr. priced around $25 and the Shikiori going for $35, it was a no-brainer to get it. I wanted my first Sailor experience to be good, and paying the price of a fancy coffee drink to have that was an acceptable bargain.

Sailor releases a lot of variations of the same products, in different colours and shimmers, often collaborating with other companies. For a person new to Sailor pens, the mind-boggling diversity of pens with seemingly the same body with slightly different names can be daunting. The Shikiori line, loosely translated to the weaving of the four seasons has pens that are representative of various aspects of nature. The four pens in this sub-line, Tsukuyo-no-Minamo, depict the central motif of moonlight shining on the water’s surface. The dark blue variant I got called “Shimoyo”, is supposed to be representative of the frost that blooms on the surface of a lake on a winter night. The other variants are the light-pink Yozakura – pink petals which speckle the spring river, the red-brown Yodaki – the colour of bonfire on a summer night, and the dark-violet Yonaga – the colour of the moon and wandering birds on the autumn lake.

Each variant in this line has a fountain pen, a ballpoint pen, and a mechanical pencil, along with a matching ink.  The colours are objectively attractive, alongside a faint shimmer in the plastic body of the pen. The colour of the Shimoyo is similar to my Empress Teal Pilot Prera, pictured below.

The pen has a hefty feel to it, and feels substantial in the hands. It is very comfortable both posted and unposted, and I like the gold accents and the white finial at the top. The gold-plated steel nib is substantial and beautiful, comes with an ornate inscription, and features a tiny F inscribed on the left edge. These pens only come with a fine nib.

Unfortunately, the writing experience was anything but fine. Even though it is incredibly consistent, I am only grudgingly happy with my Pilot Kaküno with a fine nib, and I knew the Sailors run even finer. But I wasn’t ready for how badly the pen wrote. It was like forcing ink through a tiny needle that did not want to write. I did not mind the feedback – I very much wanted to experience the signature Sailor characteristic. But the pen was inconsistent, even scratchy. The lines it produced were extremely thin, and it wrote very dry. I also felt that the pen produced thicker lines with horizontal strokes and thinner lines with vertical ones – the experience akin to writing with a fine chisel. I am not sure if this is how it is supposed to be, I just wanted to point it out.

I had initially inked it with Diamine’s Sherwood Green, but there are some reports on Reddit saying it makes the pen run drier and makes it feel scratchier. I flushed the pen and decided to use one of the two cartridges of Sailor Jentle Black ink that comes with the pen, thinking, surely this will give me an experience closer to what the manufacturers intended. Unfortunately, it did not. It was slightly juicier, but only slightly.

I tried writing with it on MD paper, a Life Pistachio notebook, and a Ro-Biki notebook with Solstice paper. The pen wrote very thin and dry on MD and Life paper. The manner of lines it produced were similar to a low-diameter mechanical pencil with 3B lead.

It did better on the Ro-Biki notebook, which generally produces thicker lines than the others, but the writing experience was still too dry for my tastes.

I did want to get a Sailor pen in medium-fine (MF) or medium (M), but the glowing reviews of this pen and the nib convinced me that I’m going to get a good experience with this, even with a fine nib. Unfortunately, the experience, for me at least, is bad enough that I will be returning this.

I really wanted to like this pen. I loved its colour, its subtle sheen, the way it felt in the hands, but the writing experience was a let down. For now, I will stick with my Pilots. But I want to try another Sailor pen in the future, in MF or M. And probably a more expensive one.

Update (28/09/2026): I found a person on Reddit with very similar issues as mine with this pen. Their post starts with “Feeling hopeless about my Sailor Tsukuyonominamo Shikiori”, which is exactly how I feel after reading people raving about how juicy and wonderful the experience of writing with this pen is. I guess there are at least a few people who got the short end of the stick in the form of a faulty nib.