Pilot (パイロット)
The Japanese pen par excellence, from the lacquered Namiki fountain pen to the erasable Frixion.
- Founded
- 1918
- Headquarters
- Tokyo, Japan
- Sector
- Stationery, writing instruments
- Flagship product
- Frixion, Namiki, G-2
Pilot was born in 1918 when two teachers at Tokyo's merchant marine school set out to build a fountain pen that would not leak. A century on, the firm covers the entire spectrum of writing: the maki-e lacquer of Namiki fountain pens, sold as art objects, and the 200-yen pen on the convenience-store rack.
Its modern masterstroke is the Frixion: a thermosensitive ink that vanishes at 60 °C — hence under the friction of the eraser on the cap — and returns in the freezer. Launched in 2006, it has sold over three billion units and made it acceptable, in a school culture where crossings-out are frowned upon, to write in pen from primary school.
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