5 star Koukaboku inkstick ( 五星紅花墨 )-

Six generations before today's Kobaien, Matsui Motoyasu travelled to Nagasaki in 1739 to sit with ink masters of Qing China, exchanging centuries of craft in a single winter.

From that meeting came Koukaboku — "the ink of flowers" — five-star, ground from pure rapeseed oil-smoke for a clarity few inks equal: pure black at full strength, warming to a soft, tea-toned grey as it is diluted.

An inkstick, unlike most things one buys, does not simply age — it ripens. Laid away in a dry room, its ink deepens and its line quietens over the years, the way a cellared bottle finds its character in silence.

We can note the year of your stick's making on a free certificate of manufacture, and, where a particular year is still in stock, prepare one on request — a small provenance to mark the start of its own slow maturing.

Keep it as you would a good vintage: somewhere dark, somewhere still. What you grind today is fine work. What you set aside may, in a decade, become something rarer.

The meaning of the product name is as follows: 

五 ( Itsutsu : five )

星 ( hoshi : star )

紅 ( kou : crimson )

花 ( ka: flower )

墨 ( boku : ink )