Onoto’s newest fountain pen comes in its tribute edition celebrating literary figures. It has been made in honour of Natsume Soseki and his masterpiece, I Am a Cat.
“Once he had taken up his pen (a quill pen inlaid with mother-of-pearl that he had brought home from England), he wrote incessantly, before dinner, after school, and after dinner until late at night, with great pleasure and small effort” wrote John Nathan about Soseki: Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist.
That “quill pen” from England could well have been his Onoto, as he was known to own one and had even written an essay in praise of his fountain pens.
I Am a Cat is a commentary on humankind delivered by a cat. It’s a comic evocation of the author’s deep pessimism about his own humanity. When it appeared in 1905, readers were delighted by its wit and lightness:
“I would guess that he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of man’s inventiveness, pants” observed the Cat.
The Neko Pen is crafted from highly polished black acrylic with sterling silver fittings or gold plating. There is a figure of a cat engraved on its cap button and the writer’s name in Japanese on the barrel.
For a cat that had no name, we wonder what the feline impersonation of Soseki would say about being immortalised in an Onoto Neko Pen.
We bid farewell with a last pearl of wisdom from the Cat: “You must not speak ill of other persons. After all, everyone dies when their allotted span is over.”
For More Information: https://onoto.com/product/the-neko-pen-natsume-soseki/