Sailor Jentle - Purple 201 aka Shigure

Recently I manged to purchase a bottle of Sailors Jentle ink – purple 201 aka shigure which means rain showers.  I was very pleased about this due to 1. My love of purple inks and 2.you now have to pay more money for less ink when buying this colour as its become part of the Sailor shikiori range.

I am not sure what the link is between purple and rain showers, shigure sounds so much better than the English translation.  I did however, look in to the meaning of the term rain shower and was surprised to discover it is different to ‘rain’.  Apparently rain showers have a shorter duration than rain and come from cumuliform (cumulus) clouds. These are thick clouds with a horizontal base, with the upper parts looking like domes or towers.  These clouds have more defined stop and start points, so showers (like the clouds they come from) may suddenly stop and start.

The ink when I bought it came in the old Sailor squat bottles within a box denoting the Jentle four seasons range of inks.

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It now comes in the 20ml Shikiori range bottle, less ink more $

​The colour on opening the bottle is purple but the chromatography reveals much more – a combination of purple, blue, yellow and green.

I am biased about this ink because its purple and it seems to be the dark purple I was looking for not like Bungbox ink of the witch a purple so dark it is black.
Both the col-o-ring and Tomoe swatches were a dark purple, on col-o-ring almost aubergine.  The Tomoe swatch has a hint of red sheen.

col-o-ring

Tomoe

For writing the ink was used on copy paper, rhodia and Tomoe river starting with copy paper.
As expected well behaved though a little on the dark side you could still see it was purple.  Impressive dry time.

On Rhodia it was more purple looking, dry time a little longer but still quite good.

On Tomoe - beautiful, I used cream Tomoe paper.  The only flaw is the time it takes for Sailor inks to dry on Tomoe paper, I know Tomoe is slow but ....

OK so I’m not really bothered about the slow drying on Tomoe as I really like this colour and I don’t tend to use Tomoe paper at work.  Plus this ink has shown it can handle cheap copy paper and still look good.  Sailor inks are available everywhere unfortunately this colour is only available in the Shikiori range now and they are not cheap especially as you now only get 20ml.
Alternatives to this ink:

Shigure is the swatch at the bottom of the pic

In summary -
Saturation – high 
Shading – yes
Sheen – hint of red in the Tomoe swatch not apparent in the writing
Shimmer - no
Flow –good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up – Excellent 
Feathering – very very slight on cheap paper
Drying – the better the quality of paper the slower the dry time
Cleaning - good
Water resistance - not sold as waterproof but a good amount of ink remained after being held under running water